...White Water Ramblers

Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, we assemble at Lee's Ferry, Arizona, on the banks of a cold green river. Green because of microplankton. Cold (49 degrees Fahrenheit) because this water comes from the bottom of a dam 15 miles upstream--Glen Canyon Dam. We are bound for Pierce Ferry on Lake Mead, 280 miles down-river, through the Grand Canyon of the Colorado.

(We're going to get their stinking dam, by the way. We've got secret plans: underground chemists working on the formula for a new kind of acid that will dissolve concrete underwater; the world's biggest houseboat at Wahweap Marina, above the dam, filled with fertilizer and kerosene; a muralist from Mexico painting a jagged fracture down the dam's face. Long before it fills with mud, Glen Canyon Dam is going to go--5,000,000 cubic yards of concrete--down the river. All is ready but the printed announcements.)

I turn my attention to the little boats, the boatmen, my fellow passengers on this suicidal journey down the river of no return.

There are seven dories, bright, gaily painted craft; each is named after some natural feature destroyed or maimed by the works of man. The Peace River (damned in Canada), the Tapestry Wall, the Moqui Steps, the Music Temple (lovely places in Glen Canyon now sunk beneath the waters of Lake Powell), the Vale of Rhondda (mined in Wales) and the Celilo Falls (Columbia River). The boats are 17 feet long from stem to transom, almost seven feet wide at the beam. Five are made of wood, one of fiberglass, one of aluminum. Closed hatches at bow, midships and stern make them virtually unsinkable--we are told. I don't believe it for a moment. "Virtually" unsinkable. Virtually, indeed. What sinister ambiguities are contained in that sly equivocation?

I'm looking for a way to creep off unnoticed when my escape is interdicted by the approach of two fellow passengers. Some fellows. One is a dark-brown, exotic wench in a tigerskin bikini; she has the eyes and hair of Salome and breasts like two roebuck gamboling on the playing fields of the Lord. The other is a tall, trim sloop of a girl with flaxen hair, a mouth that promises--well, everything--and elegant thighs emerging from the skimpiest pair of Levi cutoffs I have ever seen.

I pause, hesitate, reconsider. This is a serious assignment. I've been paid real money for this job, money I've already spent, virtually unrefundable. Following my bowsprit back to the beach, I join the crowd around Wally Rist, the head boatman, who is demonstrating--on Salome--the proper way to fasten a life jacket.

An hour later, all too soon, we are launched forth on the mad and complex waters.

Five miles down-river from Lee's Ferry, we glide beneath the bridge, 467 feet above us, that spans Marble Gorge. Some Navaho kid up there, bored with trying to sell clay pots to the tourists, lobs a rock. It crashes into the water ten feet from our boat. Can't blame the Indians, just normal ethnic hatred, but our boatman, John Blaustein, picks up the pace a bit, heaving at the oars, until we are safely out of range.

Entering here over a century ago, Major John Wesley Powell wrote as follows in his diary:

August 5, 1869--With some feeling of anxiety we enter a new canyon this morning. We have learned to observe closely the texture of the rock. In softer strata we have a quiet river, in harder we find rapids and falls. Below us are the limestones and hard sandstones which we found in Cataract Canyon. This bodes toil and danger.

The Kaibab limestone formation rises on either side of us, forming walls that cut off most of the sky. We float through a monstrous defile 1000 feet deep; 2000 feet deep? From ahead comes the deep, toneless vibration of the first major rapid. Badger Rapid. The sound resembles that of a freight train approaching through a tunnel. On the standard boatman's scale of one to ten, this rapid is rated at four to six. Of intermediate difficulty. Staring, we see the river come to an edge and vanish. Curling waves leap above that edge. Rist, in the first boat, stands up for a good look, sits down, turns his bow forward and slides over the glassy rim of water. His boat disappears. He disappears. Two more dories follow. They disappear. Our turn.

"Buckle up," commands John.

I and the three other passengers in the dory fasten our life jackets. John stands in the center of the boat, reading the water. Pooled behind the wall of boulders that forms the rapid, the river slows, moving with sluggish ease toward the drop. The roar grows louder.

