Seeking Hard Desert Truth

A century and a half ago, Major John Wesley Powell and eight men were ninety-nine days deep in the Grand Canyon and still scared sleepless by the roar of Colorado River rapids. They had launched in May from Green River, Wyoming, rowing blindly, facing backward in leaky, overloaded rowboats, into violent, giant eddies they called whirlpools, pulled ever downward into the tumult of unknown falls and ancient rock canyons, back into shapeless antiquity. Obsessed by this geology, and having passed ruins built long before Christ, Powell felt peculiarly transported—just as boaters feel today in this place. Then as now, traversing the Grand Canyon is like traveling through time.

At the beginning of their expedition, Oramel and Seneca Howland had earned Powell’s wrath by capsizing and destroying a boat carrying two thousand pounds of food, maps, and equipment, a mishap that left them faint with hunger and unable to fulfill their scientific research. Later, William Dunn fell into the river and destroyed Powell’s pocket watch.