The Best Travel Writing 2011 - James O'Reilly [58]
After a festive spaghetti dinner we gather round the campfire to chart the rest of the trip. Because we’re a bit behind schedule and have a set take-out date, Kristen suggests floating over the flatwater at night. Steve is dead set against a night float, his emotions amplified by alcohol. He conjures visions of bodies in sleeping bags rolling off the boats, never to be seen again. “I’d rather run Lava ten times than do a night float,” he exclaims. Kristen gives him a look that says “Whatever,” and suggests we talk about it in the morning.
With the return of daylight and sobriety, all is forgiven. At Granite Park Canyon (Mile 209) we find an expansive beach, set up a badminton net and prepare our Thanksgiving feast. A solo boater floats by. His name is Jake and he’s hungry for company, so we invite him to join us. We put the turkey in a metal drum and cover it with charcoal. Hours later it’s burnt to a crisp, but we scrape off the black crust and savor the feast of tender poultry, mashed potatoes, warm stuffing and unheated green beans—we didn’t have any more pots—straight from the can. For dessert we tuck into Martha’s home-baked apple and pumpkin pies, perfectly fresh after three weeks on ice, and toast one another with wine and beer.
Thirty miles downstream, a wide side-canyon opens to the north, seeming to offer a way out of the Grand Canyon. At this juncture, O.G. Howland asked Powell to abandon the river and end the journey. Howland said that he, his brother Seneca, and William Dunn were determined to leave. Powell took out his sextant and found the party was about forty-five miles from the mouth of the Rio Virgen, their destination, the end of the Colorado’s course through the Grand Canyon.
“All night long I pace up and down a little path,” Powell wrote. “Is it wise to go on?” he wondered. “At one time I almost conclude to leave the river. But for years I have been contemplating this trip. To leave the exploration unfinished … is more than I am willing to acknowledge, and I determine to go on.”
In the morning Powell asked Howland, Howland, and Dunn if they still wanted to leave. The elder Howland said they did. Powell sadly accepted their decision and left them his boat, the Emma Dean, in case they reconsidered and wanted to meet the party downstream. The men were never seen again. They may have died at the hands of Indians or Mormons; they could have perished from lack of food or water; no one knows.
This place, at Mile 239, is named Separation Canyon, and we hike up to see a plaque in memory of the three lost explorers. We make camp here with deepening awareness that our journey is nearing its end. From Separation to the take out, the water is virtually flat, save for one nasty rapid caused by human intrusion into the river. It sounds strange to say it, but the river has been drowned, submerged by Lake Mead. The rapids are gone, buried by the tepid backwash from Hoover Dam downstream. The water here is stagnant and fetid. “Bathtub rings” from the rise and fall of the reservoir blanch the Canyon’s walls. Helicopters with sightseers from Vegas buzz overhead; motorboats storm upstream past our rafts, their passengers pointing cameras at us and gaping.
Just two days after leaving Separation’s beach, Powell’s party triumphantly concluded their journey. They had navigated and documented the entire run of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, and Powell could not contain his glee:
How beautiful the sky, how bright the sunshine, what “floods of delirious music” pour from the throats of birds, how sweet the fragrance of earth and tree and blossom…. Now the danger is over, now the toil has ceased, now the gloom has disappeared, now the firmament is bounded only by the horizon, and what a vast expanse of constellations can be seen! The river rolls by us in silent majesty; the quiet of the camp is sweet; our joy is almost ecstasy.
As we paddle against the wind on Lake Mead, the Canyon