In Search of True-blue Water

In truth, blue water is mostly a myth, born of a human wish for purity.

Only a few streams flaunt "true-blue" hues. Several-fed by the waters of the San Francisco Peaks-are in Arizona, where they flow like great blue prizes at the end of dusty roads, at the bottom of inhospitable canyons or at the far end of long miles.

Never revealing itself to the casual passer-by, blue water in Arizona insists you earn the view.

I love blue. The color and the idea of it. I named a peregrine falcon in my care Blue. I named my dog Blue, after the falcon. I wear blue jeans and blue sweaters. I buy blue rugs and blue teacups and earrings with blue stones. I listen to blues. I plant blue flowers in my garden. My eyes are blue. I am fascinated by Der Blaue Reiter art movement and Pablo Picasso's Blue Period. I read almost anything that has blue in the title. In his extraordinary philosophical inquiry, On Being Blue, the writer William H. Gass explores the qualities of the word "blue." As lim-itless as the blue heavens, the energy of his blue language leaves me breathless.

So when the concept of exploring Arizona's blue waters-Havasu Falls and the Little Colorado River -emerged late one night, I jumped at it. I was thinking blue, not geography. I had no idea how difficult it would be. Blue water, common as it sounds, is hard to come by when you try to find it in a desert.

The easiest of these waters to reach is the azure pool beneath the Grand Canyon's Havasu Falls and the robin's egg stream that flows so placidly away from it to plunge furiously over Mooney Falls. This water flows into yet another blue pool and on down past Beaver Falls to its confluence with the Colorado River. I managed to make finding even this water difficult.

We planned a 10-mile hike to the campground below Havasu Falls on the Havasupai Indian Reservation. My husband, David Muench, wanted to make new photographs of this blue water he has visited often, while I would see it for the first time, understanding the place in a way possible only by walking.

The trail to the village of Supai, above Havasu Falls, descends from Hualapai Hilltop, a carnival of a parking lot where horsepackers who supply the village load up their goods and where backpackers, hikers and horseback riders depart and arrive. Pack animals are tethered to hitch rails. Packers' dogs busy themselves about the horses. Everything is bustle and preparation, a scene I would normally find marvelous, but I was too ill from a sudden flu to care about any of it. I had not eaten in 20 hours. I could not imagine walking anywhere.

David suggested we abort the trip, but it was the only time we could make it for the next 11 months. We had campground reservations and a permit. If we didn't go, I would not see this blue water. I decided the worst that could happen was that I would have to helicopter out.

We descended the trail carved out of almost vertical white limestone extending hundreds of feet down from Hilltop. Almost 2,000 feet lower, we hiked a gentle red trail through a high red-walled canyon. I walked slowly in a dreamlike haze. A couple of miles from the village, David went ahead to see if there was room at the hotel, which would save me the last 2 miles to the campground. I continued at my own pace. A man, bent under a load of slender tree limbs, appeared on the road ahead of me. A second man rode past on a black horse. Houses sprouted. I entered the square formed by the cafe on one side of a large, open space, the store and post office on the other. A few old men lounged on the bench in front of the store. Dogs wandered back and forth or lay on

the sandy earth in front of the cafe. David appeared to say we had a room. I slept for 13 hours. When I woke, I was well. We left the village on the hot, dusty track to Havasu Falls. Nothing in the landscape prepared me for my first view of the falls and the paradise of a blue pool that lay beneath it. The “earth laughs in flowers,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote. This place was the equivalent of laughter, the earth rejoicing in the jewel-like water. Coming from the dry, red desert into this tropical dreamland seemed to me nature’s interpretation of my illness and recovery.

The rock walls breached by the falls cascading into the pool enclose about half of the pool. Sloping forest surrounds the rest between the river flowing out of the pool and the trail. Cottonwoods and willows cast deep shade over the end of the pool. We camped the next two nights along the blue stream flowing 10 miles over four falls from the Supai village to the Colorado River. Between Havasu and Mooney falls,

