To backpack in Canyonlands is for me a deeply moving experience. It is a place that offers opportunity to experience the sensation of setting foot on another planet, and at the same time, moving through a space both comfortable and familiar.

During the past week I thought often about how to share what transpired as Sarah and I rose from sandy valley floors to slick rock, from cool, deep ravines cast in shadow to high, bare, red stone saddles and ridge lines heated by the sun’s harsh embrace.

Every major elevation change, every transition from valley to adjacent valley, even the rounding of a corner left us breathless, saying aloud, “Oh my god. I can’t believe what I am seeing …” only to fall silent again for there were no words worth speaking in attempt to capture what we were experiencing.

An Open Book
Edward Abbey often stated that Canyonlands is like no other place on Earth. Situated in the heart of the Colorado Plateau, it is a geologic anomaly which has exposed a layer-by-layer account of 1.6 billion years history. Mountains rose and fell as many as five times, seas repeatedly swelled to fill the Southwest only to retreat again when uplifting forces caused igneous basement foundations and layers of limestone, sandstone, schist, and shale to rise thousands of feet.

Records of these events are presented to us as an open history book, literally documenting in stone the lifeforms of ancient, warm seas and forests where deserts now lie. More recently, Native American cliff dwellings, grainaries, tools, pottery, and foot paths provide evidence of healthy hunter-gatherer and agrarian societies which traded far south into the Americas, to the Pacific and Atlantic coasts.

A Home to Many
To explore Canyonlands at the heart of the Colorado Plateau is to feel as though you may be the first to ever walk in this place and at the same time to recognize a rich, human history that goes far beyond that of the terribly inaccurate, standard fare text book description of Mormon re-settlers and cowboy rustlers, outlaws, and miners who are too often given credit for having discovered and tamed the American Southwest.

When I walk along spring fed creeks in the shadow of cotton woods, alongside twisted juniper and pinion pine which have experienced two to ten times my own years, I relish the fact that the Colorado Plateau holds a higher concentration of National Parks than anywhere else in a country which protects its wild areas like none other on Earth.

At the same time, I look back to a time when it was not necessary to protect land from overuse and abuse, when the estimated ten to twenty million inhabitants of this continent were living not in perfect harmony as Disney has portrayed, but in numbers whose consumption was incapable of the drastic, large-scale environmental change we now employ.

The first human inhabitants of this land did not come to this place for recreation nor as an escape from their work, but in migration to follow game or to cultivate crops where river deltas provided rich soil and cliff band shelter to seeds for the following year, or to establish dwellings which supported families for many generations.

In “Lies My Teacher Told Me” by James Loewen, it is made clear that American history books fail to teach our children that so many European descendants on the American frontier left the “comforts of civilization” to live with the Native Americans, where they were treated with greater dignity and enjoyed a higher quality of life, that laws were enacted to punish those who were captured and returned.

While it is not my intent nor place to glorify the relatively harsh existence of living entirely from the land as did the first people of this continent, neither would I tell you that I am ever wanting to return to my home on the Front Range of Colorado when living this way. My feet were sore, my shoulders tired, yes, but I was alive in a way that I cannot duplicate here, in my home, with bath, stereo, computer, and mobile phone. I need none of these things when I lie beneath a star field so bright that it illuminates my very dreams.

A Lighter Footprint
In six days and five nights, Sarah and I together consumed less water, in food, drink, and personal hygiene, than that used for an average ten minutes shower; less electric power to light our nights than that consumed by a single 20 Watt bulb burning for just nine minutes; less food by weight or calories than that likely consumed in half as many days given typical American diet and proportions. Yet, we both returned with our bodies leaner, stronger, and far more capable of moving with agility and grace over the challenging terrain while carrying nearly one-third our total body weight. We never fell to sleep hungry nor awoke without energy for the day ahead.

A Simpler Way of Living
Backpacking is for me neither a recreational activity nor a vacation—it is not a departure from the realworld. Rather, backpacking is a return to a simpler way of living, a reminder that the rest of my life need not be as complicated nor as hectic as I often allow it to be, a reminder to breathe deeper, to enjoy food and friends more, to cherish those things left relatively untouched by human hands.

