August 28, 2005

Floating along


We went through hundreds of rapids, with all of our belongings tightly wrapped in rubber bags and strapped to the boat, but we also spent many hours moving leisurely along on calmer water, listening for the canyon wren, admiring the spectacular scenery. The colour and shape and type of rock was always changing.

From the raft, we admired side canyons and caves and waterfalls, cacti of all sorts, bighorn sheep, and great blue heron. I was surprised at first at how small the great blue herons were.

"How come the great blue herons are so small here?" I asked the boatman.

He laughed at me. "The birds aren't small. The canyon is big."

8 comments:

Phantom Scribbler said...

My god, look at that vista! Thank you so much for sharing these photos with us!

Scrivener said...

Gorgeous!

Ianqui said...

I can't even begin to put in words how awesome this all looks. I'm ridiculously jealous.

Unknown said...

Holy cow! That's beautiful. Okay, I'm definitely making it out there next summer. Just amazing.

Anonymous said...

oh yeah, the canyon...I guess that totally screws up your perspective! (But I wouldn't mind having my perspective screwed up)

Julie said...

Oh, how fabulous! I love it that the herons looked small. Please post more pix!

jo(e) said...

Friday Mom: Yeah, the amazing thing about the canyon is really the sheer size of it all. Sort of like swimming in the ocean -- makes me feel very small and humble. We travelled for fourteen days and the canyon just kept going on and on.

The first time I saw the Grand Canyon, which was from the rim, I was thinking about a relative who was dying ... and I found the sheer size of the canyon comforting. Surely, some power far higher than humans made a canyon that big ....

I like being in the presence of something far beyond the scope of humanity.

Running2Ks said...

Amazing and spectacular!