| In time
the tug of wilderness would be felt by more and more people, and by 1950 the total number
of persons who had floated the river hit one hundred. Historian Dock Marston told us that
my wife, Esther, and I were numbers 185 and 186 (the order depending, of course, on who
was at which end of the boat at the finish line); that was in 1955, so the snowball was
beginning to roll. But even now, with twenty thousand or more people spread over a
distance of some two hundred miles in a river-running season lasting seven or eight
months, only the most reclusive among us will feel that the glorious river trail through
the Grand Canyon--easily the longest, wildest, grandest white-water route in the world--is
overcrowded... ...In the
long-term perspective of a canyon millions upon millions of years old, carved inch by inch
down into a rising plain of which the youngest rocks--the upper Permian surface formation
we call the Kaibab--are a couple of hundred million years old and the oldest--the
mysterious flinty schists of the innermost gorges--still glitter with the dawn-light of
Creation, it seems almost funny to worry about what we do to it. The proud dams above and
below, those ugly concrete plugs Ed Abbey would have liked to have blown up, are at worst
fleeting aberrations. And although there is much concern over what damage we may be
causing in the canyon by going through it on rafts and in boats, there seems to be room
for agreement that we are scarcely leaving enough twentieth-century artifacts and drowned
corpses behind to make a decent fossil record of our times in the siltstone forming at the
bottom of Lake Mead.
If for nothing more than
pleasure, instruction, and inspiration for the transitory race called human, we should be
determined to sustain the river experience in the Grand Canyon. Few things in this world
are really beyond description; it is safe to say that the exhilaration in approaching,
entering, and running a big Grand Canyon rapid in a small boat is one of them. Add to the
scores of rapids the compelling subjects for contemplation (including, at times, the
responses of your fellow wayfarers, and yes, even the sandstorms, rainstorms, and
inevitable cuts and bruises) and there is nothing more, with the possible exception of a
hot shower now and again, that anyone should ask of life...
© Martin Litton
1999
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| Day 1 Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, we assemble
at Lee’s Ferry, Arizona, on the banks of the brand-new cold green Colorado River.
Green because of micro-plankton. Cold because this water is issuing from the bottom of a
dam twelve miles upstream--that Glen Canyon Dam. The temperature of the water here is 47¼
F. (I place a six-pack of Michelob in the water for quick chilling.)... Minutes later, all
too soon, without adequate spiritual preparation, we are launched forth on the mad and
complex waters of the frigid river...
From up ahead comes the deep
toneless vibration of the first major rapid, Badger Creek. The sound resembles that of an
approaching freight train on a steel trestle. On the standard scale of 1 to 10 this rapid
is rated 4-6. Of intermediate difficulty. Staring, we see the river come to an edge and
apparently vanish. Curling waves leap, from time to time, above that edge. Wally Rist, in
the leading boat, stands up for a good look, sits down, turns his boat, and facing
forward, slides over the glassy rim of water. His boat disappears. He disappears. Two more
boats follow. They disappear. Our turn... We fasten our life jackets. Pooled behind the
wall of boulders that forms the rapid, the river slows, moving with sluggish ease toward
the drop. The roar grows louder. I think of Pittsburgh, the old Forbes Field, seventh game
of the 1961 World Series, bottom of the ninth, Yankees leading 8 to 7, two men out, one
man on, and the roar that greeted Lou Mazerowski’s pennant-winning homer...
John has seated himself, the bow
of the dory is sliding down the oily tongue of the rapid, holes and boils and haystack
waves exploding all around us. One icy wave reaches up and slaps me in the chest, drenches
my belly. Cold! The shock of it. But we are through, easy, riding the choppy tailwaves of
the rapid. John catches the bottom of the eddy on the right and with a few deft strokes
brings our boat to the beach at the mouth of Badger Creek. Here we’ll make camp for
our first night on the river. True, we haven’t gone far, but then, we didn’t get
started till noon...
Day 8
We spend much of the day at Elves
Chasm, a magical place with running stream, clear pools, high falls, lush and varied
vegetation. We climb from ledge to ledge, from fall to fall, up pitches of some
difficulty. We watch the boatmen traverse one ledge with a rather indecent exposure, two
hundred feet of vertical space full of nothing but gravity. The ledge is three inches
wide. There are no handholds. Most of us choose the sole alternate route, a humiliating
crawl on face and belly through a claustrophobic tunnel. No matter. More wonders wait
beyond. The route terminates in a kind of amphitheater deep in the cliffs, where warblers
sing in the redbud trees and a whispering, shimmering, vaporous veil of crystalline water
slips down and down, over moss and algae, past maidenhair fern and helleborine orchid,
from the notch in the canyon far above our heads. A breeze caresses the leaves of the
willows, hackberrys, box elders. Meditation time...
Day 18
...The spirit of John Wesley
Powell will understand, high in his haunt on the rim of Great Thumb Mesa. Listen to his
words, still whispered by the wind:
We have an unknown distance
yet to run;
an unknown river yet to explore
Night and day the river flows. If
time is the mind of space, the Colorado is the soul of the desert. Brave boatmen come,
they go, they die, the voyage flows on forever. We are all canyoneers. We are all
passengers on this little living mossy ship, this delicate dory sailing round the sun that
humans call the earth.
Joy, shipmates, joy.
© Edward Abbey
1977, 1999
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