A Journal
Edward Abbey

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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