“Canyon View” by Peter Turchi

A story by faculty member Peter Turchi appears in Prompt Press:

Cárdenas’s men spent three days looking for a passage down
to the river. Captain Melgosa and one Juan Galeras and another
companion attempted to go down at the least difficult place, and
went until those who stayed above were unable to keep sight of
them. They returned in the late afternoon, not having succeeded
in reaching the bottom. What seemed easy from above was not
so, but instead very hard and difficult.
–from accounts of the journey of Francisco Vásquez de Coronadois

“What is it about that place?” my wife asks.
She means the Grand Canyon; she wants to know why I need to keep going back. Though if anyone knows, it would be her: we saw it together—my first time—nearly 35 years ago, in August. I had driven across country with a kidney stone, the tiniest sliver of calcium compounds, a miniscule collection of crystals, an implausible cause of blinding pain. … Continue reading here.