“History is not a ladder we climb, but a canyon we descend—each layer a story, each fossil a forgotten truth.”In the spring of the plague years, I went down. Not metaphorically—though that too—but quite literally: into the Grand Canyon, down through rock older than life itself, each layer a scripture in sediment. Tommy, our river guide—equal parts maestro, maven, and modern-day Charon—navigated us through the silence and fury of deep time. No cell signal. No calendar. Just sun, stone, and the...