Paria Canyon

PARIA CANYON SLOSHING THROUGH A WET WILDERNESS

I've sought wildness and isolation in high mountains and ancient forests, on glaciers and tundra. Deserts never occurred to me until I met my photographer husband, David Muench, who loves them. He suggested a backpack through Paria Canyon, a hidden place in the desert of the Colorado Plateau. The solitude of the Paria River would show me a new kind of wildness, he said.

A guidebook told me that, if I stepped into Paria's quicksand, I shouldn't worry because I would touch bottom. It suggested I remove my backpack, throw it away from me, then crawl out. It was comforting to know I would touch bottom, but while hip-deep in quicksand, removing my backpack became out of the question.

In a place where both river and land are as broad as time primordial, I stood in water and became part of a reflection in one of David's photographs. I stepped out of the river onto some dark mud, leading toward a dried-mud step and a long-dead fallen tree, instantly sinking into quicksand. Within seconds it had reached my hips, and I could not move. So much for following the guidebook's advice.

On the edge of fear, I remembered my horse, Ace. Before he became mine, someone had ridden him into a bog, then left him mired chest-high. People unsuccessfully strained to pull him out with ropes, tiring Ace and themselves. They backed off. Ace rested. After a long time, he gathered himself up, gave a huge heave forward and pulled himself free. So I rested a minute, then threw my whole body toward the mud step, bending my knee forward in the same moment. My knee touched the step. Putting all my weight on that knee, I wrenched the other leg free and crawled onto the dried mud.

I had refused a walking stick at the start of our trip because I like my hands free, but quicksand explains their popularity in Paria. You use one to check for quicksand under the next step or for balance as you step from river to slippery mud. I'd first encountered quicksand along this trek in still water near a high wall. David helped pull my foot free, then offered me his tripod as a walking stick. I thought this a ruse to get me to carry it, but, ultimately, I used David as my support, taking his hand each time I stepped into or out of the stream. He got a lot of use.

I hate getting my feet wet. I knew before we started that we would be hiking in water, but I never imagined so much of it. This is the desert, after all. I'd expected to hike sandy banks, rock ledges, cactus prairies. But in the 38 miles we covered along the Paria River onour six-day backpack, we spent not a day out of the water. Sometimes we waded straight down the flow, walking the river as if it were a road. Sometimes we crossed back and forth, again and again.

The Paria River runs 80 miles from Bryce Canyon in Utah to its confluence with the Colorado River at Lee's Ferry in Arizona. We started just across the border in Utah, entering Arizona 7 miles later. Along this route, the river is enclosed by a canyon-wild and silent. In October, when we hiked, we rarely heard the cry of a bird or felt a gust of wind. The shallow river ran silently along its dark course. One night we heard an owl, and one dawn, a beaver. We listened to the splat of mud beneath our feet, the delicate fall of a spring, our own voices, but mostly silence. The strict limits on numbers of backpackers protect the silence and isolation. During our trip, we saw only eight other people, all of them in the first few days.

Despite imagining dry-land alternatives to walking in the river, I wore sneakers designed for water. I worried they might not support my feet enough under the weight of my 50pound backpack, but on this essentially level route they seemed worth trying. Most people carry lighter packs than we did. Most people walk faster. Things take longer, and you carry more, when you travel with a photographer. However, any pack on a Paria trip is heavy because you must carry so much drinking water. Never mind that you're always in water-the river water is not inviting to drink. Ankle-deep and muddy, the Paria (a Paiute word for “muddy”) runs the color of weak coffee with too much milk in it. It's the color of the mud banks, the color of the rock soaring up from its edges. We found some springs along the way, but not at all of our campsites, and nothing reliable after mile 25.The canyon narrowed quickly, its walls shooting straight up from the river. At their base, little indentations faced with mud steps pretended to be secret corridors, like dark medieval alleys beckoning with ancient stories. In Paria, the story changes all the time. Ancient rock yields to rock still older. The river makes its way according to the season, the storm, the geologic era. Walls give way to great vaulted amphitheaters. We passed alcoves and chambers, ledges, shelves and niches. An occasional green plant sprouted brilliant against the dark rock layers. A hanging garden softened monumental walls. A single white datura bloomed, rare so late in the season.