John seats himself, the dory slides down the oily tongue of the rapid, holes and boils and haystack waves exploding all around us. John makes a perfect run down the middle. One icy wave reaches up and slaps me in the chest, drenches my belly, groin and private parts. Cold! The shock of it. But we are through, riding the choppy tail of the rapid. John catches the eddy on the right and with a few deft strokes brings our boat to the beach. The other boats join us. Boatmen and passengers clamber ashore. Here we shall make camp for our first night on the river. We haven't gone far, but then, we didn't get started till noon today.

The cooks begin at once preparing supper. Our cooks are two able and handsome young women named Jane and Kenly. Both are competent oarsmen as well, but because of their employer (Martin Litton of Portola Valley, California), they are confined to the role of cook. They don't seem to mind. Good policy, anyway, I'm thinking; after all, if we allow women to do anything men can do, what remains of the ancient dignity of being a man? We have to draw the line somewhere. Fair but firm, that's the rule. Keep them down, I say, beat them down with oars and anchor chains, if need be, with vigorous blows about the head and shoulders, but keep them down.

After dinner--pork chops, applesauce, salad, etc., the etc. in my case being a mug of Ronrico 151--the boatman called Sharky digs out his ukulele and his kazoo and announces a party. Darkness settles in, the campfire blazes higher, decorum decays. Salome dances in the sand. The tall slim girl in the cutoff cutoffs stands somewhat aloof, watching us all with a scornful smile on her lovely face. We sing the kind of songs people sing on river trips, we talk, we smoke our long cigars, we watch the fire.

The tall girl leaves us, walking up the dunes into the shadows toward her bed. I resolve to follow. One more nip on the Ronrico and two more songs and then I slink away, unobserved, I hope, and trail her footsteps in the sand. In the dim starlight, I find her lying on top of her sleeping bag, naked as a nymph. She says nothing as I unroll my bag beside hers, undress and lie down next to her. Two shooting stars trace lingering parabolas of blue fire across the sky. From below rises the sound of rowdy music. Crickets chirp. I reach out and touch the girl, softly, on her warm, rounded hip.

"Took you long enough to get here," she says.

"Sorry, honey."

•

We wake early in the morning to the sound of Rich Turner, boatman, playing his recorder. Greensleeves, Foggy, Foggy Dew, Amazing Grace--sweet, simple tunes that float like angelic voices through the great natural echo chamber under the canyon walls. We pass without trauma from our dreams into the day, the wilderness and desert and river.

Great blue herons rise before us, flap down-river, find another perch and wait until we herd them on again. Ravens croak, canyon wrens sing a glissando and, in the thickets on the bank, we spot a blue grosbeak, an ash-throated flycatcher, a sparrow hawk. John rows and rests. Waterdrops fall from his oars and tinkle on the surface of the placid river. An enormous stillness fills the canyon.

Then the sound of motors. "Baloney boats," says John. We look upstream and see a huge silver-gray rubber raft come barging around the bend, bearing down on us. Swarming with people, it looks like a floating anthill. John pulls our dory aside to let it pass. At full throttle, the thing roars by. Followed a minute later by a second and a third. Western River Expeditions, Salt Lake City. The wilderness mass-transit system. The three baloneys swerve around the bend below and vanish. Oil slicks glisten on the water. Gasoline fumes hover on the air, slowly dissipating. Gradually, the quiet returns. We talk about birds, rocks, rapids.

Ah, yes, the rapids. Here they come again. We run Soap Creek Rapid, rated five to six, and Salt Water Wash, where Frank M. Brown was drowned in 1889, surveying for a railroad that was never built. Sheerwall Rapid (two to three). House Rock Rapid (seven to eight). The ratings vary, depending on the volume of river flow. Most rapids are easier in high water; this river is low.

(Continued on page 114) White Water Ramblers (continued from page 90)

We hit no rocks but plunge through plenty of waves. Soaked with icy water, burning under the sun, we bail out the boat, gaze up at the towering walls and hurry on, borne forward by the hastening current. In the late afternoon, chilled despite the August heat by the water and the shade of the canyon walls, we are glad to see Wally's boat pulled ashore on the beach above the mouth of North Canyon. Second camp: Mile 21 from Lee's Ferry. Sixteen days and nights to go.

Unloading the dories is becoming part of the routine. Most of the passengers help out, scrounging for firewood, carrying water. My wife, Renée, the girl with the legs, has already made herself a member of the crew. Only a few more sensitive types like myself, pained by the sight of toil, sneak away for a walk up North Canyon.

