Grand Canyon Celebration: A Father-Son Journey of Discovery

When his son Brandon was born, author 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.

This is the story of the Pattons' 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. Illustrated with original tribal drawings.
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