There is no movie, no music, no restaurant, no paycheck that matches the passion I feel, the sense of true joy in simply walking, climbing, eating, and sleeping when I have lost track of the hour and day. It is the rising and setting of the sun, the rythmic flutter of a single cottonwood leaf in the steady breeze which provide endless entertainment, intrigue, and education when I carry all that I need to live from day to day on my back, on my feet.

Sovereign to Slick Rock
Friday evening I arrived to the Willow Springs Road, just north of Arches National Park and Moab. I pulled my mountain bike from the car-top rack, fastened the front wheel, and enjoyed a brief ride on the Sovereign trail, watching the sun set from a high slab of sandstone. My friends David and Becky arrived later that same night.

The next morning I rode on Sovereign again, feeling more able than the night before, riding to the first large drainage and then back to the car, just over one and a half hours round-trip.

Back in town, David, Becky and I road the Slickrock practice loop twice. I am pleased to find that even after more than two months off the bike, I was able to ride the full loop without stopping but for the first, up-hill sandtrap which continues to elude me despite my best effort.

That night I slept on top of a boulder at Big Bend along the Colorado river. Sunday morning I awoke with the sun and climbed for a little over an hour before heading south on 191 to the Canyonlands Needles District back country office where I planned a week-long backpacking trip in November.

Roasted Corn in Tuba City
I returned to 191 and continued south through Bluff, west to Mexican Hat, and then south and west to Kayenta and Tuba City where the Dine Fair was in its final day.

Never have I seen Tuba so full of people, commotion, and life. I ate roasted corn on the cob while I watched Navajo children dance to live drums. I was pleased to witness strong inter-generational support and interaction between toddlers, teenagers, and elders too. I purchased two gifts, just as a storm rolled in and night came on, the vendors quickly packing their crafts and goods.

I drove the remaining two hundred miles through Flagstaff to Phoenix, listening to two breathtaking stories on NPR, one about the role of nurses as holistic healers and the other an interview with the inventor of a synthetic bacterium which fights cancer, HIV AIDS, malaria, and cystic fibrosis.

Cancer Killing Bacteria

From an interview with Ananda Chakabarty by Dr. Moira Gunn on NPR’s Tech Nation

Ananda Chakabarty received the world’s first patent of a life form, giving us a modified bacteria which eats oil which has for more than two decades been used to help clean-up massive oil spills.

This unique bacterium has the inherent ability to thrive in a low-oxygen environment, as do cancer, malaria, cystic fibrosis, and HIV AIDS, the presence of oxygen reducing their growth rates.

It is my understanding that this is why my grandfather, while fighting cancer, was given incredibly high dozes of vitamin C directly into his blood stream in order to invoke the production of hydrogen peroxide which is toxic to cancer cells.

According to Chakabarty, this designed bacterium takes the native intelligence of three billion years of evolution and tolerance of anaerobic environments to the battle front, employing genetic know-how for the destruction of unwanted tissues.

While most modern approaches invoke one or two means of fighting the cancerous cells, this leaves many other channels for growth active and capable. Only with a multi-faceted attack, one that leaves the cancer cells without foundation for recovery, can the cancer be truly removed from its host.

Called “Azura” (spelling to be confirmed) for its blue hue, this synthetic life form may be the saving grace of many millions of lives. While the FDA is supporting this endeavor, the progress is of course careful and slow. As of the interview, Azura is being tested in five humans for whom all other forms of cancer treatment have thus far proved ineffective. Per the radio interview, they are gaining weight and appear to be recovering.

When the interview was over, I found myself nearly jumping from my driver seat, wanting to learn more for my own knowledge and at the same time, thrilled at the unbridled creativity and courage of individuals who see opportunity in the impossible.

The Road to Discovery
While I have driven from Loveland to Moab to Flagstaff to Phoenix many, many times and never I tire of the venture, for there is always something new.

Sometimes over the airways or satellite radio, but usually, immediately outside the car as the low, heavily laden clouds filter the sunset in way that may be described only as a master piece of color and composition; or as a woman quickly parks her on the left side of the road, facing into the traffic in order to give chase to her sheep who have found a hole in the fence and risk impact with a vehicle, a loss to her livelihood.

