Grand Canyon Celebration: A Father-Son Journey of Discovery - Hardcover

Patton, Michael Quinn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1573922668 ISBN 13: 9781573922661

Publisher: Prometheus, 1999

Synopsis

When Brandon was born, Michael Quinn Patton began pondering how best to celebrate the day his son would become a man. As a sociologist, Patton was intrigued with the rich history of coming-of-age rites of passage for young men, dating to ancient tribal cultures. But as a humanist he was wary of contemporary men's movements and their stressing of new age spiritualities.
When Brandon turned 18, Patton took his son to a place of mystery and wonder-the Grand Canyon-where they could explore together what it means to come of age. With an anthropologist as their guide, Patton and his son hiked the magnificent and dangerous canyon, exploring the oldest exposed rock on Earth while delving deeply into ancient coming-of-age myths like the Grail Legend. They found themselves faced with choices between fundamentally opposed paradigms: tribe-based warrior initiation and an emergent humanist celebration of father-son bonding and rational deliberation.
Written in the tradition of The Man Who Walked Through Time, and Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, this is the story of the Pattons' remarkable journey of discovery as they learn about history and geology, false spirituality, facing danger together, and what it means to be a man in today's world.
Patton cuts across many branches of social thought and belief: humanism, skepticism, father-son relations and men's movements, liberal religions, mythology, psychology, and social science. Life-affirming lessons of mutuality and acceptance are captured in Grand Canyon Celebration, a timeless memoir for all families as they journey through the canyons of their own lives.

About this title

Review:

Grand Canyon Celebration is a stunning, deeply personal, and profound account of a true, contemporary father-son coming-of-age ritual in the Grand Canyon. When Michael Quinn Patton's son Brandon turned 18, the two of them joined a mystical anthropologist and descended into the canyon for a 10-day trek. Patton, a social science professor, was interested in the differences between tribal manhood rituals (where the adolescent struggles to separate from the tribe to form an identity) and the modern adolescent struggle (to find and maintain a connection to the family). Through the lenses of the modern-day men's movement, formal skepticism, mythology, psychology, and ancient legends, the Pattons explored Brandon's coming-of-age while challenging themselves physically in the deepest exposed rock on Earth. Grand Canyon Celebration should be required reading for parents of teenage sons seeking ways to initiate them into the adult world, and is highly recommended for all readers interested in the father-son relationship, hiking, nature, social thought, or the conflicts between New Age and secular humanist theories. Patton is a beautiful, thoughtful writer, and his balance of geographical imagery and questioning intellect will keep readers turning pages. --Ericka Lutz

About the Author:

Michael Quinn Patton (Minneapolis, MN) is a social science professor with The Union Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio, a former Peace Corps volunteer in Africa, and the award-winning author of six major books on evaluation and research.

About this edition

• Publisher: Prometheus
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1573922668
• ISBN 13: 9781573922661
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 330