That evening, the wind begins to blow. Dark clouds loom like trouble, lightning crackles in the distance. Will it rain? Renée and I string up our plastic tube tent. It doesn't rain, but all night long the wind howls, the sand swirls in our faces and small green bugs crawl in and out of my ears, seeking shelter.

•

Today is a good day. John Blaustein lets me row his boat. After getting safely past 241/2 Mile Rapid, where Bert Loper died in 1949, and through 29 Mile Rapid, I barely get around the exposed rock at the head of the chute in 30 Mile Riffle and am forced to run the rest of it stern foremost. Backward. The dory does well enough in this attitude, but John is shaken. "Exciting," he says, his knuckles white, "very exciting. Give me back the oars, please."

Well, to hell with him. I thought it was a good run. Any run without loss of boat or passengers is a good run, in my opinion. To hell with him.

Lunch at Redwall Cavern, Mile 33. Lemonade, beer, avocado-cheese-beansprout sandwiches. Redwall Cavern is a huge chamber carved out of the limestone by the old, predamnation river. Major Powell guessed it would seat 50,000 people. I'd say 5000. He was off by a digit but assumed, when writing his celebrated report, that no one else would ever come down the river to check up on him. I'm not calling Powell a liar; Powell is a hero of mine. But I will say he had a tendency, now and then, to slightly exaggerate the truth.

The river, brown before, is taking on a rich red-orange color, muy Colorado. The good old Paria (a side stream) must be in flood again. So that's where last night's storm was.

We run some modest rapids this afternoon, make third camp at Buck Farm Canyon early in the evening. Much deer sign--thus the name?--and trickling seeps, emerald pools with tadpoles, red and blue and purple dragonflies, cottonwoods, willows, graceful little redbud trees. Soup and salad, steak and sweet corn, plenty of beer for supper. Happiness.

•

Off again on the river of gold, through a clear, bright, irreplaceable day. The great Redwall cliffs soaring above, intense and vivid against God's own blue sky. Marble Canyon, Powell called this place, though limestone is not marble and he knew it.

We camp tonight at Nankoweap. "Nankoweap," Wally explains, "is an old Paiute Indian word meaning 'place where scorpions crawl into sleeping bags if not detected by unsleeping vigilance.' "

•

Onward. We have come only 52 miles in four days. We have many miles, many rapids, many pages to go before this perilous journal is completed.

Kwagunt Rapid (four to six). No problem. 60 Mile Rapid (four). Simple. We pass the mouth of the Little Colorado River, brown with floodwaters, and find new and formidable rock formations rising before us. Powell recorded the approach in these words:

August 13, 1869--We are now ready to start on our way down the Great Unknown. We have but a month's rations remaining. With some eagerness and some anxiety and some misgiving we enter the canyon below....

Dramatic words. With a little effort of the imagination, we can understand how Powell and his brave men felt. For more than two months, they'd been battling the river, all the way from Wyoming--upsetting in rapids, wrecking boats, losing supplies, gambling on Powell's belief that a river so silt-laden would not, as rumors had it, disappear underground or trap boats and boatmen between unscalable walls on the verge of a fatal waterfall.

Above us on the right stands Chuar Butte. Still visible up there, far above the river, are the aluminum scraps of two commercial airliners that collided above the Grand Canyon in 1956. One hundred and twenty-eight went down; all died.

Tanner Rapid. Basalt Canyon, a volcanic region, with grim-looking blueblack cliffs set at a crazy angle to the descending river. We make camp above the roar of Unkar Rapid in the last broad open valley we shall see for more than 200 miles. Not far downstream, the river cuts into the Pre-Cambrian gneiss and schists of the Upper Granite Gorge, the inner canyon. Where the big rapids make their play.

•

We push on to a river the color of bronze, shimmering like hammered metal under the desert sun. Through Unkar--made it! Then Nevills Rapid (four to seven). Still alive. We pull ashore above Hance Rapid (eight to nine) for study and thought.

Hance is always a problem for the dorymen, especially in low water. Too many rocks sticking up or, even worse, rocks half-hidden near the surface. No clear route through. A zigzag course. Huge waves, treacherous boils, eaters--churning holes that can eat a boat alive. A kind of slalom for oarsmen, with the penalty for a mistake a possible smashed boat.

