Site #1 - Green River, WY
Northwesterly of the official headwaters
of the Colorado River
her tributaries spout and gurgle
through the Flaming Gorge
aptly named by Powell, the explorer who
christened the chasm so
for “the brilliant, flaming red of its rocks
[when the sun shone upon them]”.
In that year 1869 and all before it
the sublimity of those arenas required
the hard work of one’s own strength and daring
to witness
what today we politely observe
through the tempered glass of our transports.
These upper waters wend through mining country,
the great trona beds of Sweetwater
left to sweat by the ancient Lake Gosiute for a time
now erupting reluctantly from the ground
under the forceful hands of men
the river’s young waters enslaved in the task
of washing ore day after day
are a veal calf,
siphoned away still bleating
to sate the thirsty bones
of townships on the verge of becoming ghosts.
The river is born, lives, and dies
a worker
indentured servant of the 40 million cottonmouths
until 1450 miles downstream
where early she will meet the death crone
in the Mexican delta sands
wishing only to greet the Sea of Cortez.
Site #2 - Headwaters in the Colorado Rockies
It’s smaller than it looks
in my mind
the Matriarch is
slick green-black
a depression in the autumnal expanse
of roasted marigold
I traveled far to behold her and as I approached
I realized
that she is a tight-lipped matron
beautiful and grave
her watery brood will waltz wildly
through the canyons
as it travels seaward
but here
where she modestly feeds the unruly child
the nursery is placid.
Not long ago
the high mountains were mantled with glaciers
stowing that feed carefully through the summers
for a measured meal
today the brittle snouts of ice left behind
tuck themselves quietly below Lone Eagle
and various protective peaks,
patron saints to the fading, frozen shadows
droplets plinking like the ticking of a clock
into the lakes below
wet bars to the growing metropolises that
sneak from the cookie jar
In defiance of the river’s most commanding officer -
gravity
trundling her waters, groaning
across the divide.
Site #3 - Glenwood Canyon
There’s a jewel box high in the mountains
left hanging there like the last ornament on the tree.
Fringed with curtains of Columbine and Bog Orchid,
it can’t contain the glinting collection of emeralds
that seep slowly from the travertine
into the Colorado below.
A dead horse marked the gulchway up from the river
at least according to the lore
decrepit totem to the travelers beneath, beckoning
come, come and see!
Year after year I drive the careening passages
through Glenwood
always noting the byzantine zag of the rocks
a violent portrait of the carver working dutifully
on these layered walls
aided now and then by a fire
that sharpens the artist’s blade with the sediment
of the burn
sliding away all night
to the consternation of Lake Powell, its heiress.
At the foot of this cleavage
river waters mingle with those from
the Yampah springs
Big Medicine as the Ute called it,
pooling genially into folds hollowed out
by long-dead hands
thrusting upwards into the spark-spray
of the Grand Fountain.
Last time I was there
my daughter soaked quietly in my belly
jelly-like, unformed yet.
She, like the canyon,
is of the water
I reckon
Site #4 - Canyonlands / Moab UT
I sit in my studio and look at my hands
as they move across the panel
they look more like my mothers now than they used to
and soon, like her mother’s before her.
When I stared over the great expanse above
Dead Horse Point, last fall
feeling the stir of my heart in the evening winds
I remember thinking the land looked like
my grandmother’s skin
when my child hands pushed together
on either side of her wrist
the folds neverending.
How many times the waters
had a change of heart
coursing through this valley through the eons
some of her edifices
like the the Titan of Fisher Towers
standing in high relief against the desert sky
are just the carcasses of a plateau
carried away in the current
others, like the right-angled structures built by men
are just enabled by the shunting of her waters.
My eyes scan the Canyonlands and catch
in the corner
an ancient monument indeed
the Paradox Formation
coaxed to the surface and evaporated
into crystalline form
through a slurry of river water dyed electric blue
The Moab Potash Ponds: a resurrection of ocean
that old, old poultice of salts
seems more alien on this surface
than the others.
Imagine if our heartbreaks
were so thoroughly mapped?
I suppose that is what our wrinkles are
if we are lucky enough to grow old
and earn so many
Site #5 - Lake Powell / Glen Canyon Dam
Before the flood
the canyon was eden
fleeced with arches
and other intricately sculpted formations.
A drawn out fight led by the Sierra Club
was lost as the Colorado’s waters began to steep
behind the new walls of Glen Canyon Dam
to form Lake Powell,
defender of the West against drought and ruin
The dark backdrop of war in Vietnam casting the
heroic feat of engineering in a dazzling light.
Now the spring breakers peel
across the gathered hems of her surface
beholding her as the May Queen -
emblem of abundance and leisure
bearer of fruits to the irrigated croplands
that burst forth
from her fingertips
and oh, how the people of St. George
must have danced
when first the siphoned water reached them!
But the lake is a bell tower
and her warnings ring clear
“This bounty is fickle!”, moans the bells.
As I stand on the precipice
there hangs above me a great, blackened orb
the aft sphere
bending the light of the midday sun
around its mass.
The orb is, i think, the weight of the water
of what it buried
and of what the bleached shoreline too, foretells:
there is no Amphritite here
no wise overseer
there is only us,
and our dreams.
Site #6 - The Grand Canyon
A once-lonely river
bustles with the noise and confusion of a holiday
as bodies line the seams of this great rip in the Earth.
I get the sense that the crowd is allied
in collective pursuit
of enlightenment
we stand shoulder to shoulder
peering down and across the ripples that fade
to dust-blue in the distance
How can my little eyes take all of this in?
so much has happened in the 70 million years
since your dissection began.
The water roars more loudly here
a noticeable quickening in the womb of rock
I spent 21 days down in that lion’s den
a decade ago
and my heart became a hole
that my body drained out of.
Here it is still the morning of creation
and the gaping sky
recedes through the curtain of walls
with each passing day
on the broiling tongue
of the river.
Where the Little enters the canyon
the marriage of waters is consummated
at a holy site.
A well of souls
watches quietly from the ages
as our wreckless hands conspire
to ferry hoards upon the precious shores from which
they would peer greedily at the wedding bed.
The plan is hushed, for now.
Site #7 - Lake Mead / Hoover Dam
She’s seriously overdrawn,
the greatest reservoir in the country
straws reaching far past her sternum
to poke at the dregs.
Last time I saw her before this I was in a raft,
dragged behind a motorboat
the slack current of the upper Mead leaving us reliant
on an outboard motor
to cross her.
I was sick and I begged the group to pull onto
the reedy shore
so I could find a rock to puke behind
Was she low then, too?
now I fret with my camera
searching for an angle from which to shoot
the peak-like hydroelectric towers
that turn water into wine at all hours
of the day and night.
The river slumbers here
in the breathing, spidery lake above Hoover
for a couple of years
gathering strength for the toil that lies beyond
it will be hard work to feed
the great southwestern cities
of Los Angeles, San Diego, Tucson
and that dragon, Las Vegas-
A mirage of drenched opulence that feels adversarial
as dead pool looms on the horizon
but the valley stays within its means
drawing from an ancient aquifer
far beneath the thrumming hive
and employing clever tricks,
like the magicians of the strip
to make their rations last..
There is much to learn from the oasis.
Home beckons
it is from here that I say goodbye to the river
as i’ve done before, and I’ll do again.
We turn from each other and continue our journeys
mine east, back to the mountains
hers west, towards the sea.