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  With limited rations, “an unknown distance yet to run” and “an unknown river yet to explore” the mood of Powell’s party turned serious at the Little Colorado. For us, the Little Colorado is another gorgeous canyon feature to explore. The sky-blue river is brightened by chalky mineral deposits which have ever so slowly created tiny (a foot or two high) travertine falls, little steps in the river over which the shiny water fans. I sit mesmerized by the sounds of dozens of these falls and their gentle music accompanied by the song of canyon wrens overhead.

  Back on the water, upstream gales hit us full force. The strength we’ve built during a week of rowing helps, but still we make only 1 mile per hour, compared to our average speed of 4 or 5 mph. At camp we play bocce among the stones, thickets and sand, the terrain adding new elements to the old Italian game. That night we make s’mores from graham crackers, chocolate bars and toasted marshmallows. River guides say most accidents happen on land and that night is the closest I’ve come so far to injury. As Jason, who is Kristen’s boyfriend and so pretty I call him “Boy Band,” tells a story, he excitedly gestures and a flaming marshmallow vaults off his stick and leaps across the fire, landing on my leg. But the burn is mild and easily remedied with cool water.

  As we break camp on a rainy cool morning, I put on my Neoprene hood for the first time—it’s a wetsuit for the head and makes me look like a dorky aviator from the 1930s. I can’t picture Powell or his rugged men in one of these, but I’ll gladly put vanity aside and don the hood, my fleece top, nylon splash jacket and Neoprene booties to stay warm.

  After ten days I feel in tune with the cadences of the canyon, but our isolation is interrupted by a stop at Phantom Ranch near the bottom of the Bright Angel Trail. This is a popular lodge and campsite for those hiking deep into the Canyon, and it’s where we bid farewell to three members of our party, who hike out to return to commitments above the rim.

  Though I’m tempted to eschew Phantom Ranch’s conveniences, I go to its pay phone for two reasons: to tell my girlfriend and mother that I’m having the time of my life, and because it’s my birthday and I want to hear the voices of my loved ones. It feels strange to touch a credit card and money. When an operator asks for my zip code to authorize the card, I can barely remember it. I reach my mother and she recounts the story she tells me every year: how at my first Thanksgiving, when I was a week old, I was placed on the table as the centerpiece and the turkey was bigger than me.

  On the way back to the boats I catch the eye of a mule deer, a young buck who lets me get within a few feet of him. The deer doesn’t seem to fear people, perhaps because in this park deer can’t be hunted. I meet a couple of tourists from South Korea, who are astounded that we’re in the midst of a twenty-four-day voyage. The young woman touches my shoulder in farewell; it seems that a part of them wants to connect to our journey. We refill our big plastic water jugs and get back on the river.

  There is a descent of perhaps seventy-five or eighty feet in a third of a mile, and the rushing waters break into great waves on the rocks and lash themselves into a mad, white foam. We step into our boats, push off, and away we go, first on smooth but swift water, then we strike a glassy wave and ride to its top, down again into the trough, up again on a high wave, and down and up on waves higher and still higher until we strike one just as it curls back, and a breaker rolls over our little boat. Still on we speed…until the little boat is caught in a whirlpool and spun around several times.

  The Colorado welcomes us back with some of the most technical and scary rapids on the river. Most rivers have a rating scale of Class I (flat water) to Class VI (virtually unrunnable), but the Colorado is graded from one to ten. Today we have several Class 10 rapids, the first being Horn, a mess of towering waves, rocks, chutes, and holes. While Owen scouts, I put on my dry top with rubber neck and wrist gaskets to keep the water out. In the rapid we get knocked sideways, then slide backwards for a minute before Owen pulls the boat away from a gaping hole and into the calm water below.

  Next is Granite. We spend more than half an hour scouting, searching for a route through it. As arduous as carrying the boats around the rapids would be, gazing at Granite almost makes me consider portaging. But that’s not an option. Steve, only twenty-four years old, has volunteered to be lead boat. A true outdoorsman, Steve has been nonchalant leading us through all the rapids during the past few days.