They run it one by one, not easily but safely. The river carries us swiftly into the Inner Gorge. Like a tunnel of love, there are practically no shores or beaches in here. The burnished rocks rise sheer from the water's edge, cutting off all view of the higher cliffs, all of the outer world but a winding strip of blue sky. We float along as if in a gigantic millstream. Powell called it a gloomy place, but glowing is the word. The afternoon sun, hidden by the high walls but reflected and refracted by the water, by the polished cliffs, by the atmosphere, streams upon us with indirect light, from many angles, all radiant.

Two miles below Hance, we crash through the well-named Sockdolager Rapid (six to eight), and two and a half miles later, into and through Grapevine Rapid (six to eight). The boats ride high on the water but not high enough to escape the recoil of the 55-degree waves. Screams of delight, shock, astonishment ring through the canyon as we ride this liquid roller coaster. Unlike the sea, here on the river the water moves, the waves remain in place.

In the early afternoon, we arrive at the ranger station near the Phantom Ranch tourist hostel, the only outpost of civilization within the Grand Canyon. From here, foot and mule trails lead to both the North and the South Rims. Also a telephone line. There is even a heliport for the convenience of visiting dignitaries. (continued on page 167)White Water Ramblers(continued from page 114) The two footbridges across the river at this point are the only bridges on the Colorado from near Lee's Ferry to Hoover Dam, more than 300 miles.

Here we pause for an hour. Some of the passengers are leaving us, having contracted for only the first part of the voyage. Their places are taken by others who have hiked the trail down from South Rim. All is soon ready. One by one the boats move out, down the river, deeper into the Inner Gorge.

This time, my wife and I sit in the bow of the leading dory. Our boatman is young Rich Turner--musician, ornithologist, schoolteacher, rock climber, high diver, veteran oarsman. Two other passengers are on board: Jane, the cook, and a newcomer, 15-year-old Jennie Dear from Henderson, Kentucky. An active, athletic girl, Jennie has never been on a river trip of any kind before. As we drift down the river, Rich plying the oars at a leisurely pace, she asks if we don't get bored sometimes with this effortless sort of travel. We tell her about the birds and the interesting geological formations.

Rich suggests that we buckle life jackets. Horn Creek Rapid (seven to nine) coming up, he reminds us. He says something about The Great Wave. For Jennie's benefit, he reviews routine upset procedures: Take deep breath when entering rapids; hang on; if boat turns over, get out from under and grab lifeline strung along gunwales; stay on upstream side of boat to avoid being trapped between boat and a hard place; climb onto bottom of boat as soon as possible; grasp flip line and assist boatman in righting boat; bail out liquid contents; relax and enjoy the view.

"What was that about a great wave?" Renée asks.

"I didn't say a great wave." says Rich. "I said The Great Wave."

Not far ahead, the river plays its conjuring trick, pouring off the edge of the known world, disappearing into some kind of grumbling abyss. Above the watery rim I can see hints of a rainbow in the mist, backlit by the westering sun.

What I've forgotten is that Horn, unlike longer rapids above and below, makes its descent abruptly, in one dive, through a narrow channel where the river is squeezed into sudden acceleration. Rich stands up for a last look but sits quickly. The boat slides down the glassy tongue of the current. Into a yawning mouth. I take a deep breath--involuntarily. "Hang on!" Rich shouts.

The dory plunges down into the watery hole, then up the slope of the standing wave. The wave topples upon us, filling the boat in an instant. The force of the river carries us through and toward a second, deeper hole. "One more!" cries Rich. One more, indeed. We drop. The second wave towers above us. Far above. The Great Wave. Our water-laden boat, turned askew, climbs heavily up its face. Never makes it. The wave hits us from the left and the dory turns over with the grave, solemn, unresisting certainty of disaster. No one says a word as we go under.

Below the surface, all is silent and dark. Part of the current, I feel no sense of motion. But before there is time to think about this, the life jacket brings me to the top. The dory, upside down, is only a stroke away. I grab the lifeline. Renée is hanging on beside me. Rich and Jennie cling to the stern, Jane to the (continued on page 172)White Water Ramblers (continued from page 167) downstream side. The wrong side.