Although the canyon changed around every bend, constantly offering some new marvel for the eye and the soul, what never changed was the presence of water. I began every morning with a step into it. I continued hating this; yet, somewhere along the way, I realized I minded it less. The water was not cold, not deep. In the day's hot sunshine, which penetrated even the canyon's depths, the river kept me cool. It soothed my feet, which were, as I'd thought, not terribly happy supporting my heavy pack. That is, until the morning that the water suddenly turned icy cold. In spite of the cloudless blue sky above us, the canyon lay blanketed in shadow. Only twice during the day did we walk through a patch of sun. My feet were numb with cold. The plus side was that I could not feel my blisters.

The length of Paria Canyon offers many possible side trips. We entered the mouth of Buckskin Canyon, stopping long enough for lunch. We dawdled as long as we could at The Hole, a large grotto where water sliding down the back wall nurtures trees and flowers and fills two pools. Tadpoles scurried across one of them. The falling water was clear, cool and good to drink, and, on a hot day, it would be a miracle to come here. Another miraclefor mewas Wrather Arch. A side canyon led to a 400-foot climb up a steep and rocky slope that was out oftheriver. At about 200 feet across and about 100 feet high, Wrather Arch is one of the largest sandstone arches in Arizona.

Beyond Wrather Arch, the river changed. Still muddy, it became more like an alpine stream-skirting boulders, rushing in little riffles and rapids and cascades. The geology also changed, moving deeper into time as Navajo sandstone gave way to the Kayenta formation, from there to the deep colors of the Moenave formation and, afterward, the gray, brown and green shales, the purple and blue and charcoal volcanic ash of the Chinle formation. The canyon walls recede far to the sides, their heights littering the canyon with centuries of rockfall. Here it seems easy to understand geology as an ongoing process. Nothing is permanent in a world eternally forming, forever changing. I found this exciting, if a bit nerve-wracking.

Nearing the end of our hike, we left the river to climb and descend hills of sharp rock, coming, at long last, to a view of the 3,000foot-high Vermilion Cliffs, the namesake of the national monument that includes Paria Canyon.

David wanted to make our last camp near some boulders that he knew were etched with petroglyphs. Tired, we climbed too high, missed the route and almost ran out of daylight. Perched steeply above the river, with too little light left to backtrack, we traversed a precipitous sand dune, while sand slid beneath our feet and shifted out into space like dust motes. Footprints disappeared asour feet lifted, as if we were meant to leave no trace.

Climbing into a little pass, we discovered an abrupt drop of 100 feet to the river. David noticed a narrow place where, by jumping 10 feet down, we could descend to the river over boulders. He removed his pack, laid his camera and tripod on a flat rock to our right, then jumped out of my view. I reached the lip of the jump, clumsily passed everything down to him, then looked at the jump. Directly below me, an opening led all the way to the bottom of the cliff. Beyond the opening, David stood on a short sand slope. I stood with a sheer rock wall on my left; the rock where he had laid his gear, on the right. To avoid simply sliding down the hole, I needed to jump both down and out. I first thought, I cannot do it; then, There is no choice. We were at the edge of night now. I pressed my left hand against the rock wall, my right against the flat rock. And jumped. I was down.

We put on our packs, then raced down the boulders to the river, crossing it in full darkness. We laid out our sleeping bags, ate an energy bar and went to bed. The soft sand held us. The earth cradled us beneath stars so dense there was hardly room for sky. We slept until the sky grew light.

The next morning, 10 minutes beyond our camp, we reached the petroglyphs pecked on boulders wrenched from ancient rock walls. One boulder had landed upside down, turning askew its oldest petroglyphs, probably made by ancestral Puebloans several thousand years earlier while the boulder was still in place. Someone made the later petroglyphs, most likely dating between A.D. 1100 and 1300, after the boulder landed in its present spot. These were right side up.

As we completed our hike at the Paria's confluence with the Colorado River, the country opened into a high-desert landscape. The trail ended at what was Lonely Dell, the 19thcentury ranch of Mormon settler John D. Lee, founder of Lee's Ferry. One of Lee's 17 wives, Emma, helped him run the ranch and the ferry. Upon seeing this place for the first time, Emma said, "What a lonely dell."

Well, yes. It's why I wanted to be here, why I wanted to hike Paria Canyon. Lonely, magnificent, silent. I would hike it again and never remember how much I hate getting my feet wet. AlH ADDITIONAL READING: With an eye for the vast panoramas that also embody intimate scenes, award-winning photographer David Muench delivers special views of a score of the Southwest's most inspiring landscapes-from the pinnacles of southern Arizona's sky islands to the Colorado Plateau to the low desert of California's Death Valley-in Vast & Intimate: Seeing Nature's Patterns and Relationships, published by Arizona Highways Books.