Paria - "muddy water" or the name of a mythical animal in Paiute language, according to different sources and legends. The maker of one of the most spectacular canyons merging the Colorado River, Paria starts its journey near Bryce Canyon National Park. There is no single Paria River Valley, but rather many canyons shaped and carved by the tributaries of the elusive river. Indeed the colorful and worldly-celebrated Bryce Amphitheater is a masterful artwork of the muddy waters.
My first reaction upon seeing the Queen's Garden section of the Bryce Amphitheater was pure awe and fascination. Words and even photographs are inadequate to convey the ineffable emotions invoked by mother nature's painting and sculpturing. The combination of spires, hoodoos, grottos, arches and walls are unequaled on earth. All this maze-like architecture has been built by the deposition, uplift, and erosion processes that started 12 million years ago. The finishing touch, however, was endowed by the cutting of the limestone by Paria River.
Indians have called the hoodoos "legendary people" punished by the Coyote and added a spiritual dimension to the area. Life meant spiritual unity with the physical environment for the Native Americans. By contrast, today's urban tourists, devoid of any appreciation for the poetry of nature, impose their own not-so-lyric commercial world by naming Bryce's artwork after cartoon characters or buildings in their hometowns. One frigid May morning on Inspiration Point I asked Alain Thomas, a French professional photographer, what they called the impressive formation that we were viewing through our lenses. "Fairy's castle", he answered. I heard others call it Bryce's Temple. While people torment their imagination for new names, Ranger Bryant is vehemently offended by such namecalling and says "it is all just the Bryce Amphitheather and nothing else". But even the National Park Service officially endorses the towering Thor's Hammer! The park was elected as the most attractive landmark in the U.S. by the omnipresent Europeans. To the Mormon pioneer Ebenezer Bryce it was just "one hell of a place to lose a cow".
While "elusive" may sound like an appropriate adjective for a river I was unable to document in full force, perhaps, "ghostly" suits better as a characterization, for it seemed like the river was hiding itself from people. In the beginning I had even thought that Paria might mean ``ghost'' in Paiute. The truth is Paria is the only source of life in the land that spans 70 miles from Bryce to the Colorado River. During the irrigation season in Bryce Valley, which extends from April through October, there is little water flowing down Paria below Cannonville, a town of 150 about 20 miles south of Bryce Canyon National Park. However, as early as 1881, one participant of a November 1872 military expedition, who made himself known by the initials T. V. B., produced the following offense in the United Service: "I speak of Paria as a river because it is honored with that rank on the maps, but feel as though I owed the reader an apology for deceiving him, for in a less arid country it would scarcely be dignified with the name of creek... In those water-scarce regions everything having the appearance of running water is at least a creek, and the imagination delights in exalting a creek into a river." Ironically, the rest of the story recounts the doomed end of the same expedition which had to turn back after the horrible death of its German cook in Paria's icy waters. The Paiute guide of the party introduced the historic words "whitey man, big fool" as an expression of disgust with the big campfires lit by the participants using "half a dozen dead pine trees". Poor Paiute, unable to take the creepy nights of the canyon, flees halfway through the expedition fearing death in the hands of his Navajo enemies.
What is hidden behind the scenery is the natural cycle the desert and its canyons go through. Paria, which barely qualifies to be a creek, instantly becomes a source of life and death with the onslaught of a flashflood triggered by a rainstorm miles upstream. Tree logs caught between the canyon walls, or the carcass of a coyote found at the bottom of a dark chasm attest to the force of the flashfloods which make Paria mightier than the best of rivers. The ghost materializes and its elusiveness disappears.
The small town of Tropic, with population less than 400, is an oasis in the middle of this almost uninhabitable land. Tropic enjoys a steady source of water and is adjusting to the influx of tourists fast. A new Mexican restaurant, a relatively big yet expensive grocery store, two hotels, all wooden reminding me of the Western movie sites... Then again, if you are not in some kind of tourism business, you are likely to be a rancher in Color Country. Even the owner of a Shell station I stopped by in Hatch, a tiny settlement between Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks, was dressed up in a cowboy outfit.
