Actually our ignorance and carelessness are more deliberate than accidental; we are entering Glen Canyon without having learned much about it beforehand because we wish to see it as Powell and his party had seen it, not knowing what to expect, making anew the discoveries of others. Staring at the moon the boy saw it surrounded with hazy rings, rust-colored. Strange as it might seem, I found that eating my supper out back made a difference. Not until the afternoon does the wind begin to blow, raising dust and sand in funnel-shaped twisters that spin across the desert briefly, like dancers, and then collapse whirlwinds from which issue no voice or word except the forlorn moan of the elements under stress. I see it now; the point is to stay flat. Without flowers as yet but bright and fresh, with leaves of a startling, living green in contrast to the usual desert olive drab, is a shrub known as singleleaf ash, one of the few true deciduous plants in the pinyon-juniper community. The men managed to get ashore still alive. From the vicinity of Balanced Rock comes the cry of the great horned owl. There are a couple of tricky pitches with rotten rock and fingerholds of exquisite delicacy but most of the way is easy. I open the switch, adjust the choke, engage the crank and heave it around. Where once a few adventurous people came on weekends to camp for a night or two and enjoy a taste of the primitive and remote, you will now find serpentine streams of baroque automobiles pouring in and out, all through the spring and summer, in numbers that would have seemed fantastic when I worked there: from 3,000 to 30,000 to 300,000 per year, the visitation, as they call it, mounts ever upward. Our boats turn slowly in the drift, we see through a break in the canyon walls a part of the Henry Mountains retreating to the northwest, last range in the United States to be named and explored and mapped. We examine the rapids below. Look, Mackie, I said, what do you suppose that horse does up in there?, Moon-Eye. If I can take it you can. They will complain of physical hardship, these sons of the pioneers. Squatting on the shore of the stream, I dip my cupped hands into the water and sample a little. [17], However, Abbey deliberately highlights many of the paradoxes and comments on them in his final chapter, particularly in regard to his conception of the desert landscape itself. The same that lured the mountain men Robidoux, Jim Bridger, Jedediah Smith into these parts more than a century ago. And so in the end the world is lost again. Probably because at this altitude the summer is so brief much too beautiful to last and the winter long. Why did I not. (Why not? Therefore the frogs, the toads, keep on singing even though we know, if they dont, that the sound of their uproar must surely be luring all the snakes and ringtail cats and kit foxes and coyotes and great horned owls toward the scene of their happiness. Into September, the final month. When its time to leave the desert, Abbey both dreads his return to Manhattan and becomes eager to see people againto see cab drivers and train conductors, anyone at all. Theres only one man in Moab who claims to have been there, a garage mechanic named Bundy, so we pay him a visit. Bill Hoy? But there is still too much to see and marvel at, the world very much alive in the bright light and wind, exultant with the fever of spring, the delight of morning. Buy some cows of my own.. All night long the wind has been blowing, haunting my dreams with intimations of disaster, and in the east above the rim and mountains are salmon-colored clouds whipped into long, sleek, fishlike shapes by the wind. Somewhat apart from one another, separated by roughly equal distances, facing outward from the water, they clank and croak all through the night with tireless perseverance. I am content, however, to view the remains from below. No Tags, Be the first to tag this record! After a few games of rotation pool with my friend Viviano Jacquez, a reformed sheepherder turned dude wrangler (a dubious reform), I am glad to leave the last of those smoky dens around midnight and to climb into my pickup and take the long drive north and east back to the silent rock, the unbounded space and the sweet clean air of my outpost in the Arches. Assuming, however, that population growth will be halted at a tolerable level before catastrophe does it for us, it remains permissible to talk about such things as the national parks. Over the long haul, say twenty or thirty miles, its a known fact that a healthy man can outrun a horse., But my God, in this heat, Moon-Eye, do you think we should? Delicate, wind-whipped clouds flow across the burning blue, moving in perfect unison like the fish in the pools below. The yucca is bizarre not only in appearance but in its mode of reproduction. I cannot even be sure that they are male and female, though their performance resembles so strongly a. I crawl after them, determined to see the whole thing. The return is harder than I expected. In the doctrine of the geologists with their scheme of ages, eons and epochs all is flux, as Heraclitus taught, but from the mortally human point of view the landscape of the Colorado is like a section of eternity timeless. Taking the Windows road first, I drive beneath the overhanging Balanced Rock, 3500 tons of seamless Entrada sandstone perched on a ridiculous, inadequate pedestal of the Carmel formation, soft and rotten stone eaten away by the wind, deformed by the weight above. There may, of course, be obstacles; we dont know. I slowed to a walk; he did the same. Fear does the hard work, making the owls job easy. Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or . Take it easy, old buddy. Speaking softly. But this was not good enough for the developers. Most of the south rim of this park is now closely followed by a conventional high-speed highway and interrupted at numerous places by large asphalt parking lots. When I return will it be the same? In the morning the wind is still blowing, its much colder, and the entire sky is dark with storm clouds threatening rain or possibly, judging by the chill in the air, even snow. Real cattle country all right. Most of the sky is lidded over but the sun remains clear halfway down the west, shining in under the storm. I put a pebble in my mouth and keep climbing. Through the tears I noticed my old walking stick lying nearby. Across that narrow opening a small white cloud was passing, so lovely and precious and delicate and forever inaccessible that it broke the heart and made me weep like a woman, like a child. I invite Waterman to go first, he invites me, and we waste about ten minutes in the Alphonse-Gaston routine. Then I went home to the trailer, taking a shortcut over the bluffs. The roads will still be there.) Continue military conscription. Red Canyon Creek? Among these rocks, in chutes, whirlpools and great waves, with rushing breakers and foam, the water finds its way, still tumbling down. Useless to try and reassure him that he has more to lose than gain by such assimilation; somewhere, in a way we all know, his pride was damaged and his confidence shaken. Grateful for the diversion, I throw canteens and rucksack into the government pickup and take off. of our dreamlike voyage. Instead of this lovely barren desert we would have only another blooming garden state, like New Jersey. There is in fact no illusion of the sort called mirage, only the faint deception of motion where nothing is actually moving but the overheated air. But a broad highway, with banked curves, deep cuts and heavy fills, that will invade this splendid region, is already under construction. Permanent springs or waterholes are likewise few and far between though not so rare as the streams. I had one hand on the rope. This is a rare view of a quest to experience nature in its purest form -- the silence, the struggle, the overwhelming beauty. For a few minutes the voodoo monuments burn with a golden light, then fade to rose and blue and violet as the sun winks out and drops. Even offer to bring him supplies at regular times, and the news, and anything else he might need. This theme of laying out the land for the reader continues from Chapters 1-5. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope; without it the life of the cities would drive all men into crime or drugs or psychoanalysis. I look at my watch. This speaks well of the food-gathering economy and also of its culture, which encouraged the Indians to employ their freedom in the creation and sharing of a durable art. A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles. More surprises. Abbey contrasts the difficult lives of the many who unsuccessfully sought their fortune in the desert whilst others left millionaires from lucky strikes, and the legacy of government policy and human greed that can be seen in the modern landscape of mines and shafts, roads and towns. They could, What about children? Theres a girl back in Denver. From the Inside Flap ionately felt, deeply poetic book. Its time to go home, oldtimer.. On the surface of the pool I see fragmented stars, glints of light on the whirling water. They are secret places deep in the canyons, known only to the deer and the coyotes and the dragonflies and a few others. False dawn? Dont worry, they said, this road will be built. Like most other cowboys I have known Leslie was getting on in years. Well, I couldnt tell you. Therefore, sublime. The fire. All kinds of ideas spring to mind, but an instinctive prudence makes me hold my tongue. Nobody answered but he thought he heard the sound of laughing children in the distance. Low enough, to be sure. It is doubtful, however, that the Navajo way of life, as distinguished from Navajos, can survive. My own belongings are packed in the truck. The gas comes from two steel bottles in a shed outside; the water comes by gravity flow from a tank buried in a hill close by. With this difference: those man-made celebrations of human aspiration could conceivably be reconstructed while Glen Canyon was a living thing, irreplaceable, which can never be recovered through any human agency. For instance, consider an unfortunate accident which took place only a week ago here in the Arches country. There are lonely hours. Mr. Graham like Husk was also a newcomer to the Moab area, though not so new as the latter. I rear back and throw the stone with all Ive got straight at his furry head. Keeping the flame alive. He provides readers with a useful manual on hydrating in emergencies. Good cheap workingmans tobacco. Soon after the organized search began he was spotted from the air and promptly rescued. After thawing out my boots over the gas flame I pull them on and come back to the doorway. The ancient canyon art of Utah belongs in that same international museum without walls which makes African sculpture, Melanesian masks, and the junkyards of New Jersey equally interesting those voices of silence which speak to us in the first world language. Johnny and I retrace what we can of the dead mans course. The little campgrounds where I used to putter around reading three-day-old newspapers full of