My first river trip, down the Green, was the worst. It was called The Friendship Cruise and featured motorized watercraft, the problem being that the boat I’d been assigned to broke down almost immediately after launch, leaving me and my bride stranded on the riverbank with no backup plan. Thus, we became the first couple ever to hitchhike through Labyrinth Canyon to the confluence with the Grand, then upstream to Moab—my account of which comprises a chapter in a compendium of bad trips titled I SHOULD HAVE GONE HOME.
It could have been worse, I suppose. At one point, we were picked up by a drunken dentist, whose idea of a good time was blowing past other boats and splashing muddy water onto their occupants. But then on the upstream leg, the dentist’s outboard motor conked out, after which we drifted perilously close to the point where the Grand and Green join to form the mighty Colorado. I remembered seeing a large sign warning of dangerous rapids ahead—this as we desperately appealed for a tow from the same boaters we had harassed earlier.
A year or two later I had an opportunity to find out what lay beyond that warning sign—a most turbulent section of the river called Cataract Canyon. As I recall, it was late spring with maximum runoff, our only fellow rapid runner being a dead cow wending its way southward from Wyoming headwaters, hooves pointed skyward as it shot the rapids–like a thrill seeker with raised arms on a roller coaster.
The lowlight of that trip was entering still water about thirty miles upstream of Hite, then drifting ever-so-slowly to our take-out point. We were now on Lake Powell and back in the realm of motorboats and jet skis. Nothing is more unwelcome, after having spent blissful days and nights adrift in the wilds, than the sounds and smells of combustion engines combined with the hoots and hollers of drunken dentists. Even the bloated bovine that had accompanied our run through Cataract Canyon seemed disappointed.
The protagonists of Edward Abbey’s Monkey Wrench Gang plotted to blow up Glen Canyon Dam, thus permitting the Colorado to run free again. Well, it turns out that sabotage might not be necessary, as the lake is gradually drying up, exposing the long submerged wonders of Glen Canyon. Meantime, rapids in lower Cataract Canyon are reforming, and get this: observers are reporting a re-emergence of riparian wildlife, including beavers! You may remember that in the days before they were all trapped and made into hats, beavers pretty much managed the hydrology of North America. And now it appears they’re at it again.
I, for one, will be lustily cheering them on!