The river carries us swiftly toward the canyon wall below the rapid, on the left. Jane seems still a bit dazed. Rich heaves himself onto the flat bottom of the boat and pulls her up. The boat crunches into the cliff. Sound of splintering plywood. The weight of the current forces the upstream side of the boat down, pushing me and Renée underwater again. Down in the darkness, I let go of the boat's lifeline and kick away.

After what seems an unnecessarily long time, I rise to the surface. A wave splashes in my face as I gasp for air. Good God, I'm drowning, I think, choking on a windpipe full of muddy water. Instinc tively, I swim toward shore and find myself caught in a big eddy, pulled in a circle by the swirling current. Where's Renée? I see the boat go sailing past, upside down, three people crawling on it, none of them my wife. The eddy carries me to the wall and I make a strenuous effort to find a handhold on the glossy stone. Impossible. The eddy pulls me toward a pile of broken rock fallen from the wall. I succeed in getting onto the rocks, free of the river at last. Renée? I hear her calling me. There she is, below me on an adjoining shelf of rock. Reunited, we watch Rich, Jane, Jennie and the capsized dory float away. Without us. We are relaxing into a foolish despair, feeling abandoned, when good John Blaustein comes charging through The Great Wave, spots us and rows close enough for rescue. With six soaked passengers aboard, he rows hard after Rich. Rich is having trouble getting his boat righted. John and I assist, pulling on the flip lines, and the boat comes right side up.

That evening in camp, as Rich patches up his injured dory with glue and yards of duct tape, it dawns on me why the boatmen sometimes refer to the major rapids as Christian Falls. Why? Because they hey make a believer out of you.

•

Today we run a series of rapids, beginning with Granite Falls (seven to eight). Looks bad but proves an easy run down the middle. Then Hermit (six to seven) and Boucher (four to five). From Boucher, I look up and see Point Sublime, far away and 6000 feet above on the forested North Rim. A place of many memories for me, linked with those summers when I worked as fire lookout up there, in another life, another world. We come to Crystal Rapid (eight to ten) and go ashore above it.

Crystal is a problem, with rocks on the right, rocks on the left and a huge churning eater in the middle; below the big hole lies the Rock Garden, extending across the river except for a narrow channel on the far right.

The boatmen start back to their boats. The shutterbugs get out their cameras, sitting on boulders in the sun, half-surrounded by the clamor of the thundering, tormented waters. Out there in the middle of the maelstrom, the eater waits, heaving and gulping, its mouth like a giant clam's, its rage like the 1976 Republican Convention--a horrifying uproar, all things considered. Imagine floating through that nonsense in only a life jacket. You'd feel like a butterfly being flushed down a toilet bowl.

One by one, the dories come through. But Mike Markovich, rowing a heavier boat, gets a stroke behind, is pulled toward the mouth of the eater and caught by the wave that forms the eater's lip. The boat is spun 180 degrees and turned on edge. Mike falls out, vanishing into the waves. The boat dances on the water's crest like a surfboard, is swallowed by the mouth, then spat out, shot downstream. Mike appears, swimming around the rocks and into the narrow channel on the far right. His dory, miraculously still upright, sails sedately down through the Rock Garden without touching a rock. Mike sees the boat, swims to it in the tail of the rapid, climbs aboard.

After Crystal, we pass a series of side canyons with gemlike names: Agate, Sapphire, Turquoise, Ruby. Near Bass Rapid, we see an old rusting metal boat stranded high on the left bank, far above the present water line. Nobody seems to know how it got there. Onward, through Shinumo Rapid. 110 Mile Rapid, Hakatai Rapid and into Waltenberg (five to eight). A sleeper, giant waves shutting out the sun. We plow through. Renée and I now riding in Mike's big boat. Mike's hands are sore, his knees cut up by rocks from his swim at Crystal. I row his heavy, leaky, water-laden boat the last two miles to our camp at Garnet Canyon. Twenty-one miles today--a record. We are wet, cold, tired and murderously hungry.

•

Onward and downward. Today we run Forster Rapid and Fossil Rapid, then Specter, Bedrock and Dubendorff, and camp at the mouth of Tapeats Creek. Deep in the mantle of the earth.