I long for a winter drive across the Navajo Nation, when thin layers of crisp white cover sandstone, sagebrush, and cacti and the peaks in Monument Valley appear to have sprung from a fanciful dream of a distant wonderland.

I cherish the dozen hours of uninterrupted, intense learning as I listen to half and full hour interviews or books on CD. These are the days in which I find solitude and at the same time, a connection to something greater.

I am sitting in a cafe on the West end of Bluff, Utah, less than a mile from the San Juan river and the tall sandstone wall which defines the Northern boundary of the Navajo Nation.

Nearly every seat is filled. Between the expected sound of steamers and coffee grinders and juice mixers I hear German, French, and English. I am surprised, for this town is comprised of but a few hundred people tucked into a small pocket of Southwestern Utah. Yet, Bluff attracts tourists from around the world in the summer months, a landing spot to study archeology and launch point for the San Juan river.

Noah is sitting across from me, both of us winding down and out of our recent seven day excursion on the Colorado river, putting in west of Moab at the terminus of the Potash mining road, taking out on the north side of the eastern reach of Lake Powell’s stagnant waters, across from Hite.

Living History
I was the fortunate guest of Wild Rivers Expeditions, a more than 50 years old commercial outfitter whose founder Kenny Ross is known for a life spent on the San Juan and Colorado rivers prior to the dams and regulations and deep, cold blue water, where warm red rivers once freely ran.

There were eleven of us on this journey: Kristen (the owner of Wild Rivers) guides Jim, Noah, Colleen, Morgan, Marcus, Kate, Paul, and guests Herm and Val Hoops.

Herm’s history with the rivers of the Southwest goes back four or five decades, his stories of rapids run, battles (and pranks pulled) with Park officials, and drinking beer with Edward Abbey started on day one and ended, literally, on the final stretch as we passed beneath the steel girder bridge before the takeout where he pulled a Halloween mask over his head and then turned ’round grinning, his belly shaking as he laughed. He then passed the mask to all who desired to pose for the camera on our flotilla comprised of five lashed boats pushed against the wind and across the lake by a single motor at Marcus’ control.

Day One
We pushed off of the boat ramp with five boats and three kayaks, nintey gallons of water, at least four hundred pounds of food, and a quantity of beer that seemed improbable, but in the end the exact amount required by those who consumed.

The upper canyon is a dreamy mix of perfectly flat yet steadily flowing red-brown, warm water. The campsites are numerous, nestled beneath massive uplifts of beige, red, and blue-black sandstone and limestone whose histories are best described by those who make a living in their study. But one does not require a degree in geology to appreciate the raw beauty of complex striations, overlapping layers of sand and organic deposition squeezed, shifted, split, and lifted by time, pressure, and patience.

We floated that first day until half past ten in the night, the hot sun long since below the canyon walls, the full moon then illuminating our way. The oars hardly touched the water for the current was sufficient to keep us moving in the desired direction and free of the walls, boulders, and trees that would otherwise provide only a harmless bump to the boats.

We found anchor at a rocky ledge, unloading the bare minimum to establish camp. I placed my paco pad and sleeping bag a few meters upstream from boat “94″, my head at the edge and eighteen inches above the water’s surface. As I was not ready to sleep, I dangled my headlamp just above the water, mesmerized by the reflection of the red LED shimmer in the soft movements of the river beneath.

The next morning I rose before the others and hiked for an hour, finding opportunity for a little bouldering en route to the bottom end of a wash and pour-over which came from the higher ridges of the Canyon Lands to the north. Stark reds contrasting bright yellows and greens. The slight chill of the night was rapidly replaced by the bold rays of the sun which forced the dew to evaporate from sleeping bags slung over rocks and oars. Soon, we were again floating downstream, then under the protection of umbrellas, sleeved shirts, and sunscreen.

Without Time
Throughout the trip I read from a book I have had in my library for too long, “A Tour of the Calculus,” fulfilling one of my goals for 2010 as I desire to rekindle my love for mathematics. This, however, gave my companions a nearly bottomless supply of fuel for humor. But when I asked for help to understand some of the foundations presented in the text, and the same who made fun were unable to assist, we all realized how much we have lost since our college classes and I was for the most part (but never entirely) allowed to read in peace.

