The Artist at Rest
2021-05-31, Day 2 hiking
The light of late morning spills over the sandstone walls to wash down and mingle with the gathering waters of the Paria River, Paria Wilderness, Arizona. When the creative mood strikes, the waters swell, churning with muck, stones, branches, and all manner of detritus, rising up to chisel and sculpt more canyon from slabs of a near un-ending quarry.
As is evident in this photograph, the Ranger's warning that the Paria was completely dry all the way to Lee's Ferry was patently false, and in hindsight, I have never received such inaccurate information from a ranger. To our delight, the channel even appeared to be gathering strength the further we walked downstream. Although the water was not as deep as the first time we walked the canyon four years ago, its presence made the canyon come alive.
The Ranger also warned us that the campsite we stayed in the previous night would smell of human sewage due to too many people concentrating in the most spectacular upper-reaches of the canyon system. It was true that when the breeze funneled down the cliffs in the evening we did catch a whiff of urine. A cursory investigation revealed that prior camp inhabitants had been too lazy to walk more than 10 feet from the sleeping area to piss. It turns out that when the monsoon fails and you're 30 feet above the channel on a vegetated sandbar, there isn't any way for all that ammonia to quickly dissipate from an extremely porous soil. While not exactly marvelous, it was a relief that it did not in fact smell like what I think of when a person uses the word "sewage."
All things considered, the camp was delightful and I was as enamored of its cathedral like walls as much as I was four years ago. We discovered that there was also a healthy kangaroo rat population, though they weren't so foolish so as to allow themselves to be observed directly. Instead, we found in the morning that every square inch of the entire sandy camp area that we had thoroughly trampled the evening before was covered with thousands of little, tiny rodent prints. The prints were on top of the cooking pots, all round the water bottles, and all around the tarps where we had slept. They didn't find the food, because we had stored it properly, but they left no stone unturned, and their myriad prints suggest it is they who run the place.
The Artist at Rest
2021-05-31, Day 2 hiking
The light of late morning spills over the sandstone walls to wash down and mingle with the gathering waters of the Paria River, Paria Wilderness, Arizona. When the creative mood strikes, the waters swell, churning with muck, stones, branches, and all manner of detritus, rising up to chisel and sculpt more canyon from slabs of a near un-ending quarry.
As is evident in this photograph, the Ranger's warning that the Paria was completely dry all the way to Lee's Ferry was patently false, and in hindsight, I have never received such inaccurate information from a ranger. To our delight, the channel even appeared to be gathering strength the further we walked downstream. Although the water was not as deep as the first time we walked the canyon four years ago, its presence made the canyon come alive.
The Ranger also warned us that the campsite we stayed in the previous night would smell of human sewage due to too many people concentrating in the most spectacular upper-reaches of the canyon system. It was true that when the breeze funneled down the cliffs in the evening we did catch a whiff of urine. A cursory investigation revealed that prior camp inhabitants had been too lazy to walk more than 10 feet from the sleeping area to piss. It turns out that when the monsoon fails and you're 30 feet above the channel on a vegetated sandbar, there isn't any way for all that ammonia to quickly dissipate from an extremely porous soil. While not exactly marvelous, it was a relief that it did not in fact smell like what I think of when a person uses the word "sewage."
All things considered, the camp was delightful and I was as enamored of its cathedral like walls as much as I was four years ago. We discovered that there was also a healthy kangaroo rat population, though they weren't so foolish so as to allow themselves to be observed directly. Instead, we found in the morning that every square inch of the entire sandy camp area that we had thoroughly trampled the evening before was covered with thousands of little, tiny rodent prints. The prints were on top of the cooking pots, all round the water bottles, and all around the tarps where we had slept. They didn't find the food, because we had stored it properly, but they left no stone unturned, and their myriad prints suggest it is they who run the place.