Visitors peer over the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, the most popular and accessible rim, which is open to tourists year round. The Canyon is up to 18 miles wide and a mile deep in places. Each year, up to six million tourists visit the massive chasm built by nature over a billion year period. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site and national park. Photo courtesy of the National Park Service

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The Hopi House, a Pueblo-style building constructed in 1905 with local stone and wood, is modeled after Hopi Reservation villages. Today, native tribes sell arts and crafts here, in the Grand Canyon’s Historic Village District. Photo courtesy of the National Park Service

As I stared at the multi-colored layers of the yawning abyss stretching across the horizon for miles, I was immobilized by this geologic layer cake a billion years in the making. It was a pinch-me moment.

I first saw a picture-postcard image of the Grand Canyon in the third grade. Then, I could never imagine seeing it for real. But here I was standing 7,000 feet above sea level on the edge of a majestic, twisting, circuitous chasm — the Grand Canyon’s South Rim at Mather Point.

I was totally mesmerized by the artistic interplay of natural light and shadow creeping over mammoth formations, orangey terraces and deep crevices, savoring a quiet unlike any other and only interrupted by a raven’s occasional croak. The sun sparkled on the rocky walls one moment and clouds bathed them in blue shadows the next, a shifting kaleidoscopic lightshow.

The Grand Canyon is a geologist’s dream. The canyon’s layers — russet, brown, gold, orange, tan, gray, purple, blue and blends of all of the above — tell the history of the Earth during the last billion and a half years.

A billion years? That’s hard to get your mind around. It means billions of years of land colliding and drifting apart, mountains forming and eroding, sea levels rising and falling, land freezing and thawing, and water crashing and trickling through. Unlike many canyons that are formed as rivers rush among mountain peaks, the Grand Canyon is incised into the elevated Kaibab Plateau.

National Geographic calls it a “cross section of the Earth” in America’s Wonderlands. A visitor center poster elaborates: “It’s all about the layers.” Here, nature’s inexorable forces change the landscape oh so slowly. Wind, erosion and ice wear down the walls and pry rocks apart every day. The Colorado River’s sediments scrape the canyon walls like liquid sandpaper.

One of the seven wonders

A UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the seven “natural wonders of the world,” the Grand Canyon attracts over six million visitors a year. President Theodore Roosevelt designated it a national monument in 1908 and Congress made it a national park in 1919.

It covers over 1.2 million acres from Lees Ferry on the Utah-Arizona border to Grand Wash Basin/cliffs in northwestern Arizona. It is 277 river miles long, up to 18 miles wide, and a mile deep in places. It has four climactic zones with marked differences. The climate is dry, so dry that it can take 40 years for a tree to grow one foot.

For the non-scientific, it has three distinct regions: the Colorado River/canyon floor, the South Rim and the North Rim. The rims, or tops, are no more than 18 miles apart as the raven flies, but for motorists, a 220-mile or five-hour drive.

The popular South Rim

Ninety percent of visitors go to the South Rim. It has numerous viewpoints, several historic buildings and trail heads. The Grand Canyon Visitor Center at Mather Point offers a 22-minute, introductory video to the park and a geology exhibit.

The South Rim has several hiking trails. The 13-mile Rim Trail is the only above-rim trail and the easiest. It parallels the shuttle route, offering the fatigued traveler optional rides en route. Bright Angel trail is the most popular route for rim-to-rim hikers. The steep, strenuous South Kaibab Trail plunges to the canyon floor. Hermit and Grandview Trails, unmaintained routes, offer more primitive hiking experiences.

Park rangers caution hikers to be fit, well hydrated, sun protected and sensible. It takes twice the time to hike up and out of the canyon as it does in. Park officials rescue hundreds of hikers every year.

Some adventurers prefer the Teddy Roosevelt mode, aboard a mule down winding switchbacks a mile into the depths. Since the late 1800s, people have explored the canyon on mules, the equines of choice because they are sure-footed and strong.

Mule ride enthusiasts say that this trek is not for the faint of heart, as the mules might walk very close to the narrow trail’s edge. Writing on “Trip Savvy,” Elizabeth Rose cautions, “The wranglers will tell you that if you are a regular rider, you will ache a lot less than the newbies, but after a five-and-a-half- hour ride to the canyon floor, anyone will have a little trouble walking.”

South Rim mule riders stay overnight on the canyon floor’s Phantom Ranch, a secluded getaway built in 1922 that serves home-cooked meals. Riders must be over age nine, at least 57 inches tall, weigh less than 200 lbs. fully dressed, and be able to speak and understand English. For details, visit https://www.grandcanyonlodges.com/plan/mule-rides/. (Note: You can also get to Phantom Ranch on foot or via the river.)

Other more “bottom-friendly” ways to explore the Grand Canyon are jeep tours and “flightseeing” by helicopter and airplane (but 75 percent of the park’s airspace is off-limits to aircraft). River trips by oared, paddle or motorized rafts and dories are popular.

But enjoying the Grand Canyon does not require white-knuckle adventures. A contemplative walk along the Rim Trail (South Rim) or Transept Trail (North Rim) will not disappoint.

