It is May 8, 2009, and I’m looking out of our dining room window at the Colorado River. The sun is setting behind Mt. Bross, and the river glows, as if Hollywood’s higher technical powers had grabbed hold of it. I know, that when gazing upon this iconic river of rivers – one that ranks with the Nile, the Amazon and the Mississippi, not because of its size or length, but because of what it has wrought, namely The Grand Canyon – that I am viewing, from my dining room, a living, flowing entity that history was forged from, songs are composed of and books are written about. Imagine that we live on a piece of land that is now our property, a piece of land that John Wesley Powell, Kit Carson, John Fremont and numerous other historical luminaries have paddled by and camped near; not to mention the Native American tribes, particularly the Ute Indians, who’ve called this area home for 10,000 years. I acknowledge that I’m blessed to be here, but also realize that I’m not a spec of what makes this ground relevant to human history.
When I think about it, it is more than a little humbling; life is built on and around rivers. Most of our great cities are built on rivers, and those rivers are our lore, our past, our present and our future; we sometimes take them for granted but at the same time, we always revere and romanticize them. They are more famous and more vital to our survival than mountains, buildings, streets, cities and people. A river is why Paris and London will be a world destination, and the lack of a river is why Los Angeles will never be anything more than a population center. Here’s the A-list river roll call – Seine, Danube, Thames, Ganges, Indus, Volga, Niagara, Yangtze, Amazon, Nile, Mississippi, Colorado. I might have missed one, but not the one I live upon.
For a fact, The Riverside Hotel is the oldest existing, non-agricultural, business on the Colorado River. It may be the only business directly on the Colorado River that isn’t a farm or ranch – I’m still researching this. Again, that humbles me. We moved to The Riverside in June of 2008; by the time we’d moved in, the river had thawed and was flowing freely. 2009, being our first winter/spring living on The Colorado, was also my first time seeing the river frozen, then thawing, then flowing, then bursting and roiling. I will liken the witnessing of the transformation of the Colorado River from solid to liquid as experiencing the grandeur, spectacle, wonder and awe of seeing fireworks as a child for the first time. Out of my kitchen window, I watched daily as this 30-yard wide, snow covered and dormant piece of river turned into a boiling, rushing and violent living thing that popped, cracked and screamed its way into a new season. It was an “aha!” answer to one of the questions of “why did we give up what we had to move to a place like this?” – The answer, to witness a once-in-a-lifetime liquid fireworks show that lasted a couple of weeks. And it continues on a daily basis. 200 yards south of our river property, The Colorado bends at a 90-degree western dog-leg, and then S-curves another four or five times until it flows into Byers Canyon. Right now, at that first bend south of our property, the river thrashes and rails like a white-capped sea, unaccepting of the Fly fishermen who typically probe its languid pools during the summer months; at its present state, no caddis, no midge, no Wooly Bugger will find respite in this tumultuous stew, nor will a trout indulge.
This was my first, and it may be my last spring gaze upon the seasonal transmogrification of The Colorado. If that is the case, I can say that I witnessed a sight so spectacular and significant that it will be remembered and cherished like the first view of my newborn children, the first glimpse of my beautiful wife and the lingering memory of the love of my parents for their child. It will forever be as essential to my being as water.
If you have the chance, if it’s even for a short while, live on a river.
When I think about it, it is more than a little humbling; life is built on and around rivers. Most of our great cities are built on rivers, and those rivers are our lore, our past, our present and our future; we sometimes take them for granted but at the same time, we always revere and romanticize them. They are more famous and more vital to our survival than mountains, buildings, streets, cities and people. A river is why Paris and London will be a world destination, and the lack of a river is why Los Angeles will never be anything more than a population center. Here’s the A-list river roll call – Seine, Danube, Thames, Ganges, Indus, Volga, Niagara, Yangtze, Amazon, Nile, Mississippi, Colorado. I might have missed one, but not the one I live upon.
For a fact, The Riverside Hotel is the oldest existing, non-agricultural, business on the Colorado River. It may be the only business directly on the Colorado River that isn’t a farm or ranch – I’m still researching this. Again, that humbles me. We moved to The Riverside in June of 2008; by the time we’d moved in, the river had thawed and was flowing freely. 2009, being our first winter/spring living on The Colorado, was also my first time seeing the river frozen, then thawing, then flowing, then bursting and roiling. I will liken the witnessing of the transformation of the Colorado River from solid to liquid as experiencing the grandeur, spectacle, wonder and awe of seeing fireworks as a child for the first time. Out of my kitchen window, I watched daily as this 30-yard wide, snow covered and dormant piece of river turned into a boiling, rushing and violent living thing that popped, cracked and screamed its way into a new season. It was an “aha!” answer to one of the questions of “why did we give up what we had to move to a place like this?” – The answer, to witness a once-in-a-lifetime liquid fireworks show that lasted a couple of weeks. And it continues on a daily basis. 200 yards south of our river property, The Colorado bends at a 90-degree western dog-leg, and then S-curves another four or five times until it flows into Byers Canyon. Right now, at that first bend south of our property, the river thrashes and rails like a white-capped sea, unaccepting of the Fly fishermen who typically probe its languid pools during the summer months; at its present state, no caddis, no midge, no Wooly Bugger will find respite in this tumultuous stew, nor will a trout indulge.
This was my first, and it may be my last spring gaze upon the seasonal transmogrification of The Colorado. If that is the case, I can say that I witnessed a sight so spectacular and significant that it will be remembered and cherished like the first view of my newborn children, the first glimpse of my beautiful wife and the lingering memory of the love of my parents for their child. It will forever be as essential to my being as water.
If you have the chance, if it’s even for a short while, live on a river.
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