More wonders wait beyond. The route terminates in a kind of amphitheater deep in the cliffs, where warblers sing in the redbud trees and a whispering, shimmering, vaporous veil of crystalline water slips down and down, over moss and algae, past maidenhair fern and helleborine orchid, from the notch in the canyon far above our heads. A breeze caresses the leaves of the willows, hackberrys, box elders. The spirit of John Wesley Powell will understand, high in his haunt on the rim of Great Thumb Mesa. If time is the mind of space, the Colorado is the soul of the desert.
Brave boatmen come, they go, they die, the voyage flows on forever.
We are all canyoneers. We are all passengers on this little living mossy ship, this delicate dory sailing round the sun that humans call the earth. Joy, shipmates, joy.