  But Granite is different from what we’ve seen so far: it has more hazards than we can count. The only possible run is a thread-the-needle along the right wall: if you get too far left an angry set of waves will probably flip you, too far right and you’ll be slammed into the north wall. Steve’s eyes blaze with fierce determination as he enters the river. He eludes the biggest waves, pulls back hard on the oars to stay off the wall and he’s through. Up close, as we run it, Granite is faster and harder to read than from the river bank, and we get bounced around near the bottom, but with some strong, well-timed tugs on the oars, Owen pulls us to safety.

  Hermit has a twenty-foot curling haystack wave in the center, is even bigger that Granite. But it’s a straight shot down the center. Just hit it hard and enjoy the ride. The wave is higher than our boat is long, but we keep the boat straight and have a clean roller-coaster run. We float to camp to the celebratory sounds of cheers and beers being popped. My birthday celebration has begun.

  On a sandy beach that evening I’m offered the camp throne, a reclining nylon chaise longue. My other chair, battered by the river, is missing an arm—we name it the John Wesley Powell because he’d lost his arm before his Canyon journey. I dig out the bottle of Herradura tequila I’ve brought for this night, passing it around the campfire circle for all to swig. The group presents me with a blueberry muffin cake baked in a Dutch oven, a large, covered cast-iron pot that’s set on coals for baking.

  When I first considered a twenty-four-day Canyon trip, it seemed like a long time. At the halfway point, I feel time slipping away. There’s so much to see every day in the side canyons: the fern-shrouded waterfall at Elves Chasm where Kristen and others leap naked into the pool below, Blacktail Canyon with its magical concert-hall acoustics, and Deer Creek Falls, a thundering 100-foot-high cascade next to the river. I’m in no hurry to return home, but I am ready for some rest.

  We take a layover day at Galloway Camp where we enjoy a warm solar shower (the water heated in a dark bag attached to a hose and shower head). A drove of about eight bighorn sheep stroll right through camp, scampering up an impossibly steep hillside as we approach. We wash our clothes in buckets of river water and drape them over the spindly desert trees.

  I sink deeper into the Canyon’s natural rhythms. I put away my watch and tell time by the progression of Pleiades, the Big Dipper and Orion across the night sky. We’ve become a resourceful group—we fix broken chairs with extra straps, we patch boats if they spring a leak, and erect shelters with tarps and oars when it rains. I appreciate this sense of self-containment and the group’s confidence that we have the ability to handle almost anything that comes our way.

  As we travel deeper into the crucible, past rock walls more than a billion years old, the Canyon gets steeper and narrower. Our sense of isolation intensifies. “It seems a long way up to the world of sunshine and open sky,” Powell wrote. And it is: in the heart of the Canyon the walls are 6,000 feet—more than a mile—high. The sun shines through the sharp, narrow slot for an hour or less each day this time of year; we warm up when the river bends to the south and catches the late autumn sun in the southern sky.

  By late August of 1869, Powell’s crew had traveled for three months since beginning their journey at Green River City. By the time they reached the deepest part of the Grand Canyon, Powell wrote, their canvas tent was “useless,” their rubber ponchos lost, “more than half the party are without hats, not one of us has an entire suit of clothes, and we have not a blanket apiece.” When the rain pours down, “we sit up all night on the rocks shivering, and are more exhausted by the nigh
t’s discomfort than the day’s toil.”

  At Ledges Camp we sleep comfortably atop Thermarest pads on shelves of shiny black gneiss. I fall asleep to a column of stars visible through the Canyon’s slot, the occasional meteor shining brilliantly for a flash before being consumed by Earth’s atmosphere. I dream of a tiger in a cage, so lonely it’s going crazy. It needs to roam. Then I dream of traveling across the U.S. entirely by water with my brother. Perhaps the inescapable Canyon is taking an emotional toll after all.

  “Are we running Lava tomorrow?” Nathan, a wiry and strong former collegiate soccer player, shouts to our campfire circle. “Because if we are,” he announces as he puts down his beer, “I need to stop drinking right now!” A few miles downstream, Lava is the most intimidating rapid on the river, with a precipitous fifteen-foot drop that tumbles into a recirculating ledge hole and ferocious lateral waves that seem to upend boats for kicks.

