The road left the highway and wound deeper into red sandstone country cast in the shadow of early morning.
After several miles we emerged onto a barren plateau where to the north sat distant mountains still mantled in snow. After a time the road descended to a broad floodplain of moonscape gray. Stands of bare cottonwood marked the course of the river.
Dust rose in clouds from our vehicles and then the set of our feet as we walked to inspect the river. Full to banks not much wider than a small boat and its oars, it carried the color of the countryside which it drained.
For me it was the first time here, for the one who had brought us here it would be the last. As we rigged the boats he sat on the edge of the bank in meager shade, alternating between staring off into the distance, offering advice on loading and consulting his river map, stained and dog-eared with the years.
He looked around at sky and river and surroundings and opened his arms wide and asked of the universe, “Have you ever seen anything so perfect?”
I wondered if he saw the landscape as I did, or were the colors more vibrant, the sound and scent of desert in motion richer and more pungent in his last knowing.
After a couple of hours rigging, we dragged our collection of craft into the flow. For the first hour the moonscape scenery continued, crumbling banks of alkaline soil dotted with bare cottonwoods and stands of black tamarisk, recently succumbed to the eponymous beetle.
Flowing bank to bank, there was little in the way of eddies, and little reason to stop if there were.
Gradually we approached walls of sandstone, yellow, white and burnished red, that grew in height until suddenly we had left behind the moonscape and entered into a canyon of imposing cliffs, bluffs and battlements.
In places the river flowed beneath overhangs low enough to cause us to duck, gear piled high on the rafts almost scraping the rock overhead. In other places, huge slabs calved from the sheer faces high above had tumbled into the river, constricting the flow and creating tight obstacle courses.
Myriad side canyons, some as large as the one we floated, others tight and narrow, enticed further exploration.
Finally, late afternoon, we arrived at camp, floating the rafts as far up a narrow wash as possible to minimize the distance to carry the gear.
We helped him up the rough path to a large sandy flat and sat him in the shade while we attended to lugging the comforts and accoutrements of multiday rafting – kitchen boxes, tables, dry bags, coolers – up to the sand and set up camp in the lee of a gracefully curving wall.
Beer seldom tastes as good after such labors in such a setting, and as night’s chill set in we sat around a campfire as dinner began to bubble in the pot.
At such times I feel like something of a participant in an alien abduction, of being picked up from one world and set down in another.
The day had begun with noise and bustle and interstates, and now having transported through space and time here we sat, set down in the quiet embrace of the real, natural world, the only traces of civilization those we had carried here with us. As I lay down for the night I wondered how many before me had rested in this same place and from how long ago, and how many more would in times yet to be.
Hayden Mellsop is a Realtor with Pinon Real Estate Group and a former fishing guide.
