Sunday 15th April

The most incredible and rewarding experience came on Sunday morning with the hike down Marble Canyon and as I reached the Colorado river I spent some time imagining how the first explorers of the American West had felt upon discovering this beautiful place for the first time. In particular I thought about John Wesley Powell who in 1869 led the groundbreaking first expedition through the Colorado river and its canyons. The marked out trail we followed enabled us to get a feel for the wilderness without too much danger but at the same time this took away from the experience because there is always the possibility of other tourists and the real wilderness would not have other people in close proximity, you would be isolated and more at one with your surroundings. The difficult terrain I had just finished maneuvering led me to contemplate the fact that the first explorers who navigated the canyon, did so with no prior knowledge or marked out trails. I would be apprehensive to hike without knowing my surroundings to some degree, but this did not deter Powell who was quoted as saying “We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls ride over the river, we know not. Ah, well! we may conjecture many things. After seeing and experiencing what Powell did I have a new found respect for him and others like him, something that could not be gained without participating and certainly not from studying text books.

References:

 ‘John Wesley Powell: Mapping the Colorado River - American History Magazine’. http://www.historynet.com/john-wesley-powell-mapping-the-colorado-river.htm.
‘Powell Museum’ http://www.powellmuseum.org/museum_about.php”.