Sun going down behind the western rim. I row and float another mile, another, looking through the chilling twilight for a place to camp. The river is walled by mudbanks and jungles of tamarisk on either side, permitting no place to land. I am cold, tired, hungry, anxious to get out of my little rowboat before darkness sets in.

A ledge of rock slopes up from the water on the right. I bear for that, tether my skiff to a willow tree and make camp for the night. The sky is clear, the stars bright and steady. I do not bother to pitch the tent. I build a fire of twigs and grill two pork chops over the flames. A beautiful night, beginning early. I drink a cup of cocoa and slip into my old greasy sleeping bag, using a lifejacket for a pillow. I fall asleep to the sound of water gurgling past the ledge, the whisper of a breeze through the dry dead leaves of the willow.

Sunday

The November nights are long. I wake in the dark, check my antique pocketwatch by flashlight: five o’clock. I rise and build another little fire on the coals of the one before, make myself a mug of tea. Tea, an apple, a slice of bread with jam, is all the breakfast I require. I load my gear into the boat, untie the bowline, climb aboard and shove off into the current. Starlight glitters on the silent river, flowing smooth and heavy as oil toward the west. I stroke the water with my oars, guiding the boat onto the bubble line of foam that indicates the center of the current, then ship oars and let the boat turn idly on the stream, floating without effort through the morning stillness.

The east glows with color. The highest canyon walls, two thousand feet above the river, take on the radiance of dawn. The river flows in absolute silence between mudbanks crowded with more willow, tamarisk and cottonwood. A mute but bitter struggle goes on there—the invading, exotic tamarisk striving to drive out the native willow.

Deer tracks on the mud and sandbars. Signs of raccoon, beaver, fox and coyote. And again the birds—heron, sandpiper, killdeer, chukar.

Late in the morning the sun clears the vertical walls, shining down on me and skiff and water and the narrow strip of plant life on either bank. At noon I pull to shore and walk for a mile up sandstone ledges into a cul-de-sac, the closed end of a box canyon. I eat my lunch of raisins and cheese beside a pool of liquid quicksand under a two-hundred-foot overhanging pour-off—a dry waterfall.

Back to the river, drawn by the powerful tug of the stream. I see a bunch of deer, five does, passing like shadows through the trees and brush on the left bank. Two of them emerge from the jungle and step out on a sandbar for a drink from the river. Oars at rest, I glide past within twenty feet of their alert eyes and ears. They see me as only another piece of floating driftwood. If I had my bow now, and one broadhead arrow, I’d be feasting on poached liver and short ribs for supper. Maybe.