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Member Spotlight: Linda and Bob Shadiow, Grand Guardians and Bright Angel Circle Members
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inda Shadiow says she and her husband, Bob, are just two “ordinary people” who didn’t grow up going to National Parks. “Looking at the land as something other than the ground we walk on was a paradigm shift for both of us,” she says. “But over the years, we came to purposely move to places where we would have access to national parks because the land became increasingly important to us.” Linda and Bob grew to be avid Grand Canyon hikers who first visited the park on a roadtrip in 1979. “Our first trip was your typical tourist trip . . . get in the car, go, look at the edge, and say ‘Oh my God, look at this!’ But snapshots ended up not being enough for us.” A pivotal trip for them occurred after they moved to Flagstaff about ten years later, when they joined a bicycle trip to the canyon. “I remember as we unexpectedly approached the canyon’s edge, both of us felt like the land beneath us fell away and took our breath with it. That experience opened our pores to the canyon’s world,” says Linda. Since then, the couple has hiked to the bottom of the canyon dozens of times, including memorable stays at Phantom Ranch for Thanksgivings, Christmases, and New Year’s Eve, and has been on raft trips down the Colorado River. They lived in Flagstaff, Arizona for 30 years, allowing them easy access to the South Rim, “world of trails, sunrises, sunsets, and history.”
Photo courtesy Linda and Bob Shadiow.
“Every time we were at the rim or on a trail, something shifted in us a bit. It became not just us looking at the canyon, but the canyon showing us its space, a space where the walls, the sky, the land, the river, and even the silence has stories,” Linda says. “I became fascinated with how the canyon taught us to see—to open our eyes to its history, culture, music, wildlife. And there was a moment— I think on the Tonto Trail— when we both realized we had gone from standing apart from the canyon to just this profound sense of being a part of the canyon.” Now retired, the couple relocated to St. George, Utah in part to be closer to the North Rim, and they completed their third rim-to-rim hike the year they both turned 70.
“The canyon doesn’t care how old we are, it invites us to come and build more stories within it.” Their experiences and memories of the canyon are woven through the 53-year friendship that is the core of their marriage, and supporting Grand Canyon is important to the couple. “We realized even as two ordinary people who have more wealth in experiences than in bank accounts, we can still put GCC in our will,” they say. Bob and Linda feel that “being part of the group that supports the canyon gives us ancestors we’ve never met, including the canyon itself. We have come to think about our being kin with the land, and about the canyon being kin with us.”
