André Serge Patenaude

This adventure was all new for me. Here I was a thirty-two-year-old man with an ex-wife and a ten-year-old daughter. I don't have a job. I don't have a place that I can call home. I had been working since I was fourteen years old. And since my daughter's birth, I had been working two jobs to make ends meet. And now I've taken my life back and I have difficulty feeling the appreciation of this beautiful phenomenon in front of me. This was real. The Pecos River flowing into the Grand Canyon before my very eyes was real. Not a movie, not a picture but nature at her best and I was numb. The only experience I was having was my mind trying to figure things out and analyze the view. After about an hour of viewing the bluff and the two rivers meeting and the sound of waters rushing and the blue sky and the fresh air and my dog and myself, my mind started to quiet down enough so that enthusiasm and gratitude and appreciation could be felt. Then I started to look for a campsite.

Andre Patenaude

One Man's Search for the Divine

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