I look back and realize I do not know nor do I care when I lost track of time. Without watch or mobile phone, the concept of time was wonderfully abandoned. I could not, without counting backward, have told you the name of the day on which we found our feet again on the ramp across from Hite. It simply didn’t matter. Days of the week and hours of the clock are useful only for communication between two or more persons who need to plan for something in the future, something not immediately within their reach.

When the entire world is but a river and a set of boats and the people who guide them, the world is wonderfully simple and beautifully without the need for the management of time. While Einstein said something like, “Without time, all things would happen at once,” time passes on a river not by seconds, minutes, nor even days, but by movement past geographic markers. Remarkable cliff bands, contributing side streams and ancient dry canyons, and fine, white sand beaches make clear that all things are unfolding in slow succession, in the proper order, where distance traveled is a living, breathing function of speed and ever patient time.

Stories from Water
By camp fire I listened into the night of the stories shared between Herm and Kristen, speaking of more than fifty years of Wild Rivers through three successive owners, each a contributor to the history of the Southwest. The politics of water and waterways and the people who use them are as complicated as any such matter. Public hearings and private deals paint a history of use and abuse of what will continue to be a subject of controversy and litigation for centuries to come as fresh water in the Southwest, as with many places in the world, is in growing demand but of diminishing supply.

As our boats passed through more than twenty rapids, some in the Class 3-4 range, it occurred to me that we speak of the people who have move through these places, the ancients with the knowledge of their artifacts and the modern people by name and photos, each leaving their mark in one or more ways. But what of the water itself?

Water has for a substantial part of the history of the planet made the journey from cloud to snow capped peak to melt water, from mountain stream to the Colorado and back again to the ocean (as it once flowed) only to be taken from the surface by a warm wind and lifted to the clouds once more.

Does the water molecule recall each journey and look forward to the next? Does the water enjoy giving foundation to the river wave as much as we enjoy riding over the top?

Gooey, Stinky, & Happy
In certain places, there was this wonderful, gooey, stinky, brown-red muck that rested in long, warm swathes adjacent to the sand beaches and dunes. To stand in the mud with bare feet offered an incredible sensation. Warm, wet, and welcoming.

But the odor was to me too close to that of the sheep fold on my grand parents’ farm in Iowa and so at first, I avoided the whole thing. However, once off the boat, the more I struggled the more I sank, up to my thighs at one point. There was no turning back, for my pant legs were coated and I was only sinking further. When I let go of concern (and my pants as well), I followed Noah’s lead and ran along the sandy crust, diving chest down and head first onto the mud, sliding as far as momentum would carry me.

I had to remember to keep my mouth closed, despite the desire to grin, for fear that I would swallow the goo. I made the mistake of turning on my side which resulted in the packing of my right ear with mud, both ends of five cotton swabs later required to remove it all. I am not yet convinced I am clean, subtle gurgling sounds give fear that some ancient microbial life has found refuge in my brain, eating my memories for breakfast and my dreams for dinner at night.

Into the Dolls House
At our third camp, at the bottom of the fifth rapid we stayed for two nights. A strong wind pummeled our camp as the sun set, followed by scattered rain showers which continued into the morning. Noah and I left camp early just as Herm and Val rose to make breakfast. We hiked the back route to the Dolls House in the Maze District of Canyon Lands, a place notorious for its wild, twisting, challenging rock. Surprise Valley, roughly three quarters distance from the river bottom to the Dolls House was indeed a surprise, a welcomed wash of green after a steep climb up loose scree.

As Noah and I lost the trail above Spanish Bottom, having come in from the southwest, we climbed instead straight up a cut high to our left. Not entirely comfortable, the scramble was by no means simple and involved a few slightly exposed climbing maneuvers. At the top, we were pleased to find the way not only possible, but welcoming onto a high slung saddle. En route to join the Dolls House trail, we found two ancient graineries with sand mortar tucked slabs of sandstone yet in tact.

Marcus, Paul, Colleen, Kate, and Jim came later, trying at first to follow our tracks but in seeing our forward and then back again confusion, they continued high above Spanish Bottom, cutting across deep red soil to find the end of the switchback trail. Marcus later laughed, saying we appeared to have been lost, and then disappeared, having moved from soil to rock.