  The mood the next morning is serious, quiet. We tighten lines on the boats so if we flip we won’t lose our gear. Without a word we start stretching, we want to be limber, ready, in case we swim in the frothy madness. As we row downriver, the steep red walls widen slightly. Layers of basalt give way to black volcanic rock, the river’s descent gets steeper. The water picks up speed. We hear the rapids’ roar before we see Lava and pull over at the scout point just as two boats from the trip ahead of us are about to run the gauntlet.

  At this water level the forgiving left chute is too shallow to run. The center hole must be avoided at all costs. So we’ll run right. The first of the other trip’s two rafts, a solo boater on a catamaran, drops in. The boat is buried by a crashing wave; when it emerges, its pilot is gone, swept out by the rushing waters. The next boat gets slapped sideways by the first couple of grinding curlers, by the third its downstream side starts to rise and we watch helplessly as the boat flips, dumping everyone on board into the hammering current. We exhale when we see everyone flush out safely below.

  At each of the life-threatening rapids we’ve run, Owen has rallied us by sounding his kazoo-like horn, a sort of Cavalry rallying cry. Each boat captain taps the top of his or her head, river sign language for “O.K.” and “Ready.” Owen blows on the kazoo but there’s no sound—it’s waterlogged—an ominous sign. He blows the water out and tries again—nothing. Then he shakes it out; the third attempt yields a warbled call, enough sound to give us superstitious guides inspiration for the run ahead.

  Our map-guide says running through Lava takes twenty seconds. But we all know how long twenty seconds can be if things don’t go well. And if they don’t, it will take much more than twenty seconds to pick up the pieces and put everything back together again.

  Steve, in our lead boat, drops in—we can’t see his run from above—but Boy Band stands atop his boat and shouts: “one boat through!” Nathan follows and gets slapped around—he looks a bit sideways and one side of his boat starts to rise, but then it comes down and he’s through. Kristen and Neil roll into it; we drop in just after them. It’s hard to see exactly where we planned to enter—the frothy green and white maelstrom makes it almost impossible to chart a course.

  But Owen is on target and hits the first wave hard and straight, just like you’re supposed to. We break through the first hurdle, hit the V of the second wave right where we want to and punch through. Several fifteen-foot curlers break over our boat then we hit a wall of whitewater. The Black Pearl seems to stop, suspended above the mighty Colorado in slow motion. Then the river grabs us and drags us through the final drops. We’re through the worst of Lava Falls. From here it’s a roller-coaster of waves to the bottom of the rapid. We pull over at Tequila Beach, named for post-Lava celebrations, break out the Sauza and Hornitos, and pass the bottles around. The group that had the flip and swimmers is there too. We compare notes, borrow their hula hoops and whirl as ecstatically as dervishes.

  We’ve made it through the big rapids; all we need to do now is find a beach to sleep on. Kristen pulls us over about a mile below Lava, but the beach is tiny and covered with prickly shrubs. The group revokes her status as trip leader for the rest of the day. Owen, the only sober one among us, is given command. He locates a fine camp, and we play bocce on a spit of beach so close to the river that we sink up to our ankles in the watery sand.

  Powell’s journal suggests his party portaged the boats around Lava Falls and had a clear sense that they were near the end of the journey. They too celebrated after Lava, stumbling upon an Indian garden with ripe green squashes. Powell excuses his “robbery” by “pleading our great want.” After so many meager meals, the captain is exultant: “What a kettle of squash sauce we make! True, we have no salt with which to season it, but it makes a fine addition to our unleavened bread and coffee.” Powell estimates his team covered thirty-five river miles that day. “A few days like this,” he writes, “and we are out of our prison.”

  Canyon veterans warn that trips can fall apart during the final few days. Once Lava has been run, the theory goes, all the pent-up and buried resentments surface, and group cohesion suffers. But we’re a companionable, easygoing group. We know we won’t fall prey to petty disputes.

  After a festive spaghetti dinner we gather round the campfire to chart the rest of the trip. Because we’re a bit behind schedule and have a set take-out date, Kristen suggests floating over the flatwater at night. Steve is dead set against a night float, his emotions amplified by alcohol. He conjures visions of bodies in sleeping bags rolling off the boats, never to be seen again. “I’d rather run Lava ten times than do a night float,” he exclaims. Kristen gives him a look that says “Whatever,” and suggests we talk about it in the morning.

