The sun would slide behind a wall and cast a shadow so black it would appear, for a moment, we were floating toward nothingness. And when it finally did, life appeared so vast that we had to squint at its brilliance. In the frosty mornings, we would climb back into our boats and wait for the sun to crack the canyon rim. The golden eagles and herds of elk, immortalized in rock paintings by prehistoric people.Īt camp, we cracked beers and devised games of bocce, substituting plastic balls with smooth rocks imprinted with seashells. The red walls, a quarter mile high, a reflection of ancient seas. There, all the ages were on display like an open casket, surreal and absolute at once. "When you're older, the years pass with little effort."īut time had seemed boundless in the canyon. "It goes so fast," my mother said when she picked me up at the airport. And before I could shake the desert sand from my overnight bag, I was on an airplane to Philadelphia to be with my family. "I could do this forever," I had thought.Īlas, the river's nature is to flow. Over five days and 50 miles, four friends and I had lived out of our boats along the Green River, camping each night amid junipers and large, unidentifiable animal tracks. The news finally came the day after I returned home from a river trip through the Canyon of Lodore in Northwestern Colorado. She was 90 years old and we had been anticipating her death. I am writing this note from a hotel room in Philadelphia, the night before my grandmother's funeral.
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