It is summer time, 1976. My brother Rick and I take a thirty day odyssey down a dying river. From Bluff, Utah to the Lake Powel graveyard, we wind our way through the canyons of the San Juan River in southern Utah.
     As we drift from canyon to canyon in an 18 foot rowing dory, we are chased by storms, dreams of perfect women and the ghosts of old river rats. I found wisdom in conversation with lizards, found Anasazi ruins and petroglyphs of hands, old shoes, a wallet with molding twenties, the sudden flashflood spitting from a side canyon, history marching by on a canyon wall. We found a kind of peace that can only come when there is nothing to do but wait for another sunset to paint the cliffs.
     This journey reestablished my sense of earth, in spite of my sorrow over the rape of women and men and the wilderness. Beyond the death of oceans and rivers and lakes, there is the death of cultures and of nature itself: nature as idea and myth in the collective mind of humanity.
     It is hard to imagine that a better dream will ever take its place.