blue water is mostly a myth, born of a human wish for purity

The broad, turquoise stream is a liquid window giving view to pebbles and strips of sunlight in the creek bed. Filling the creek channel with its translucence, the water is blue, utterly clear and warm. The trail continues to Mooney Falls, winding down a steep travertine cliff and entering a narrow cave where steps have been cut in the stone. The cave is dark at first, then curves back toward the light, descends a few steps farther and opens onto a ledge that enters yet another cave on its way down to the falls. The first ledge provides the classic view of Mooney Falls-a thick, white-foaming torrent interlaced with strips of blue water that lose themselves at once in the crashing foam. The cliff from which the water plunges and the cliff down which we climbed is travertine stone hanging in draperies.The water plunges into a large blue lagoon as mag-nificent as the pool below Havasu Falls. From here the stream continues down to Beaver Falls and ultimately enters the Colorado River in Grand Canyon National Beyond the Navajo Indian Reservation, the Little Colorado follows a serpentine course westward through Grand Canyon National Park to its confluence with the Colorado River.Park between river miles 156 and 157. This is a popular stop on a river trip. Boats put in at the confluence so hikers can make the trek up the deep canyon-often crossing the creek with its cascades and blue pools-to Beaver Falls.

To the east, along the Little Colorado River where David and I hiked several months later, blue is more ephemeral than at Havasu. If one is to find blue water there, timing is everything.

Blue happens when the Little Colorado is dry above Blue Spring. Our checkpoint was the Little Colorado at Cameron because, if no water flows there, chances are good of finding blue water lower in the canyon.

We checked the day before starting a difficult hike down into Salt Trail Canyon, found the Little Colorado dry at Cameron and drove a short distance north on U.S. Route 89 before heading west across the Navajo Indian Reservation.

This is hard country of scattered ranches where sparse cattle and horses scrape together the meager living the land offers. Confusing roads - some official, most blazed by four-wheelers - cut the land, and we made a few wrong guesses before finding the unmarked entrance to the narrow Salt Trail Canyon.

The route into and through the canyon is used on pilgrimages of the Hopi Indians to their sacred Sipapu, downstream on the Little Colorado - the opposite direction from our trek. The trail is marked by cairns, but is not easy to negotiate. This landscape does not invite you. The blue water makes you work to find it.

The canyon entrance is guarded by two cairns not far below the parking area where we camped overnight. They are the only clue that the steep, unstable drop-off lying

before you is the way in. It is an act of trust to plunge down between them-trust in yourself, in the rock, in this wild universe.

The place is both wild and sacred.

After a hurried breakfast, we started down the loose boulders in the clear, cold morning. The sky was a brilliant, uninterrupted blue, the full moon lowering, the wind beginning. Birdsong mingled with wind, counterpoint and melody.

At our start, sun lit the west walls of the canyon, casting deep shadows on the Corn Maiden, a freestanding rock pillar below the rock slide not far below the entrance.

By midmorning, the sun seemed to be everywhere, and hot. Beyond the Corn Maiden, the trail descended a steep alluvial slope down to the bottom of the canyon.

After a considerable hike, we reached a side drainage coming down the slope to create a steep drop-off requiring rope. We had none. Our several attempts at starting down did not work.

The canyon bottom was visible below us. Tantalizing. Unreachable. We had not imagined failing to reach the blue water, although at this point I became concerned about failing to return to the top.

At the point of turning around, David discovered that by climbing farther up the slope, we could circumvent the gulch altogether and reach a more suitable crossing. This was long and tedious and made me wonder how interested I really was in blue water, but it worked.

Resuming our course, we descended a short distance to another abrupt cliff where cairns guided us down a series of benches to an area that looked totally impossible. Impossible, of course, is always relative.

In fact, each step led to the next, all the way to the base of the cliff where, switchbacking down, we reached the bottom of Salt Trail Canyon, then crossed it at its confluence with the canyon of the Little Colorado River.

After so much work to get here, we had reached our blue water.

Major springs come in from side canyons all along the Little Colorado. Hiking upstream, we came to cascades over travertine terraces and magical pools of blue water-deep blue, opaque blue, turquoise blue, unimaginable blue.

I am right to love blue. Sometimes love makes you go through too much, but it is always worth it. Also Ruth Rudner of Corrales, New Mexico, will go anywhere there is something blue, even following husband David Muench along trails that make her (sometimes) wish she were somewhere else.

David Muench, also of Corrales, embraced the wild challenge of reaching the water of the Little Colorado, gloried in the absolute beauty of Havasu Falls and continues his search for the blue waters of the Earth.

For a guide to losing your blues by visiting Havasu Falls, go to arizonahighways.com (Click on Water Fun Guide)

Lake Powell's low water reveals long-submerged cliffs and bridges Text and Photographs by Gary Ladd

Kayakers quest for Glen