Standing on the edge of Grand Canyon National Park’s South Rim at night when I was a child, I could see a twinkle in the distance. Ten miles away, across the canyon’s abyss, the warm lights of the Grand Canyon Lodge on the North Rim reminded me of the canyon’s vastness and the little community on the other side. 

But on Sunday, the light grew much brighter as flames devastated the lodge and left behind a pile of ashes and debris. 

Now, from the South Rim, my friends who still live there see illuminated plumes of smoke when they can see the North Rim at all. Where once stood a community — historic cabins, the lodge, a visitor center, the homes of park rangers nestled in a dense Ponderosa forest — now lies remnants of history and the memories that go with them.

I had a unique childhood as the daughter of two retired National Park Service rangers, growing up from age 3 until I graduated high school just a 10-minute walk from the infamous South Rim of Grand Canyon National Park.

The canyon’s South Rim draws the vast majority of the park’s more than 4 million annual visitors, while the North Rim — as the crow flies only about 10 miles away but a four-plus hour drive around the canyon’s edge — sees about 10% of those visitors. 

Grand Canyon Lodge was the pinnacle of the North Rim, a cozy cabin-like lodge that has perched right on the canyon’s edge since 1928 when it was designed for then-concessionaire Union Pacific Railroad. 

In 1932, the original lodge burned down and was replaced with another lodge in 1937 on the original building’s footprint. 

History repeated itself on Sunday night, when the Dragon Bravo fire overtook the lodge and an estimated 50-to-80 other buildings on the North Rim, leaving the community that once grew back from the ashes scorched and destroyed, a National Park Service news release announced Monday. 

Unlike the 1932 fire, which left all but two cabins and the lodge standing, Sunday’s flames swept the whole community. 

My heart is broken by the devastating loss and, as I look to the future, I know the community will build back stronger. But I can’t help but feel the immense loss of the place I knew that will never be the same in my lifetime.

For many, the Grand Canyon’s North Rim was a vacation destination of beauty and solitude. 

For the Grand Canyon community, including myself, the North Rim was home. 

My family spent many holidays and school breaks on the North Rim, reveling in the peaceful Ponderosa forest so much quieter than the south rim we called home.

Each time we visited, my younger sister Lenny and I would run through the lodge to a statue of Brighty the Burro — a local legend — and hug it until we were dragged away. 

Each visit to the North Rim was accompanied by a stop at Jacob Lake Inn, which is famous among locals for its delicious and unique cookie selection. The inn was still safe from the fire Monday, and it became a staging and rest area for more than 250 firefighters. 

The North Rim was our playground, where we learned, laughed, built forts, climbed trees and grew up. While we didn’t live there permanently, it was an extension of our home 10 miles away on the South Rim. 

It’s where I started and finished rim-to-rim hikes that taught me how to be daring and joyous in the outdoors, where my sister and I learned to build campfires and make s’mores, where I felt my connection to the Grand Canyon deepen and grow into a core part of who I am. 

In 2016, our close family friends, Bentley and Amala Posey-Monk, got married on the patio of the Grand Canyon Lodge, and we celebrated their love in that building. They had planned to bring their two young girls back to the North Rim for their 10th wedding anniversary next year, they told me. 

My sister and I became Junior Rangers dozens of times on the North Rim, filling out our workbooks (which had photos of us on them since we were friends with the designer) on the lodge couches year-after-year, never tiring of hearing about the canyon’s history and the majesty of it all.

Many park visitors likely don’t realize how intertwined home and work are for national park staff in a park like Grand Canyon’s North Rim, where there are only 22 year-round residents who stay through the winter when the park closes to visitors. 

For the people who maintain and care for the park, the North Rim’s developed area was work, home, community and everything in between. Friends of my parents lost everything on Sunday — their house full of family heirlooms, decades of photos, their backyard, home, workplace and lifestyle. In one night, their lives changed forever. 

Just like it did in the 1930s, the North Rim will once again rise from the ashes. The community will return, the Ponderosa forest will do what Ponderosa forests do best — stand tall in resilience and return to life slowly but surely. 

In the meantime, the devastation and heartbreak for the Grand Canyon community will take its toll. From a canyon kid, I send my deepest love to everyone touched by this tragedy and hold my North Rim memories tight. I’m grateful to have known the magic of this place.