Geological and human history

At the Yavapai Geology Museum, visitors learn that the oldest exposed rock layers are at the bottom of the canyon’s inner gorge, the Vishnu Basement Rocks, hard schist and granites formed by colliding tectonic plates. Above are layers of shale, limestone and lava rock. The upper two-thirds of sedimentary rock come from ancient marine life, river deposition and sand dunes.

The museum sits on a point chosen by scientists in the 1920s because they believed this best represented the canyon’s geology. The 1.3-mile long “Trail of Time” between the museum and visitor center has viewing tubes and markers every meter representing one million years of time.

The park has one archaeological site and nine properties on the National Register of Historic Places, including four buildings designed by architect Mary Colter between 1902 and 1948. Colter’s aesthetics drew on the landscape, incorporating local stone and earth tones.

Grand Canyon’s Historic Village District has some of the most accessible views as well as multiple visitor services, including free shuttle buses. The historic, four-story, upscale El Tovar Hotel, built in 1905 of Oregon pine and native boulders, personified elegance in its day and still does. Note to movie junkies: Chevy Chase pulled up to this hotel in a pea-green station wagon in the 1983 movie Vacation and robbed the front desk clerk.

The Hopi House, designed by Colter, is a Pueblo-style, 1905 building made of local stone and wood and modeled after Hopi Reservation villages. Today, native tribes sell arts and crafts like Navajo jewelry, Zuni fetishes, wood carvings and pottery here.

The historic, limestone Lookout Studio, perched on the rim’s edge, appears to rise from the Earth. From here, visitors might spot California condors soaring on thermals.

A few miles from Grand Canyon Village, the Tusayan Museum and Ruins, excavated in 1930, is an introduction to the Puebloans who built a village here around the year 1185. Sixteen to 20 people lived here and grew corn, beans and squash.

The center of activity was a plaza and a kiva for ceremonies. Today’s visitors can explore outlines and ruins of former limestone and mud structures and, in the small museum, grinding stones, bone tools and pottery.

The 70-foot, stone Desert View Watchtower at the South Rim’s highest point offers an 85-step climb up for a 360-degree view of the Colorado River, the Painted Desert and more canyon layers. Another 1932 Colter creation, the tower’s base blends into the rocks.

It reflects the ancestral Puebloans of the southwest U.S. Four Corners region. Murals by Fred Kabotie represent the physical and spiritual origins of Hopi life.

More of nature’s wonders

This great rocky chasm may seem lifeless at first, but its dramatic topography and climate ranges make for a rich diversity of living things — from purple lupine wildflowers, to ringtails, to bighorn sheep. The Grand Canyon has 1,750 types of vascular plants; 92 mammal species; 57 reptile and amphibian species; and 18 fish species.

While the park has a rich human history, a visit is really about nature’s splendor, rocks and more. Because the canyon’s height is over 5,000 vertical feet, there is much biological diversity. “A trip from the rim to the canyon’s bottom is a botanical journey equivalent to an expedition from Canada to Mexico,” notes a sign in a park museum.

Three of the four North American deserts come together in the park at low elevations. These desert habitats support desert bighorn sheep. Dwarf forests of pinyon pine and juniper are home to mountain lions and pinyon jays.

Squirrels live in the ponderosa pine habitats, but these are special squirrels. The South Rim’s Abert’s or tassel-eared squirrel is found in Arizona, the Grand Canyon, New Mexico and southwestern Colorado. The North Rim’s Kaibab squirrel is only found here. Each has distinct coloration.

People have been in the Grand Canyon for thousands of years, no doubt captivated by its massiveness, mystery and constantly changing colors. At any time of day, it is sure to enrich the spirit, an experience that for our forebears made it a sacred land.

If you go

Start at https://www.nps.gov/grca/index.htm for lodging options, attractions and overall planning. Book lodging and trips within the park well ahead. It’s not too early to start planning for a trip next summer. Rooms for next June range from $89 to $275 per night at the five lodges in the national park.

Summer is the busiest time. Fall offers changing leaf colors and less congestion. The South Rim is open all year. The North Rim is closed from October 15 to May 15.

To reach the South Rim, you can drive from Flagstaff, Ariz. (82 miles), Phoenix (225 miles) or Las Vegas (270 miles). The North Rim is a five-hour, 220-mile drive from the South Rim. There is no public transportation to the North Rim. Trans-Canyon Shuttle (www.trans-canyonshuttle.com) has daily trips between the South and North Rims lasting four to five hours from May to October.

Amtrak provides service to Williams and Flagstaff, Arizona. Arizona Shuttle (www.arizonashuttle.com) has service from Phoenix and Flagstaff. Grand Canyon Shuttles (www.grandcanyonshuttles.com) offer service from Las Vegas, Phoenix and Flagstaff. Grand Canyon Railway (www.thetrain.com) has packages and operates restored locomotives from Williams, Arizona, to the South Rim, a two-hour trip, prefaced by a Wild West show.

Currently, American Airlines’ roundtrip flights from BWI to Phoenix or Las Vegas are around $386; from BWI to Flagstaff, $481.