Grand Canyon Journals - Part 6: Phantom Ranch

 April 12, 2001

I woke up shortly before dawn, packed my gear, and wandered down to the deserted beach to watch the sunrise and wait for everyone else to wake up. I hoped that it would be a long time before the latter happened but all too soon, the camp was humming with life and after the morning rituals, we shoved off down the river. There was general excitement in the air because we were to encounter the second of the three signs of civilization since the journey began, Phantom Ranch. After a week of being away from civilization, I was looking forward to experiencing some of the missed creature comforts once again.

Upon arriving, we disembarked the boats and walked down well worn paths smelling of donkey piss to a little cantina where we all purchased and mailed postcards back to friends and family. As I sat down to write some little bit of humor on that back of each postcard, I started to notice the atmosphere around me. The air conditioning felt dry and canned, almost sterile. The music seemed garishly loud, obnoxious and seemed to bore a hole through my head. Everywhere, everyone was laughing and screaming like circus clowns in a horror movie with a bad plot. Suddenly I felt sick and claustrophobic so with my head reeling, I shoved the postcards into the mailbox, staggered back to the boats along the river. There in the shade of a tamarisk bush, I spent the rest of the morning hiding from civilization trying to regain my senses.

The seven days on the river now felt like seven years and suddenly I didn't want to go back to the world I came from. Back meant everything evil when compared to my new life on the river where all was good. It felt like my old world had been destroyed while visiting a new one on vacation. I knew that eventually, good or bad, I would have to go back to the old world and the thought of that roiled my stomach. All four dory boats in our group were named after some part of the canyon that has been destroyed. I had assumed this to mean placed destroyed by the huge dammed up lagoons on either end but today, I understood why Bronco's boat was named the Phantom.

We picked up the new passengers after lunch. For me the remaining guests who had been on the trip the last seven days, these newcomers felt like intruding strangers in this world to which we had grown close. Despite our best intentions, I think they felt it but yet understood. Our merry crew seemed slightly morose as we set off down the river once again.

We camped that evening on a tiny sand beach at the mouth of a non-descript side canyon. Still stinking of civilization and wanting to cleanse myself from it, I headed up the canyon alone. It was extremely steep going up and every rock was loose and threatening to slide out from under me but I kept climbing until cliffs some 1500 feet rimmed me in. I had stumbled a few times on loose rocks causing my legs to bleed in several places but they were superficial wounds and it felt like I was going that extra step in purifying my body. Below the cliffs, I sat to regain my breath, sanity and to watch the evening come to this part of the canyon. A few California Condors, introduced only two years prior, soared by in the sky reinforcing that small and insignificant feeling one gets when sitting within the bowels of the Grand Canyon. I sat there until the sun forced my hand and I started back just in time to make it through the steep stuff before the sun dropped over the rim out of sight. I came across a few of the crew members towards the mouth of the canyon, also escaping the 'guests,' so I gave them a wide berth as I walked back to camp. Once there, I did my normal routines, greeted the newcomers and sat on the beach contemplating the day and Phantom Ranch.

Soon, Bronco and I were the only two people remaining at the campfire. We mixed stories, him telling about his authentic recreation of Powell's trip down the Colorado and myself telling stories of my time spent in the Wind River Mountains. But the chill of night started replacing the warmth of the fire as it was reduced to coals that slowly started winking out, so we called it a night. I was feeling back to normal as I made my way back to my sleeping back nestled among some rocks and tamarisk bushes down near the river. The moon was nearly full and the stars seemed so bright reflecting off the black schist walls of the narrow canyon where we were camped. Lying in my sleeping bag staring up in the sky, the canyon wall was a mixture of moonlight and shadows and circled around in the periphery of my vision seemingly sealing me to the beach where I was confined. The whole scene had an eerie feeling to it and I tried to imagine what Powell must have been feeling as he camped nearby so many years ago and not knowing what laid downstream. I had a sense that he had been feeling much the same things as me.