•

Sausage and blueberry pancakes for breakfast. I hold out my tin cup, disdaining a plate. An enormous pancake is draped over my cup, hand and wrist. Sharky and Rich, in charge of flipping the flapjacks this morning, begin a game. Who can toss a pancake higher and catch it on his spatula? Higher and higher spin the half-baked pancakes, revolving lazily against the cerulean shore of outer space. One falls in the sand. You lose. But another rises to unimaginable heights, higher and higher, becoming a speck, a mote, a mathematical point, and vanishes forever beyond all human ken. God's pancake.

Time to get out of this awful canyon. Good Christ, we've been lingering and malingering around down in here for ten days--11? Twenty-two? Whatever. This claustrophobe's nightmare. This rumbling gulch of iron and stone. This baloney funnel, this motorboat tunnel, this stinking trench of prickly pear and burro shit and Porta Potti fumes.

Speaking of baloneys. I'm tossing another empty Michelob can into the river when three gigantic pontoon barges, 37 feet long if they're an inch, come chugging down the channel. Each is piled high with naked humans blistering under the sun, who wave at us and shout with waning glee as they plow through the cold waves of Tapeats Rapid.

We camp two nights at the mouth of Tapeats. During the day, we hike up Tapeats Creek and visit one of its tributaries, Thunder River, a great gush of frothy water pouring from a cave in the Redwall limestone. (How can a river be a tributary of a creek?) The Redwall formation is full of caverns, partially explored. The whole Kaibab Plateau is full of holes, of which the Grand Canyon happens to be merely the most open and conspicuous.

Late in the evening, returning, Renée and I pause on the rim trail high above the Tapeats and look down at our camp. Twilight down in there. Moon rising on the east. A pillar of blue smoke rises slowly from the cooking fire. Some of the girls are shampooing their hair in the mouth of the clear stream. Wally and Dane Mensik are casting for trout. Others lie about reading, dozing, talking, sipping booze. Murmur of voices. Humans more or less, like us. enjoying the sense of a perfect evening. We hear Sharky and Rich playing a duet with their recorders; the melody of an old, old Shaker hymn floats up toward us on the quiet air:

'Tis a gift to be simple,'Tis a gift to be free,'Tis a gift to come down,Where we ought to be....

•

Onward. We plunge through treacherous Upset Rapid (three to eight), where the motor-pontoon man Shorty Burton got his, back in '67. We doff headgear in his memory. R.I.P., Shorty. We'll join you shortly. We pause for half a day at Havasu Creek. Blue water, full of travertine. This lime solution tends to form hard, stony barriers, like small dams, as it flows down the creek to the river. As a result, Havasu Creek has many falls, cascades and pools.

Here we lounge in the lime-blue water, spouting fountains at the sky, and talk of Phoenix, Arizona, Shithead Capital of the Sunny Southwest, of smog, growth, business, politics and such obscenities. It is Wally Rist who broaches the obvious thought: Suppose all that garbage has ceased to exist. Suppose The Bomb has come and gone and we are the sole survivors. For nearly two weeks, we haven't seen a newspaper, heard a radio or smelled a TV set; how do we know the world is still out there?

Sobering thought. If it's not, I suggest, then the first thing we'd better do is march up Havasu Canyon to the village of Supai and raid the Indians' melon patch. Like Major Powell did.

Sharky shakes his head, looking around at the glistening bodies of the long-haired rosy-bottomed dolphins splashing about in the next pool. No, he says, the first thing we've got to do is start repopulating the earth. First things first.

•

We camp at National Canyon, Mile 167. The boatmen are somber tonight, thinking of Mile 179: Lava Falls. John takes me down to the beach and shows me a rock close to the river's edge. "See this rock?" he says. "That's oracle rock. If the river is up in the morning high enough to cover the rock, we can go left at Lava. If the water covers only half the rock, we go middle or right. If it doesn't reach the rock, we have to go right."

"What's the easiest run?"

"The slot in the middle."

"What's the worst?"

"Down the right."

•

In the morning, the river is low. John looks grim. I check the rock. High and dry. (The river level, because of Glen Canyon Dam and its varying peak-power outflow, is constantly rising and falling.)

August 13, 1869--We are now ready to start on our way down the Great Unknown.... What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls rise over the river, we know not.... The men talk as cheerfully as ever; jests are bandied about freely this morning; but to me the cheer is somber and the jests are gastly [sic].

