Grand Canyon National Park - The Living River

From the river's perspective, as it makes its brief passage across the broken rock between deep gorges, little of this life-and-death panorama can be seen. The flower stalks of century plants rise like distant flagpoles across the low valley, while more like maypoles. And before very long, the entire vista is gone, shut out by the rising walls of the Inner Gorge.

Dropping a sudden 30 feet through some horrendous white water -- Hance Rapids, rated 11 on a scale of severity that usually runs from 1 to 10 -- the river rushes headlong toward the dead black stone of Granite Gorge, where even greater rapids await. Though the Vishnu Schist of the gorge contains no remnant of ancient life, the river and its banks teem with the life of today. Ringtails hunt among patches of thorny mesquite, clumps of seep willows, and the ever-present pink-flowered tamarisk. River otters play and beavers build dugout dens along the bank (only in the calmest side streams are the busy, flat-tailed rodents likely to construct dams). Great blue herons stand among stretches of horsetail, patiently alert for the flash of fish or the twitching of frogs. Mallards, mergansers, and goldeneye ducks swim in stretches of calm water. Spotted sandpipers strut stiff-legged on the shore, and water ouzels bob and bow. Ospreys and red-winged blackbirds are among the other birds that stay near the water, but almost any bird in the park, from black-chinned hummingbirds to golden eagles, might be seen here. Chattering flocks of bushtits sometimes sweep in to pick for insects on shores and sandbars, and then are gone again in a nervous flurry.

But it is in the side canyons that the Grand Canyon's life is richest and most diverse. Each is different; all seem miraculous when the black depth of the gorge opens to them, as though life itself had suddenly been reinvented, fresh and new. Their freshness is made more poignant by the knowledge that, just beyond most of them, rapids rage around and over rocks that were washed from these canyons.

The greatest of the side canyons, Havasu, is the home of the Havasupai, the last remaining Indian inhabitants of the Grand Canyon. Their village is a bit more than 10 miles south of the river on Havasu Creek, past a series of three waterfalls that tumble down the Redwall into pools of the most brilliant turquoise imaginable. Havasupai means "people of the blue-green water," and Havasu Creek is indeed blue-green like no other creek. It is the color of the sky, reflected and intensified by the hard white bed of the stream and by billions of white mineral particles suspended in the water. The minerals, contributed by the limestone through which the stream's water trickles before bursting from the Grand Canyon's south wall, build up on the bed in the same way that stalactites and stalagmites are built in such caves as Carlsbad Cavern.

Each of the three falls in lower Havasu Canyon is a glory. Together, they constitute a near-mystical experience. Their spray has created draperies of red stone, called travertine, on the adjacent Redwall cliffs. Around the blue pools into which they splash, amid maidenhair ferns, stream orchids, and a wealth of green, grow monkey flowers of red and yellow, stalks of blue monkshood and lupine, red columbines, and a rainbow of other blossoms. Bees bustle and butterflies glide and coast. Birds flash through the foliage like delicate fireworks: blue grosbeaks, goldfinches, orange orioles, red summer tanagers. The musical play of the falling water drowns out the memory of the Colorado's roar.

The fleeting life of Havasu Canyon is a bright counterpoint to the seemingly eternal blackness of the gorge into which its blue, blue waters run. The contrast is as much a part of the Grand Canyon experience as is the breathtaking view from the rim. The wonder of the Grand Canyon is that it is not eternal -- not the forests of the North Rim nor the desert world of the canyon floor; certainly not the fragile pocket of beauty that lies nestled at a foot of Havasu Falls; nor even the black Vishnu Schist that the river carries, ever so slowly, away from the bottom of Granite Gorge. The Grand Canyon is a process. It is constantly growing wider as water eats at its rims, and its wondrous architecture is being relentlessly whittled away. If the process continues as it has, it will be only a few million years until the canyon has expanded to the point of nonexistence, leaving once more a level plain.