Route 12 and towns like Tropic form the gateway to the canyons of Escalante and the Cockscomb, if one approaches from the west. Turning south at Cannonville brings you to the intersection of Kodachrome Basin State Park and the Cottonwood Wash Road. This must be one intersection where everyone new to the area slams on the breaks, for Cottonwood Wash Road is basically a narrow dirt road marked by the sign "impassable when wet". It is 30 miles of no man's land. Sometimes you encounter more rattlesnakes than cars. And wet it is with two stream crossings, one for Paria, another for the Cottonwood Creek.
Kodachrome Basin is a rare spectacle of color and form with its red rock spires and cliffs. No wonder the National Geographic Society (NGS) named the place Kodachrome Flats following their visit in 1949. I can't help wonder, with some amusement admittedly, if the park would have been named after Fujichrome, had the visit taken place this decade. As I hike on the Panorama Trail, I am so elated by the visual feast presented to me, yet again, by this arid country, that I do not watch my step. Underneath every natural beauty, there is also fragility. The cryptogamic soil, or "delicate dirt" as some call it, surrounds the trails everywhere in Kodachrome Basin. Crypto is composed of fragile mass of lichens that conserve water and add nitrogen to parched lands, stabilizing the desert soil. Step on it and your footprint will stay for at least 100 years!
The major landmark of the Cockscomb is Grosvenor Arch, named after the NGS President Gilbert Grosvenor. Kelsey writes that the arch was previously known as Butler Valley Arch, and insists on using the former name. This is actually an impressive double arch, albeit devoid of the colors of sandstone. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) registration book near the arch reflects the mindset of people of all sorts. While Europeans request for an asphalt road, others ask that "Utah be left alone". And I am wondering if I am the first Turkish person to sign the pages...
The geography along the Cottonwood Road is unique in Paria Country. The while-dominated colors of the surrounding hills are characteristics of the Cockscomb, a monocline caused by a fold in the earth's crust. Even here descriptions follow man's imagination. "Drive another five miles down the road till you cross a bridge and see the Santa Claus on your left," was the directions by MiraLoy Ott, owner of the Trail Head Station in Kodachrome Basin State Park, for the inconspicuous Cottonwood Wash Narrows, a small slot canyon.
In May of 1995 I backpacked through the Lower Paria River Canyon with K. Wilamska. Going in is really the only way to see Paria Canyon and Buckskin Gulch, which is as deep as 3,000 feet and only 2 feet wide at its narrowest point. The first night, we camped near the confluence with Buckskin Gulch. The light drizzle prepared the muddy ground for the next day's excursion up Buckskin and the deafening echoes of the thunders vibrated our tents. As my Polish companion was telling me the story of the tent that a flashflood claimed as its sacrifice, the clouds dispersed, and it was a window of bright stars looking up.
Next morning we made our first attempt up Buckskin Gulch. The sky was seldom visible and it felt as if we were walking inside a cave. The diffused light bouncing down through the crack above added an eery yet powerful enhancement to the colors of the canyon walls that were decorated by the black stripes of the desert varnish. Buckskin is the last place on earth to be in a rainshower. The sandstone can not absorb water, and worse yet, there is almost no elevation to seek refuge in the event of a flashflood.
The river is really a sequence of slimy, bug-infested puddles at first. Then, it becomes one steady flow, rising inch by inch as the miles pile up, sometimes following the tireless contours of a gooseneck. While Paria is a good source if filtered, the year-around springs deliver tasty water. The red colors of Navajo sandstone dominate the vision for 25 miles until the canyon begins widening and layers of the Kayenta formation appear. The green foreground of the trees at the upper elevations and the rugged look of cryptogamic soil complete the scenery.
The one mile walk up the Wrather Canyon gives the deceptive impression that this country may not be that arid after all. This is an amazing side canyon that contains a rich display of riparian vegetation, crowned by a big arch at one end. But the illusion created by the river, springs and the paradise-like Wrather Canyon belongs only to the middle section of Lower Paria. The water pumps left behind as relics of a past era are reminders of the dry plateaus up above, and the canyon itself becomes an open desert beyond Bush Head. There are no springs the last few miles before Lee's Ferry. When the filters start clogging up with silt and mud, you begin to feel the heat in the veins. Your mouth dries as soon as the last drops of water flow down the throat, and it hurts to swallow.
When I visited Lower Paria again in 1996, it was a different experience, not just because of the drought which prohibited the desert plants from blooming. What had impressed me so much in 1995 was how pristine the canyon looked. In 1996 I collected a beer can and cigarette butts in the very same campground I had used. Toilet papers were almost growing on the trees. Ironically, it appeared that a Sierra Club outing was responsible for the recklessness. The BLM personnel I talked to in Kanab and the White House Trailhead all complained about the detrimental effects of the increased human activity. A fee system will be in effect starting July 1996, and there are plans of imposing quotas on the number of hikers. But just like everywhere else, bureaucracy is slow and the desert may not be able to survive the delay.
Plant life also has its share of abuse by the desert sun and heat. Early morning blooms soon die under the merciless sun, but another flower shows up the next morning, beside the dead one. Pinon juniper and desert scrub are here too, but it is the cottonwood tree that one should really watch for. Cottonwood provides the indispensable shade for campgrounds but its bark is also the perfect home for ceturoides sculpturatus, one of the nastier scorpion species.
The wildlife in Paria is trying to make a comeback in the desert big-horned sheep. The once extinct resident of Paria was reintroduced in 1984 around Bush Head. The herd seems to be healthy in numbers but it is still easier to see a big-horn on a petroglyph.
My most unusual wildlife encounter was the one with a great-horned owl under the big boulders of the dryfall, two miles up Buckskin Gulch. This natural barricade can be negotiated with the help of a rope only. "We received reports of and rescued a wounded big-horned sheep once, but never an owl. It was probably an infant let go by the mother, or perhaps an older owl that got sick and seeked refuge in the shade of the boulders," guessed the BLM ranger in White House Trailhead. I thought the attractive mice population could also account for the presence of hungry owls.
The four day long excursion that starts in the BLM-administered wilderness area in Utah concludes in Lee's Ferry, Arizona, within the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, where Paria merges the Colorado River. The Mormon zealot John Doyle Lee was sent here by his Church to set up a ferry service for the fellow Mormons who were to colonize northern Arizona. Lee's outrageous cattle drive in 1871 also marked the first journey through the Lower Paria Canyon by a white man. The ferry was operational until 1928, well after John Lee was executed in 1877 for his participation in the massacre of 150 immigrants twenty years before, an embarrassment to the Mormon Church known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
Rain turned into storm the last night and for the first time I had a good sleep. The next day, the last mile out of the canyon greeted us with hail. But others before us who tried to fulfill their dreams were far less fortunate. The abandoned uranium and gold mines, the remains of a half-sunken steamboat, the cabin of Emma, Lee's 19th wife, are all reminders of an era in the frontier when people were desperately struggling to scratch out a living. Perhaps an even more poignant testament to the continuous resettlements are the ghost towns of the entire Paria River Valley. The once prosperous Old Pahreah with its orchards, vineyards, vegetable farms and ranches was eventually abandoned after seasons of flashfloods and harsh winters. Today the only remains are the nearby movie set where, among others, "The Outlaw Josey Wales" and "Calamity Jane" were shot.
I can't help wonder what desperation, dedication or hope brought people to this rugged and unwelcoming terrain. Was it just the Mormon Church's colonization and expansion efforts? Those who gave up early on the gold rush to California? Perhaps it was the call of individualism? Whatever the reasons, people still inhabit this country and new boomstowns like Page, founded in the 50's as a shantytown for the workers of the Glen Canyon Dam project, develop rapidly. Albeit, it is not ranching or mining but tourism that feeds the population now.
Modern day industrial tourism, as Edward Abbey calls it, with its urban customers is conquering every bit of soil in southern Utah. Giant projects such as Glen Canyon Dam have caused irreversable environmental destruction while preparing the desert for human colonization. The native Americans who had once been part of the spiritual charisma of the canyonlands are now taking their place in this machinery. "A lot of them just do nothing and collect the welfare money. Their kids, ashamed of the traditional Navajo heritage, language, religion and lifestyle, become Americanized." says Errol LaFrenais, a retired archaeology professor who now resides in Kanab, Utah. These people who have lived freely, far away from materialism, and who have seen the God in nature, are now forced to sell souvenirs and are sacrificed together with the environment, all in the name of tourism.
Nevertheless, there is still divine beauty in this land. Every mathematical and physical principle that keeps the earth together is on display here. The 180-degree bend of the Colorado, the multiple light beams penetrating through the crack above Antelope Canyon, the delicately balanced rocks of Glen Canyon, the striking contrast of colors between land and water in Lake Powell...
I am looking forward to experiencing new suprises of the desert and the sandstone.