  With the return of daylight and sobriety, all is forgiven. At Granite Park Canyon (Mile 209) we find an expansive beach, set up a badminton net and prepare our Thanksgiving feast. A solo boater floats by. His name is Jake and he’s hungry for company, so we invite him to join us. We put the turkey in a metal drum and cover it with charcoal. Hours later it’s burnt to a crisp, but we scrape off the black crust and savor the feast of tender poultry, mashed potatoes, warm stuffing and unheated green beans—we didn’t have any more pots—straight from the can. For dessert we tuck into Martha’s home-baked apple and pumpkin pies, perfectly fresh after three weeks on ice, and toast one another with wine and beer.

  Thirty miles downstream, a wide side-canyon opens to the north, seeming to offer a way out of the Grand Canyon. At this juncture, O.G. Howland asked Powell to abandon the river and end the journey. Howland said that he, his brother Seneca, and William Dunn were determined to leave. Powell took out his sextant and found the party was about forty-five miles from the mouth of the Rio Virgen, their destination, the end of the Colorado’s course through the Grand Canyon.

  “All night long I pace up and down a little path,” Powell wrote. “Is it wise to go on?” he wondered. “At one time I almost conclude to leave the river. But for years I have been contemplating this trip. To leave the exploration unfinished … is more than I am willing to acknowledge, and I determine to go on.”

  In the morning Powell asked Howland, Howland, and Dunn if they still wanted to leave. The elder Howland said they did. Powell sadly accepted their decision and left them his boat, the Emma Dean, in case they reconsidered and wanted to meet the party downstream. The men were never seen again. They may have died at the hands of Indians or Mormons; they could have perished from lack of food or water; no one knows.

  This place, at Mile 239, is named Separation Canyon, and we hike up to see a plaque in memory of the three lost explorers. We make camp here with deepening awareness that our journey is nearing its end. From Separation to the take out, the water is virtually flat, save for one nasty rapid caused by human intrusion into the river. It sounds strange to say it, but the river has been drowned, submerged by Lake Mead. The rapids are gone, buried by the tepid backwash from Hoover Dam downstream. The water here is stagnant and fetid. “Bathtub rings” from the rise and fall of the reservoir blanc
h the Canyon’s walls. Helicopters with sightseers from Vegas buzz overhead; motorboats storm upstream past our rafts, their passengers pointing cameras at us and gaping.

  Just two days after leaving Separation’s beach, Powell’s party triumphantly concluded their journey. They had navigated and documented the entire run of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, and Powell could not contain his glee:

  How beautiful the sky, how bright the sunshine, what “floods of delirious music” pour from the throats of birds, how sweet the fragrance of earth and tree and blossom…. Now the danger is over, now the toil has ceased, now the gloom has disappeared, now the firmament is bounded only by the horizon, and what a vast expanse of constellations can be seen! The river rolls by us in silent majesty; the quiet of the camp is sweet; our joy is almost ecstasy.

  As we paddle against the wind on Lake Mead, the Canyon widens. It’s more open here, and I feel we’ve been released from its magnetic grip. By late afternoon, the incessant hum of the planes and motorboats ceases, and vestiges of the Canyon’s magic reappear. Lynsey plays her flute, the sweet music conjuring native visions. At night a gibbous moon rises over our Hypalon boats, which make soothing whale-like sounds as they rub against one another. As tired and eager for comfort as I am, I savor this final night in the Canyon, caressed by the muted lullaby of the rippling river.

  Michael Shapiro is the author of A Sense of Place: Great Travel Writers Talk About Their Craft, Lives, and Inspiration, and wrote the text for the pictorial book Guatemala: A Journey Through the Land of the Maya. His article on Jan Morris’s Wales was a cover story for National Geographic Traveler and won the prestigious Bedford Pace award. He also writes for such publications as Islands, Hemispheres, American Way, Mariner, The Sun, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and San Francisco Chronicle. He works as a freelance editor and has helped his clients get published in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Huffington Post.