Write on, good Major Powell. How prescient you were. I can read your every emotion on the faces of the boatmen.

As Sharky pulls us into the current, lashing about lustily with the oars, I glance back at the beach we are now departing. Only once. A black shadow lies across the unwet rugosities of oracle rock. Well--it looks like a good day to die. All days are OK, but this one looks better than most. Might as well review the scenery.

Some of the highest walls in the canyon rear above our heads. Two thousand feet straight up. With terraces and further higher walls beyond. Toroweap Overlook rises 3000 feet above the river at Mile 176.

The Colorado slides seaward in its stony groove. We'll never make it. Mojave Desert-type vegetation: mesquite, ocotillo, catclaw acacia, barrel cactus, clockface and cow's-tongue prickly pear. All adorn as best they can the talus slopes below the cliffs.

We stop for lunch at Mile 177, not far above that riffle. Looking solemn, Wally gives his final harangue of the voyage.

"Listen!" he begins.

We listen. Don't hear a damn thing. Sigh of the river, maybe, swooning round the next bend. Cicadas keening in the dry grass. Faint scream of the sun, 93,000,000 miles above. Nothing significant, right?

"You don't hear it, but it's there," he says. "Lava Falls. Mile 179. It's always there. Every time we come down this river, there it is. Drops 37 feet. The worst rapid in North America. We're gonna need help from you people. Anybody who's hoping to see a disaster, stay out of sight. All passengers will walk around this one except volunteers. Yes, we'll need...."

Hands are rising.

"Not yet," Wally says. "We want everybody to see it first. Anybody who thinks he or she wants to ride through Lava has to get down there and walk below it and look up through the waves. We want people who can handle the oars, who can help right the boat if it flips and can climb around on wet boulders, if necessary. Nobody has to do it, but I'll tell you this much: When you're out there in the middle of Lava, it's nice to hear another heart beating besides your own."

Commander Wally's briefing. You'd think we were in a U-boat about to enter a combat zone. Nobody has to do it, eh? Not even looking at me, he says that. Pretending to talk to everybody but me. But you've tipped your hand, Rist. I can read you like the writing on the wall, Wally. No, thanks. I glance furtively up and down the river, trapped but not yet panicked. Where is that place? That Separation Canyon? That Exit from this hall of horrors?

Salami on rye, potato salad, peanut butter and Ry-Krisp for lunch. Not half bad. It's all bad. The condemned man revealed no emotion as he ate his lunch. Ironic laughter in the background. No place to hide. All boats shove off onto the shining Colorado.

At Mile 178, a great black basaltic rock appears, standing silent in the middle of the river. Vulcan's Anvil, they call it. It looks like a 40-foot tombstone.

A muttering sound rises ahead, beyond the next bend. Wordless voices grumble in subterranean echo chambers. All boats put ashore on the right bank. Wally leads us, passengers and crew, up a path through the tamarisk jungle and onto a slide of volcanic boulders big as bungalows, high above the river. Lava Falls bellows in the sunlight. He stops. We stop. He waves us on. "Volunteers will assemble here," he shouts, above the tumult from below. "After you've looked it over."

We go on, all but the boatmen, who remain clustered around Wally, commencing their usual confabulations. The sad smiles, the solemn headshakings. Same old hype. I smile, too, slinking away. See you in hell, boat boys. Chuckling, I join the stockbrokers and sweet old ladies in a safe shady place near the foot of the uproar. Breathing easily now, I watch the dancing falls, the caldron of colliding superwaves, the lava rocks like iron-blue bicuspids protruding from the foam--here, there, most everywhere, a fiendish distribution of dory-rending fangs. I study the channel on the far left: nothing but teeth. The "slot" in the middle: gone. Hah, I think, they're going to have to run it on the right. Right up against this basalt boxcar I'm relaxing on.

Time passes. Can't see the boatmen from here. But I know what they're doing. They're all squatting in the bushes, taking a last crap. A natural animal reflex. The old phrase scared shitless denotes a basic biological psychophysical reaction. I look back up at the "volunteers' " assembly point. Sure enough, a few suckers have showed up, seven or eight of them.

