We pay scant attention to all that rot and soon afterward Sharky digs out his recorder, his ukelele and his kazoo and announces a porta-potty porter’s party. Bottles appear. Darkness settles in, decorum decays. Salome dances in the sand.

One more nip on the Ron Rico and two more songs and then I slink away. I unroll my sleeping bag, but the air is so warm I hardly need to crawl into it. By dawn I will. Two shooting stars trace lingering parabolas of blue fire across the sky. From below rises the sound of rowdy, unseemly music. Crickets chirp. The steady, rhythmic rumble of the river pouring over the rocks is somehow soothing. I soon drop off to sleep.

A COOL MORNING, overcast sky.

More birds for Renáe’s list: brown-headed cowbird, western tanager, black-necked stilts, violet-green swallows, black-throated swifts. The swifts like to skim close to the waves in the rapids, attracted, it would seem, by the turbulent air. According to Rich Turner, one of our boatmen, they sometimes hit the waves and drown.

River rising but not high enough. Boatmen nervous about running the serious rapids with insufficient water. Those rocks, those granite fangs foaming with froth in the charging stream. Bad dreams.

We push onto a river the color of bronze, shimmering like hammered metal under the desert sun. Through Unkar—made it! Then 75 Mile Rapid (4–7). Still alive. We pull ashore above Hance Rapid (7–8) for study and consultation.

Hance is always a problem for the dorymen, especially in low water. Just too many goddamned rocks sticking up, or even worse, half-hidden near the surface. No clear route through. A zigzag course. Huge waves, treacherous boils, churning holes that can eat a boat alive. A kind of slalom for oarsmen, with the penalty for a mistake a possible smashed boat. The big advantage of rubber boats is that they can usually be bounced off the well-polished boulders in the rapids without suffering damage. Usually. But rigid crafts like dories or kayaks may split, puncture, crack like an eggshell. Therefore their safe passage through a big rapid—through any rapid—requires more maneuvering on the part of the boatman. More skill? Let’s play it safe and say…more care. A little more…love.

The boatmen stand on high points beside the rapid, study the obstacles, consult among themselves. We, the passengers, are herded downriver along the shore by Kenly and Jane, the cooks, and assembled below the rapid. The boatmen are going through this one without us. The boats will be lighter and will draw less water, making them more maneuverable. None of the passengers seem to object to this arrangement. Most of them are busy loading their cameras.

The boatmen run it without us, one by one, not easily but safely. We rejoin our boats. The river carries us swiftly into the Granite Gorge. Like a tunnel of love, there are no shores or beaches in here. The burnished and river-sculptured rocks rise sheer from the water’s edge, cutting off all view of the higher cliffs, all of the outer and upper world but a winding column of blue sky. We glide along as in a gigantic millstream. As usual, Powell described the scene as well as anyone ever will: