Greetings from Grand Canyon National Park

Where Our Story Began

The North Rim of the Grand Canyon is where our story began.

Our mothers knew each other in Tucson, but somehow Bruce and I had never met. Years later, we both ended up working at the North Rim — Bruce on the fire crew and me surrounded by the life and community of the park. He became my next-door neighbor. Tall, handsome, quiet, and completely at home outdoors, he quickly became my closest friend.

We spent our days surrounded by ponderosa pines, endless canyon views, and the changing moods of the seasons. The park had a way of slowing life down and bringing people together. Before long, friendship became something more.

We married a few years later and spent the legendary winter of 1982–83 snowed in at the North Rim. More than nine feet of snow buried the lodge and cabins. Snowmobiles became our transportation, and daily life revolved around weather, isolation, and the beauty of a place few people ever experience in winter. That extraordinary snowpack eventually contributed to the historic flooding of the Inner Canyon in 1983.

Living there shaped the course of our lives. Bruce later became a Battalion Chief with the Tucson Fire Department, and I became a nurse and instructor, but the lessons we learned at the canyon stayed with us — resilience, wonder, simplicity, and respect for nature.

Today, we continue to travel together creating wildlife and landscape photography inspired by the parks and wild places we love. Every photograph we make is, in some way, connected back to where it all began: the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.

Sincerely,
Jan