Glen Canyon Then and Now

IMAGES OF A LOST WORLD

Glen Canyon. Glen Canyon. The words resonate with tranquility. And it was tranquil a place of curving sandstone cliffs, teasing rapids and luminous chambers carved from the slick-rock plateaus. At the bottom of Glen Canyon, the Colorado River rested and loitered, tinkering with its rocky sanctuary for 160 miles. Then, soon after entering Arizona, the golden river exited the Glen to slip into the next chasm in the magnificent series - the Grand Canyon.

Today only the final 15 miles of Glen Canyon survive the greatest part transfigured in 1963 by Glen Canyon Dam into a stunning reservoir named Lake Powell. Few of those who now boat on the lake's glittering surface remember or understand what lay lost to the rising waters, while those who knew the canyon before the lake cannot possibly forget.

Tad Nichols floated through Glen Canyon and never forgot. When he photographed it in the 1950s and early '60s, before the creation of Lake Powell, Glen Canyon remained little-known and, compared to today, seldom-visited. Nichols, drawn to explore it, responded to nature's gentle architecture, recording on film the canyon's delightful, unlikely topography.

In the introduction to his beautiful book, Glen Canyon: Images of a Lost World, Nichols says, "Every side canyon beckoned us. Some were deep, dark, and narrow, intricately carved by rushing floodwaters; others, wide and sunlit with clear streams on sandy bottoms, bordered by rushes,

TAD NICHOLS PORTFOLIO Glen Canyon from 1950 through 1963

Photographer Tad Nichols, above, made some 30 trips into Glen Canyon from 1950 to 1963, before the damming of the Colorado River submerged its sandbars and flooded its side canyons, creating Lake Powell. Nichols' images of the canyon's terrain, pages 22-27, scenes that will never be viewed again, glow with particular poignancy.

Ferns, willows, and cottonwoods. The deep blue of the spring sky, the reddish brown of the canyon walls, and the fresh green of plants and trees were so appealing that we walked for hours, always wishing to see what was around the next bend. Finally we would turn back, often arriving at the boats after dark.

Rather than overwhelming and appearing defiant like some landscapes, Glen Canyon's treasures expressed themselves in the Arcadian and the playful. Glen Canyon possessed an intelligence of geometry figures almost too elegant to believe and a simplicity of form that defied description. Nichols' images in black-and-white recall those charms from the old landscape. Glen Canyon comprised more than the sum of its features more than ancient cliff dwellings, secluded waterfalls, sculptured streambeds, natural bridges and arching cottonwood trees. It encompassed more than patterns of rippling sand, interlocking

walls and undulating cliffs. Most importantly, Glen Canyon represented a lighta reflected light, an enfolding light, a light caroming from one radiant wall to another and still another, a quality of light for which photographers ache. For Nichols, the light of Glen Canyon, combined with the region's physique that begged to be caressed and cherished by its visitors, became a course of study. Massive sandstones, here and there accentuated by thin beds of shale, make up the foundations for the canyon's architectural themes. In Glen Canyon, perhaps like nowhere else on Earth, nature's work seems extraordinarily graphic. The sinuous slots, the swirled Patterns of aeolian sandstones, the sweeping lines of conchoidal fractures where the rock had parted, the dusky fingers of desert varnish exploring downward toward the canyon floors, the orderly profiles of the tablelands each contributed to the expression of Glen Canyon as remembered by Tad Nichols and his camera.

Tad Nichols: “How can you describe the experience of standing in these places?... It's like standing in a great cathedral. There's spirituality in that. I can't describe it any other way." The last trip before the closing of the dam, Frank and I went alone at Thanksgiving time. We camped on the sandbar out in front of Music Temple and had a heavy rain that evening. We went into the temple the next morning, and there was a beautiful waterfall. It was the first time we'd ever seen this.” - Glen Canyon: Images of a Lost World

GARY LADD PORTFOLIO Glen Canyon after 1963

Each year, millions come to see surreal-looking Lake Powell and its mysterious side chambers. Meanwhile, just downstream, the grandeur of the Grand Canyon has long attracted dedicated pilgrims. The Grand Canyon's upper reach, Marble Gorge, proves especially photogenic. But, today, between the two diverse worlds of Lake Powell and the Grand Canyon, there remains a single glorious stretch of Colorado River little noticed Glen Canyon below the dam, with its precious few miles of "unimproved" Colorado, the entire stretch contained in Arizona. It's a refuge innocent of both the clatter of the lake's many boaters and the wild white water of the Grand Canyon. Today's Glen Canyon, downstream from the curving face of the massive dam, appears the forgotten canyon, the quiet canyon.

The slick-rock terrain that surrounds Glen Canyon has become a touchstone of landscape photography, having largely displaced the rugged Sierra Nevada of California. Here, rather than thrusting angular peaks and polished granite, the camera is flattered by convoluted surfaces and streamlined forms sculpted from the swirling sandstone.

While the intensity of the old Glen Canyon might have been extinguished, this smoldering hint of the ancient flame continues to flicker. In the final miles of Glen Canyon, the walls of Navajo sandstone gather their forces and draw close. There's an insistent life force of the living Colorado River, which remains missing on the flashy lake upstream, and a serenity absent in the imposing canyon downstream.

Fifty years ago, Tad Nichols floated on the honest Colorado River, and captured its charms before they succumbed to civilization. Yet what remains today still reverberates with a soul of sandstone. Though the Colorado now runs unnaturally cold and clear, and its banks are edged with confusions of tamarisk, the Glen Canyon of old remains, even if greatly abbreviated. Burnt-orange cliffs rise a thousand feet and more, redbuds

Peregrine falcons keep watch from

The heights, and in the sum-mer, flash floods pour from the rims. And, as yesterday, the Colorado River in Glen Canyon continues to run seaward in persistent silence, its fluid form

Gary Ladd arrived too late to float the

the entire length of Glen Canyon, but he now lives in nearby Page and has come to know what's left of the canyon below the dam in intimate

In terms. His photographs, pages

28-33, capture the canyon as it is today: spring-blooming redbuds, sensuous cliffs of Navajo sandstone and chilly waters rippling toward a rendezvous with the Grand Canyon.

In Glen Canyon: Images of a Lost World, Ladd says, "There are guidelines to attempt to follow in describing a good photograph. Although none of them are totally satisfying, . . . one is especially applicable to Glen Canyon . . . complex against simple, delicate versus massive, flowing versus static, old and polished in contrast to young and rough."

Only here and there rent by protruding boulders. Before reaching the end of the Glen, the willful Colorado River swings far right and right again until it runs due north, away from the resistant limestone of the Grand Canyon and the geologic upwarp that makes that chasm manifest. The currents slacken with a reluctance to leave the gracious sandstone corridors and for half a mile they retreat toward Utah. Then, with some resignation, the Colorado hooks west and then south, sweeps by Lee's Ferry and plunges into the furious rapids and rugged splendor of the Grand Canyon, leaving the enchanted light of Glen Canyon behind. EDITOR'S NOTE: Glen Canyon photographer Tad Nichols died in August 2000 at the age of 89. Glen Canyon: Images of a Lost World was published by the Museum of New Mexico Press.