Thunder River

Thunder An Adventure By Jonreed

WHEN you want to know the earth, to hear the deep beat of her heart, to sense her innermost secrets, to grapple with her and feel her fearful breath, to wear the mark of the dragon's teeth upon you forever-go down into Thunder River. Put a knapsack on your back, a blanket over your shoulder, a pair of moccasins on your feet. Be one of her children if you want to know the earth. Otherwise, you might as well buy postcards and stay home.

River in the Canyon Lauritzen

you can imagine the time, several million years ago, when the Colorado wound unhurriedly along between the upper rims. There were cottonwood and willows crowding its banks and birds ruffling the surface gilded by the desert sun. Even now the valley floor looks that smooth and innocent in the far distance that you can almost see the billowing trees and the glistening water. It is in the foreground where the lesser canyons make their beginnings that you get some warning of the hideous deep gorge that When you want to know the earth, to hear the deep beat of her heart, to sense her innermost secrets, to grapple with her and feel her fearful teeth upon you forever. ... go down into Thunder River.

But of course there are no postcards of Thunder River. If there are, they should be burned, for no picture, no words can do anything but pique your curiosity about it or any other part of the Grand Canyon. Once you have gone down into these places -alone-pictures only bring you anguish and words are little hunks of lies.

The trail to Thunder River leads off the North Rim from Indian Holler, which is near Big Saddle toward Crazy Jug Point, and that could be seventy miles south of Fredonia by way of Ryan ranger station. You leave your car at the corrals in Indian Holler (spelled Hollow) and walk about four miles up the holler. Then up the side Still on the south and you are at the top of the first rim and you get your first reward.

Maybe it's some after sun-up and the Valley of Red Gold is spread out below, south and westward, flooded with a misty light that shines on the clean-washed sandstone terraces and takes the edge from the shadows of the dark canyons whose begin nings are directly below, south. It is a leisurely valley that moves off for sixty miles to a dim horizon in the west, where the Unikaret Mountains slumber on the brink like black, lazy monsters that have crawled out of the canyons to sun themselves. Looking down the Valley of Red Gold writhes down the valley like the slash of a knife plunged to the hilt and drawn in swift curves along the full length of the wide hollow.

The rims that border the valley look deceptively low, being even along the top. It is when you get a fragment of them set off alone like Jon's Altar, midway down the valley-that you realize the majesty of these upper heights. The coloring and stratification are uniform all the way, the most striking feature being a cream-colored ledge through the center, the full length of the rims. Below this ledge all along are triangular splashes of magenta, where torrents have washed the rock debris off the lower stratum-so giving the illusion that the ledge is dripping with dark red. Down the trail you go now, in a long, rough, winding descent from the first rim.

All the time you think you are going to plunge right off into the canyons ahead when you get to the bottom of the rim. But the trail doubles back several miles into a cove to the eastward under the rim. Then it lures you on over hillocks and around draws until your sweat-drenched frame begins to fag and you wonder if the one who told you the way to take might have not wanted you to hover forever on the lower rims like a lost imp.

If you are lucky you will see the small slab of rock with the words feebly scratched on it: "Thunder River this way," and an arrow pointing off to southwestward. That is the fork of the trails, one of which, if you can follow it, leads to Thunder River; the other takes you to hellan'gone. I took that one to hellan'gone, and after some wandering came to a fence and a fading of the track and a realization that I had walked miles in the wrong direction. Even after I had trudged back, grinding the dust between my teeth, and found the slab sign and followed a trail that went in the direction the arrow pointed, this trail petered out on the solid rock and there was no way of telling where it went. So I dragged myself doubtfully down a holler where, according to the direction I had, the trail should have gone, but there was no trail anywhere only enough track to lead one on to believe that someone, sometime had been there before.

Maybe it was a mountain sheep, maybe a wandering deer, maybe a cowpuncher looking for lost cattle and getting lost himself. Mountain sheep or satyrs, I followed their ancient trace down into an abrupt canyon and then rimmed around above a thousand foot wall that dropped deeper into that canyon, and I finally found myself on a peninsula jutting out into a maze of bottomless ravines. Before I could persuade myself to give up and go back, night welled up like black water from the depths and held me there. There was nothing to do but spend the night clinging to a narrow slope between an eternity of nothing below and a long, brooding cliff above.

A step in the darkness here and you might be swallowed up, with nothing to tell of you but the faint echoing of your wail down the quiet canyons. So you hurriedly gather what brush you can from the almost barren slopes and light a fire. Then you sit, too tired, too lonely, too hungry even, to eat, and gaze out at the grim outlines of the rocks against the reddened windclouds in the west. You know that you have "come to the last path of the world, to the Scythian country, to the untrodden solitude." The earth is an emptiness, and the beat of your heart is the only rhythm of its silence.

There is no wind. Even the gust of red clouds in the west has burned itself out.

Only the stars are alive, and it is easier to believe that creatures live up there than on this gloomy earth.

The Indians could well keep away from this gouged-out wilderness, peopling it with demons and gods. You can believe that fierce giant spirits stare out of the darkness as they stride along the rims. Your only protection against them is the fire, which itself adds a fearsome aspect to the seen, and frightful size to the unseen. It leaps up and sets the cliff above to jerking and twitching like the face of an old man in a nightmare. It flits across the black emptiness of the canyon, finding nothing to which it can cling, except the rocks on the opposite brink, which glimmer faintly if you care to look. The brush is gone, the coals shrink to Ashes and there is not the faintest red glow to shield you from the presences that crowd upon the cliffs or reach up out of the abyss. You try not to think of them or of(Turn to Page 44) "... It's the red-brown gorge it has torn out at the base of cliffs and terraces piling up for nearly a mile into the sky that makes Thunder River something to remember..."

"... The Colorado moseys along with a contented look on her face like the cat that just ate the canary -and heads into the gorge that winds deep between the walls of Valley of Red Gold..."