I've been to the Grand Canyon a number of times and like to buy books when I stop at places of interest. The last time I went there I got a book about Mary Colter and also about the Fred Harvey operation. This time I went for a more, um, GRIM book, which, nonetheless, was fascinating reading. As you might imagine, the book details, not only with stories but statistics, what types of accidents have occurred at the Grand Canyon. For example, I wondered when I first started reading the book how many people accidentally fell off the rim or perhaps from one of the cliffs on the way. I had seen last year on a channel a story about boy scouts who run into trouble while hiking to the bottom. (Was "Walk Into Hell"

One man thought he would joke around with his daughter and, although there was a little wall separating the sidewalk from the rim, he pretended to leap over that wall and then disappear. Problem was that although there was a piece of ground on the other side of the wall, he lost his footing on some loose rock and catapulted to his death.

Besides all the shivers I felt reading the stories, which also included rafting accidents, plane and helicopter mishaps and even people trying to imitate Thelma and Louise by driving their car into the canyon, the authors had a point. Should people assume that natural parks and wonders have been made safe for them in the same way one assumes the owners of Disneyworld have? Or beyond that, OUGHT natural parks have to continually put up barriers? No matter how many warning signs are there, there will always be people who ignore the signs, don't read the literature, think that somehow they are immune to problems or just plain aren't considering that the natural world requires paying attention.

Anyway, it was a fascinating book.