Skip to content

To the River.

http://thisisthewilderness.com/vuln.php I took I-10 away from Phoenix for awhile, and then turned off it onto Salome Road, which headed straight for the small town of Salome, a railroad town where US-60 runs.  Most of the housing was temporary or seasonal; large numbers of retirees spend winters here, in RV parks or small cottages.  Almost everyone I could see, in cars and out of them, was old.  I followed the railroad tracks to the town of Hope, where I struck off to the northwest toward the river town of Parker.

buy Ivermectin pills The landscape began to change as I approached Parker.  Southern Arizona consists mostly of flat plains which abruptly rise in steep mountain ranges; the effect is like mountain islands in a desert ocean.  I suspect that this is the geological phenomenon called basin-and-range faulting so common in the Rocky Mountains: blocks of crust separate and float to different heights like a set of ice cubes in a drink.  The result is a sharp division between mountain areas and plains, as can be seen in places like Tucson or Jackson Hole.

Approaching the Colorado River, however, the landscape is more consistently broken and jagged; flat plains are found not surrounding mountains but nestled in between ranges.  Cactus and mesquite vanish; the Mojave desert begins.  The landscape is more dramatic but also darker and more menacing; the hostility of the desert to human life here is sensed not only as heat and waterlessness but even a hostility to passage: the mountains look jagged and impassable, even irrational.  Looking into them you cannot tell where the road might go or where the pass should be.  It is not even clear there would be a path large enough for a man to walk through them.  Given a brown-black cloud cover, the area could pass for Mordor.

This makes the arrival at the Colorado River, which runs through this wilderness, all the more astonishing.  I parked my car by the river, turned off the engine, and sat on a grassy bank watching the water swiftly flow by.

I think it is fair to say that I have an Easterner’s perspective, though of course to me it seems like the human perspective, but it was an astonishing relief to be by the river.  I think my body felt for the first time that the danger of the desert – where I had been for months – was passed.  In Southern Arizona there is only one source of safety – your proximity to a tap.  It is like living on a planet with no atmosphere: you can venture away temporarily in your little bubble, but you always think of returning to base, which is life.  This is of course always true; food ties almost all of us to civilization, because we cannot feed ourselves alone; but our need for food is a fairly long leash.  Our need for water will bring us back ten times as quickly.

The Colorado River.

The Colorado River.

But here at the river there was abundance, and, to my senses, safety.  The smell of the river was astonishing – an incredible pleasure.  The sight of it was a feast for the eyes as well, blue and green in the most fabulously rich saturations.  At its margins so many plants grew that there was a jungle of life, which was again utterly refreshing.  The flow was impressive, and a coolness came up from it.  I had expected the river to be brown and sludgy but this was not the case at all; perhaps all the upstream dams catch the silt.  The water was clear and had the mineral-blue color of mountain snow.

Again, I do not deny my Eastern sensibilities, but I was astonished that the cities of Arizona are not along the river.  The Colorado has been called the American Nile, with the odd difference that all of Egypt’s population lives along the Nile, whereas in America we have put the cities in the desert and then move the water to them.  The Colorado waters Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Tucson, and others, but the largest city on its course is Yuma.

Just on the other side of the river was California, which tempted me.  In the desert on the other side of the river was Joshua Tree National Park.  It allowed backcountry camping as far as I knew.  I had left with the intention of spending some time in the wilderness.  Literally as I drove along the river to the place where the bridge crossed into California I did not know if I would cross or stay on my side and follow.  If I stayed in Arizona I was basically resigning myself to what I considered possible in the circumstances: I would travel conventionally, stringing together a series of scenic highlights over the course of a long drive, with motels in the in-betweens.  As I came to the intersection I was still unsure; I stopped at the stop sign, signaled one way, stopped again, got honked at by the person behind me, and decided to go in the other direction.  I would stay in Arizona.

Along the river.

Along the river.

I drove north along the river and found myself a motel alongside it, in a narrow canyon which I found lovely beyond other desert landscapes I had seen.  Again, mine is the Eastern perspective, but a river utterly changes the human experience of a place, because a river situates a place in a narrative of source, course, and destination which makes sense to the human mind.  The parallels with religion are obvious, a correspondence which religions have not been unaware of.  I was going to stick with the river.

3 Comments