Two Score and Four Years of Rivers

I fell in love with rivers by accident. I was an urban kid who wanted to be kind to the planet, so I figured environmental engineering would suit me. But, in 1974, setting out from Dallas, Texas, and headed for adulthood, I ditched my science-heavy scholarship to the University of Santa Clara and serendipitously detoured to Prescott College. The college’s month-long freshman orientation ice-breaker – a thirty day river adventure through the heart of the canyon lands – introduced me to the sublime slick rock of Utah and the timelessness of rivers in general. I had never cared for the burden of time we all carry with us in ‘polite’ society, so the absence of time on a river trip was liberating. Over the decades I have sampled free-flowing rivers in every corner of the planet noting the same pricelessness in every backwash, turbulence, cascade or still water reach. But no matter how far I travel, my heart always wants to return to my river origins beneath the red rock walls and horseshoe bends of southeastern Utah.