To describe each of the narrow slots and caves in which we walked, slid, and climbed would be too much for this single entry, but one stands out in my mind. The Dolls House trail cuts across the very top of a long, narrow grassy valley, moving into a long slot created by a split in a massive formation. Near the top, to both sides are splits which welcome only those whose girth is lean.

I removed my hat, glasses, and pack, then turned my feet opposite each other, sliding in a few inches at a time. I found myself stuck within the first few feet, the rock pressing hard against my ribs. But when I blew out all the air in my lungs, my chest relaxed and I was able to continue. When I breathed in again, I was immediately jammed. And then it occurred to me–I stood on my toes, breathed in deep, and lifted my feet from the ground, and did not fall! I waved my arms and legs, and Noah laughed hard. Only when I laughed too did the air escape and I sank back down to the sandy bottom again.

Stagnant Waters
Lake Powell is advertised on countless post cards, posters, and travel brochures as a paradise in the midst of an otherwise harsh desert of the Southwest. Scarcely clad golden men and well endowed women lounge on houseboats or dive from red sandstone cliffs into turquoise blue water. High powered personal water craft and skiers are drawn to this place every summer for long weekends of recreation.

The western waters certainly provide an incredible contrast, a man-made wonderment in what would otherwise be a deep river gorge, as it was when Colonel Powell traveled its length and before him, natives of this land who for millennia traveled along the deep canyon in order to raise crops along tributary deltas, storing grain in high, protected storage facilities.

What is not advertised is that when richly laden warm water meets cooler stagnant flows, the silt drops to the lake floor. Not an insignificant amount, between 60,000 and 100,000 acre feet per year are deposited in Lake Powell, currently on the eastern reaches near Hite.

While calculations give a wide range of estimations for how long it will take silt to fill the entire space behind the dam, from three hundred to as many as one thousand years, the current situation is one of immediate concern and public conversation. The Sierra Club demands that Glen Canyon Dam be removed to restore natural, seasonal water flow, saving more than 1,000,000 acre feet of water from evaporation each year, while others warn of economic disaster for local economies if the lake top recreation were removed. In the end, the Colorado River Compact remains the primary reason the dam exists, to ensure that ample water reaches downstream customers per the 1922 contract.

As I am neither a geologist nor an economist, any data I present here would simply be a regurgitation of my own research. Instead, I will share the impact Lake Powell had on me.

In the eastern reaches of Lake Powell, where it is difficult to discern where river ends and lake begins, massive piles of silt cling to bleached sandstone walls, some thirty to forty feet above the current water line. From the last rapid (currently #23) to Hite there are virtually no places to camp, let alone walk, for the water meets silt which meets canyon wall.

It appeared to me as I might imagine a flooded city, a bathtub stain high above the flash waterway on decimated buildings whose foundations are encased in mud and debris. The lower canyon invokes this sense of sadness as I see human engineering giving rise to something entirely contrary to the postcard and advertisements. It just feels wrong, as one might feel when looking up to see a car wedged in the lower branches of a tree or a building on its side, far from its foundation.

Only when the water level rises again will the deposition of the last high water be covered, temporarily making all things appear beautiful again. But beneath the surface, the silt will continue to fill the space between the canyon walls.

I look to a future not of thirty or another fifty years, but hundreds of years and wonder who will be here to manage the dam. Who will maintain the silt level by allowing discharge through the turbine bypass tubes? Who will check the concrete for cracks or open the gates when the fierce Colorado winters give way to saturated Utah springs?

If humans do not remove the dam, the cavitation and wave harmonics of massive seasonal floods will cause large portions of concrete to break free, pulling sandstone and rebar from the canyon walls. As the water moves to flow freely again, what silt was laid down will be carried downstream by the slow cutting of a meandering channel and by the rapid flash floods which will tumble concrete blocks until they disassemble into their basic elements of sand, aggregate, and cement.

The dam will be torn down, with or without congressional approval, by the natural process of reverse engineering that created the Colorado river way. The tools will not be diamond tipped blades nor dynamite, but the machinery of time, gravity, and tiny particles of sand.

For now, boatmen and their passengers will continue to enjoy what portions of the river they may run, telling stories of those times before the dam while looking to a future when the entire river will again be free.