ASLE 2005 Grand Canyon Trip Log

This page is a joint scrapbook for the second annual ASLE Grand Canyon River Trip.
I left the image files pretty large for quality. Give them time to load.
Everybody, please send text and images!

Last updated October 2, 2005.

Group Photo at Mile 243
--Maria Bowling

Bridgitte Wester
Rich Revelen
Eric Chilton
Chris Wright
Lorena Nichols
Duncan Williams
Ruth Hughes

Craig Childs
Maria Bowling
Frances Arnold
Matthew Arnold
Janine DeBaise
Frank McGill
Kari Fraser
Karen Fraser

Lowell Hill
Karen Molleson
Lance Newman
David Stinson
Matt Herrman
Robyn Wilson
Ryan Wilson

The names above are linked to email addresses.
As you can see, I'm missing a few addresses.
If you've got contact info for someone let me know.

Dave in Granite Rapid

Some Random Thoughts from Maria
OR
Lessons in Bare Rock Part II

I started this reflection sitting in Barnes and Nobles on September 6th, my 45th birthday, with two freshly purchased copies of Craig’s books sitting at my side. Forty-five, a great age for reflection. I titled last year’s post-trip essay “Lessons from Bare Rock,” and it seems fitting to continue in that mode by adding new lessons from year to year. Last trip’s lessons were all about simplicity and perspective—how billions of years of geologic history staring you in the face day after day can put the mostly artificial busyness of our lives into stark perspective and show us how little we really need to survive on this earth. This year’s lessons are less glaring, more meditative. Last year—rocks, this year—the patient cactus, drawing on more obscure sources of nourishment.

For some odd reason, since I am not at all religious in the traditional sense, I found the Bible verse “Be still and know that I am God” running through my head as I floated and took in the grandeur of the rock formations slipping by. The rhythmic drip of the oars made a perfect background for my ruminations. I began thinking that stillness and change seem to be opposites but in the desert are inseparable. A cactus seed may wait in a crack for years for enough moisture to burst open, and, as Craig has taught us, a shrimp egg can hitch a ride on a dragonfly or be ingested as decades-old dust before it finds the moisture it needs to resume its journey, bringing a whole new meaning to the term “still life.” And while people tend to equate movement (the faster the better) with progress, I thought about how we need that same stillness, the same blank space in our hearts and our minds and our lives to be able to germinate anything true or useful, and that this stillness is a prerequisite to the knowledge of anything grand and transcendent. Wilderness, for me, has become crucial in finding this stillness, and the canyon has become my best place.

When I teach Reading, Writing and Research, Radford University’s English 102, one question that my students can focus on as an overarching theme is the one answered by Wallace Stegner in his famous “Wilderness Letter.” Why does our society need wild places? On our brief afternoon in the Shredder, Craig and I had an interesting conversation about what places like the Canyon do for us. We talked about how, while seemingly unforgiving in their harshness, the desert canyons are totally accepting and non-judgmental. We wondered whether we come to the canyon in part to escape the less than perfect reflections we see of ourselves in our daily lives, so that the beauty we see around us can magically transform our own self-images to match. Cut off from our problems, we can allow the grandeur of the canyon walls and the river and the stars to remind us of what we can be. Rather than as an escape, though, I prefer to think that we come to let these images cleanse and absolve us, leaving us ready to try to reflect more of their clarity into our own lives.

As their answer to Stegner’s question, the Christian Coalition has somehow managed to make loving wilderness into a sin. According to Pat Robertson, environmentalists are evil because they attempt to replace the worship of God with the worship of nature. But, I’d argue, as the “rulers” of our planet, what better barometer do we have for the righteousness of our actions than how we treat the earth? If we let “God” be right next to us in the crypto we careful step around, aren’t we likely to be more caring? And if we can’t see something transcendent in what is right next to us, seeing God in a far-off heaven is no more than a conceit.

I’m sure that Kari and Frank would agree that completing the trip for a second time was anything but redundant. Slipping into the pace of sleeping under the brilliant moon and rising with the canyon wrens is like exchanging news with an old friend. Everything else seemed new, fresh, and familiar, yet different. I‘ll remember the flicker of surprise in Matt’s voice (just the barest flicker, mind you) as he led Janine and the kids and I up to Dutton Spring and found the path obliterated in sections by a flood. My journal brings back images of tiny black tadpoles; miniscule toads; crows and fire ants; the mystery of a stream appearing and disappearing in the sand; the transparent baby scorpion that Frances found in our sleeping spot one morning; a circle of friends swatting flies with flip-flops; poems and stories and astronomy lessons; and always the light show on the canyon walls. All these images testify to the miracles of change and continuity that were so magically illustrated along our trip. I treasure all of these and the opportunity the kids and I had to share these moments with such a caring group of people. Here’s to hoping that our paths do cross again and under just as magnificent circumstances!

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