lies and watermelon seeds have now been consolidated into one master campground that looks, during the busy season, like a suburban village: elaborate housetrailers of quilted aluminum crowd upon gigantic camper-trucks of Fiberglas and molded plastic; through their windows you will see the blue glow of television and hear the studio laughter of Los Angeles; knobby-kneed oldsters in plaid Bermudas buzz up and down the quaintly curving asphalt road on motorbikes; quarrels break out between campsite neighbors while others gather around their burning charcoal briquettes (ground campfires no longer permitted not enough wood) to compare electric toothbrushes. They know what theyre doing; their lives depend on it, and all their rotten institutions. The more difficult places, such as Angel Arch or Druid Arch, can be reached by jeep, on horseback or in a one-or two-day hike. Ive left my canteen behind at the boats; Hole in the Rock, clearly visible from the river, doesnt seem far away. When the sun passes beyond the rim I get up and start to return to Newcomb and our camp. For my own part I am pleased enough with surfaces in fact they alone seem to me to be of much importance. Irrigation systems were then built with the cooperative labor of all, the irrigable land divided fairly among the member families, and the back country canyon and mesa left open to all who might wish to engage in cattle raising, as well as farming. It looks like it might go. And nearly all did, (This formed the open range until the advent of large-scale fencing and the Taylor Grazing Act closed it off to all but an established few.) 2. After a moments pause the two snakes come straight toward me, still in flawless unison, straight toward my face, the forked tongues flickering, their intense wild yellow eyes staring directly into my eyes. Coming close we see that he lies on his back, limbs extended rigidly from a body bloated like a balloon. By flashlight I found the bed, unrolled my sleeping bag, pulled off my boots and crawled in and went to sleep at once. 3. The Master Plan has been fulfilled. We pass the mouth of a large river entering the Colorado from the east the San Juan. Northeast the sky is vaguely overcast, a pallid gray. The knowledge that refuge is available, when and if needed, makes the silent inferno of the desert more easily bearable. Seen through my 7 by 50 binoculars it is a splendid sight a cloud of glory. Rock and driftwood and the flashing underside of leaves gleam with a strange, wild, shifting light from the stormy sky. Not quite within eyeshot but close by, in a shady dampish secret place, the sacred datura moonflower, moonlily, thornapple blooms in the night, soft white trumpet-shaped flowers that open only in darkness and close with the coming of the heat. Marauding enemies? The door of the cabin, unlatched, creaked slowly open, although there was no perceptible movement of the air. In July and August on the high desert the thunderstorms come. I refer to the tiny oasis formed by the drilled well, its windmill and storage tank. In addition to their pioneering migrations, full of unusual heroism and examples of fortitude (e.g., Brigham Young and his seventeen wives), the Mormons deserve respect for settling the most rugged, difficult as well as spectacular, terrain in the West. Atlanta Birmingham Miami etc. The trail leads up and down hills, in and out of washes and along the spines of ridges, requiring four-wheel drive most of the way. I paddle out of the quiet inlet and onto the brown silt-rich bosom of the Colorado. This is a courageous view, admirable in its simplicity and power, and with the weight of all modern history behind it. A week after rain there was still enough water there to fill my needs; hard to reach, it was well worth the effort. He stumbled backward, turned, ran. He was alone. We smoke good cheap cigars and watch the colors slowly change and fade upon the canyon walls, the four great monuments, the spires and buttes and mesas beyond. Suppose for example that we can find a certain resemblance between the music of Bach and the sea; the music of Debussy and a forest glade; the music of Beethoven and (of course) great mountains; then who has written of the desert? I would have plenty of time to write not only my epitaph but my own elegy. And therefore crawled on over the rocks under the desert sun. Between here and there and me and the mountains is the canyon wilderness, the hoodoo land of spire and pillar and pinnacle where no man lives, and where the river flows, unseen, through the blue-black trenches in the rock. My juniper, though still fruitful and full of vigor, is at the same time partly dead: one half of the divided trunk holds skyward a sapless claw, a branch without leaf or bark, baked by the sun and scoured by the wind to a silver finish, where magpies and ravens like to roost when I am not too close. I light a burner on the stove and hold the boots upside down above the flame until they are malleable enough to force my feet into. I follow them for a short distance, still plagued by curiosity, before remembering my place and the requirements of common courtesy. Instinctively he crawled deeper in among the roots of the tree and clung there with his good arm and both legs as the deluge smashed over him. The air is clean, the rock cuts cruelly into flesh; shatter the rock and the odor of flint rises to your nostrils, bitter and sharp. GRANDVIEW POINT, TUKUHNIKIVATS, Creating notes and highlights requires a free LitCharts account. And risky. 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