A Song of Silence … Restful, Pure, and Sweet

It is after the stars but before the sun. We are sitting in a small boat sipping hot sugary coffee and the cool night air. Silence. Nothing moves. There is no wind, no water lapping against the boat, no talk. The world is holding its breath, and the silence is restful, pure and soft, endless and deep.

We have been here, alone, for over an hour now without either of us saying a word, and I have the feeling that we are the only people alive, that

no city, no harbor, no houseboat, no telephone, no TV, no highway, no airplane exists. Just two people in a small boat, sipping, watching, thinking. "There are places and moments," wrote Jules Renard, "in which one is so completely alone that one sees the world entire." For both Harold and me, this is one of those places. And this is one of those moments. Gradually, reluctantly, the sky lightens, engulfing us in a silvery glow-pearl light dusted with blue. Silhouettes fatten into cliffs and mountains and

Antelope Island blessed with nature's own brand of serenity. One of hundreds of

stop, look, and enjoy spots on 186-milelong Lake Powell. John Lahusea

Canyon walls. The inky hole around us catches the glow and liquifies into life. As the sun climbs, the silver melts into gold, shimmering across the lake like shaken sheets of foil. Then, so suddenly I think that time must have leapfrogged space, a rose-orange blazes along the horizon, illuminates the hills, and explodes in the canyons; and a Bokhara blue ignites the water, races across the lake, and flows over us like fire in a forest.

-the landing strip, a road of decaying asphalt high atop a rusted mesa, a single ribbon of black running through the wind-swirled sand and stunted chaparral; the airport, a corrugated roof supported by four poies.) The view from the plane had been dazzling-1900 miles of jagged coastline, of fjords and inlets and scallops and gulleys and lagoons and channels and glens and alcoves and gulches and coves; lightning-shaped blue tentacles chiseling their way into the soft orange hills. The contrasts seemed unnatural, almost surrealthe earth was liquid and flowing; the water, lacquered, splintered, and

The day before yesterday, we had seen this same orange and this same blue from 3000 feet above the water. For three hours, we had flown over Lake Powell, from Page, Arizona, to Hite, Utah, and back. ("Hite International Airport," the pilot had called it

(Left) The view from Navajo Mountain. David Muench (Above) A symphony of sun, shadow, and silence in Padre Bay. Jerry Jacka

(Following panel, pgs. 24-25) Evening song on Lake Powell. David Muench

Text continued on page 27

SILENCE continued from page 23 diamond hard; the colors, brilliant, poster-like, squeezed straight from the-tube.

And then yesterday, we had boated through the probing canyons and had been surrounded by the same oranges and blues once again.

We floated past satin walls draped with dripping tapestries of tar-like patina; past wafer-thin sheets of stone stacked like filo dough and sculpted by the wind and rain into smooth mounds that rolled across the hills; past pagoda-like palisades and mosquelike mesas; past stands of cottonwoods aglow with sunlight; past trees growing out of rocks and grassgrowing upside down; past towering buttes layered in black and chalk and rose and embedded in smokey-gray taluses.

We explored the wandering recesses of the lake and saw how the relentless water had discovered the weaknesses in the rocks and sought out the softness within them-probing, planing, rounding, tunneling, hollowing, polishing-turning canyon walls into smooth mounds of swiss cheese. We paused beneath immense cathedral-like concordant fractures chiseled out of solid rock. We inched into narrow canyons, pressing between sheer slabs of stone that leaped majestically up from the still, blue water. Silent, secret, timeless-the canyons of Lake Powell.

We saw Dali-like landscapes where thin slices of calcite knifed like shark fins through seas of sandstone; hunks of black lava the size of railroad cars scattered on the flanks of orange hills; mounds of stone swirled like cream and shaped like lengths of rope and loaves of bread; balanced rocks and natural bridges; portals and potholes; hills shaped like camels and frogs and cookie jars and trucks and faces and hats.

And, all the while, we watched the blue water change to emerald green and back to blue; and the hills, from orange to rose and saffron and back to orange.

But now, as we sit alone in our small boat, surrounded by the blue and orange, we see more than the gigantic, bewildering beauty of this area, more than the contrasting colors and shapes, more than the bizarre formations and mirrored waters. We see "the world entire." And, without saying it, both of us know that the other sees it, too.

Finally, Harold breaks the silence. He lives in Page and loves its solitude, its uncrowded waters and hills, its crystal skies and clean air. "You know," he says, "I sure hope you don't tell people what this area is really like. Don't worry, Harold. I'm not that good. Nobody is.