A red, white and yellow dory appears on the tongue upstream. The Tapestry Wall. There's Captain Rist standing on his seat, one hand shielding his eyes. He looks pretty, all right, heroic as hell. Two passengers ride with him, sunk deep in their seats, white knuckles clenched on the gunwales. Wally lowers himself into the cockpit, takes a firm grip on the oars. Here they come. They disappear. They emerge, streaming with water. Dive and disappear again. Dark forms barely visible through the foam. The boat rears up into sunlight. Wally has crabbed an oar, lost an oarlock. He's in trouble. He's struggling with something. They vanish again, under the waves, to reappear not 20 feet from where I sit, bearing hard upon this immovable barrier. The dory yaws to port. Wally is trying to stand; he's got only one oar; looks like he's planning to climb right out of the boat onto my rock. No, he's climbing the high side, trying to prevent the boat from capsizing. Cushioned by a roil of water, the boat and its three occupants rush past me, only inches from the iron rock. Who's that lady in the stern, smiling bravely, waving one little brown hand at me? That's no lady, that's my wife! Renée! The violent current bears her away, out of sight.

Jesus.... But they're safe.

One made it. Six more to go. We have to sit and watch this? Too late now, here comes Dane at the control console of the Vale of Rhondda. A passenger in the bow. He makes a perfect run, bow first through the holes, over the big waves, and clears Death Rock by a safe and sane three feet. After him appears Mike Davis in the Music Temple--another good descent.

Three safely past, four to go. Here they come: Sharky Cornell in the Columbia, Mike Markovich in the Moqui Steps, Rich Turner in the patched-up Celilo Falls. Each with a light payload of ballast--one passenger each--they make it right side up, one way or the other way, through the sound and the fury of Mile 179.

One more to go. Poor old John Blaustein in the Peace River. I glance up at the volunteers' assembly point. The slave block. One little girl stands there, clutching her life jacket, hopefully waiting. It's Jennie Dear, the kid who changed our luck at Horn Creek. The Jonah. Now I really feel sorry for Blaustein. Not only are the scales of probability weighing against him--for if six made it through, the seventh is doomed for certain--but he and he alone has to ride with that sweet little jinx we picked up at Phantom Ranch. Tough luck, John. Bad karma. Kismet, you know. (But better him than me.)

Where is Blaustein, by the way?

I feel a firm hand on my shoulder.

"Let's go," he says.

Oh, shit. Well, of course, I know it would turn out like this all along. I never had a chance.

We trudge over the rocks, pick up Jennie, trudge through the jungle and down to the lonely boat, hyperventilating all the way. Buckle up. John gives stern instructions, which I don't hear. Pushes off. Me and little Jennie in the bow. The sun glares at us over the brassy water, blazing in our eyes. John is pointing the dory right down into the heart of the madness. The moment of total commitment. This is absurd. We dive headfirst into the absurdity....

Fifteen seconds, twenty seconds and it's all over. Thirty seconds and we're cruising through the tail of the rapid, busy with the bailers, joining the procession of six boats before us. Nothing to it. Like I always say, running the big rapids is like sex: Half the fun is in the anticipation. The real thrill is in the approach. The remainder is only ecstasy--or darkness.

•

We still have 100 miles to go. A hundred miles to Pierce Ferry, the hard row against the wind to the dismal mudbanks of Lake Merde.

The river goes on and on, but I am going to end this journey where we began, near Lee's Ferry and that dam, making the voyage semicircular. I want my tale, like the river, to go to the sea and rise from the sea in mighty clouds, riding the west winds back to the source in the Rockies once again. The river is linear, but its course is the lazy, horizontal figure eight of infinity.

We are going to have our river whole again, someday soon. Glen Canyon Dam must fall. Must soon come tumbling down. Norm Nevills would understand. Bert Loper and Moki-Mac would understand. All old river rats dead and gone and yet to come will understand. The spirit of John Wesley Powell understands, 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 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 river flows on forever. We are all canyoneers. We are all passengers on this little mossy living ship, this delicate dory round the sun, that humans call the earth.

Joy, shipmates, joy.

"Far above the river are the aluminum scraps of two airliners that collided above the Grand Canyon."

"The Great Wave. Our water-laden boat, turned askew, climbs heavily up its face. Never makes it."

"Good God, I'm drowning, I think, choking on a windpipe full of muddy water. Where's Renée?"