The River Edward Hooper Pdf
Elis Riebow
As I pictured them in my mind, the Bottoms were continually changing and morphing. After every winter snowfall comes the spring thaw and with every summer storm flows the rimrock flooding. The rushing water would wash new sand and soil into the canyons and down to the streams. The streams flow into the rivers, and river meanders in its serpentine fashion, carrying its payload of sand and silt as it moves. Sand banks from the last high water are swallowed by the seasonal water flows and carried further downstream, where they disappear, re-form and expand.
There is very little arable earth in the river basins, except for what gathers with the sand and dirt as they are deposited along the inner edges of the river contours. In these sand banks the wind-blown seeds are washed, germinate, and find root. Many plant shoots are eaten by bugs and animals, before they find root again and struggle for a hold of the fragile land spit.
The bottoms look to be so full of life; it is hard to focus on anything but the wonder and majesty of these barren cliffs and fecund rivers of the region. What is more beautiful than rising sandstone cliffs, carved out by thousands of years of river runoff, varnished by the action of the water and the minerals glistening on the rock face? The red sandy water seems so lazy and perpetual, and the natural arches first at a distance suddenly pop up right in from of you. Such odd places of grandeur the cliff face. We are approaching a lunch-spot bottom right now, yet my mind is upstream.
Rather than being green as depicted in the photo above, on our trip the Green River was constantly muddy and milky. We made our slow and deliberate expedition back in geologic time, where the days are measured by sun and heat, cool water and bottoms, shade and noon temperatures. We were in the wilderness on an unguided trip through Utah, south of what John Wesley Powell called Flaming Gorge but north of the magnificent Colorado River. The Green is a Class One river during this 50 mile stretch, with no perceptible rapids to speak of.
We did not travel in wooden dories and we did not face danger. All 18 of us made it safely during our trip, and we will again. The good fortune, though, is that we had several experienced boatmen, three of whom had been on this same trip up to 5 times. We did not run into any problems on our trip to speak of, however, having steady boatmen on our side, put my mind at ease: we did not have to be in constant wonder as to what was around the next bottom or bend in the river.
At the end of our 2012 Green River trip, Gerry Alkema, Ed Basehart, and I stopped in the town of Green River to buy a melon and see the J. W. Powell River History Museum, which was surprisingly full of interesting exhibits. One section, dedicated to the original river guides, honored Gus Hatch as a member of the River Runner Hall of Fame.
The sun was mighty strong during the day, so we covered our heads, legs, and arms with hats and sun screen. The nights were cool, so it was also good to have a jacket along for the trip. Our lunch stops aimed for several aspects: shade, enough sand to set up a table, and enough bottom to avoid steep river bank climbs.
Our goal was to reach the mesa top and return in time for dinner. We talked of emergency medicine and our children as we climbed an explored and hiked. Gabe knows the geology, plants and reptiles to a great degree and I enjoyed pumping him for information as we scaled the final steps to the lookout tower. Shored up with mortar and cement, you could still see the cedar vegas between the floors of the tower and there were remnants of a T shaped door about knee height. The view of the river unfolded on three sides of us, which showed us why this was an ideal watch post for the Indians who lived here and constructed the tower.
The series of buttes and mesas we saw were more and more spectacular with each river bend. One of the prettiest is called The Butte of the Cross, which is actually two separate buttes quite a distance apart. They appear to be joined as one in this photo, which we can call the John Wesley Powell view.
After lunch the third day, we had an exhilarating hike to the top of the mesa. The differences in the rock from the ridge top to the river are remarkable. The sandstone is hard enough to create slickrock, but porous enough to absorb some of the water. I had a pocket full of bright red rocks, which glistened in the sun like mica. It was almost like chert, a hard sedimentary stone used in making arrow heads.
Gerry Hagquist was right up there with the fastest of the hikers (except for Erik Rystrom, who likes to travel at warp speed). Erik and Jock were slowed down by some wrong turns and dead ends on the mesa tops, but that offered the rest of us a change to keep up. Gerry finally decided, near the top, it was time to go back down. Jock and Erik agreed to hike some more with me to the tippy top of the mesa for a river view. We had thought it was only a mile or so further, but it was more like 2.5 miles each way. The hike was hot and very dry, but worth every step.
The entire river experience is different from above. The plants are Mormon tea, rabbit bush, juniper, yucca, and pinion pine. The wild life is jack rabbits, crows, and lizards. The sparse soil is held together by micro-organisms. It is more like a landscape out of Star Wars, with the Sand People ready to peer around the next formation.
We made good time on top, Erik setting a mean pace and we zoomed to the edge for some photo ops before heading back to the river. As we completed our loop we saw Gabe Magtutu, Scott Soper, Bill Luhrs, and Mark Gambo. They were going to continue to quick march to the edge and return quickly thereafter. We will often recall the beauty of that vantage point. It was outstanding.
We all paddled downriver to the Confluence and located a nearly vacant sandbar to land. As Bill and I looked at the cliffs in the area, we noticed that the land seemed to slope more dramatically upward, as if they had fallen into the mesa behind them. Gabe told us that the sloping was created by salt. I thought Gabe had had too much time in the sun, but it turns out he is right. Millions of years ago a saltwater sea evaporated and left thousands of feet of bedded salts in Canyonlands.
After the salt deposits stopped, large quantities of sediment built up over the salt and added enormous weight. The pressure squeezed the salt horizontally and was washed out of salt valleys by the rivers. The Colorado River cut through several salt valleys and the surrounding area collapsed.
In many parts of the Rio Grande, San Juan, and Colorado River basins the tamarisk are dead or dying. The leaf beetles have had an amazing ability to eat into the bark and kill the plant. It is only a matter of time before the dead trees wash down river. The new shoots are all over the Bottoms, but they too, will eventually die due to the beetles and only the native cottonwood, willows and pinion will likely survive. We hope that the experiment proves successful.
James Edward Hooper, age 89, of Rock Creek, Al., passed from this life to his heavenly home on December 31, 2019. He was born June 23, 1930 in Jasper, Alabama. He was a mechanic, race car driver, and an antique car upholsterer. He had a love... View Obituary & Service Information
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