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A World of Water: Lake Powell
In a place where the silence intimidates, where the water is a world unto itself, one may feel the presence of the earth's soul.
BY EZRA JAMESON
I arrived at Lake Powell Resort in Page, Arizona after a five-and-a-half hour drive from Provo, Utah. Nearing the resort, you turn left off the US-89 and drive down Lakeshore Drive. When the dark blue water appeared with the rising red sandstone canyon walls that stretch on and on as far as you can see I thought of the Chinese word for America,Meiguo, which means “beautiful country.” After living in and traveling throughout China for two-and-a-half years, I started to think the term Meiguo might be more appropriately applied to China and forgot about the natural beauties of my own country. Going down the Li River from Guilin to Yangshuo in southern China and seeing the richly green rising and rolling mountains and hills that reach up out of the misty earth like gigantic thumbs and fingers you think there’s nothing else in world to see and if there is it doesn’t matter if you see it anyway because it couldn’t be as good as this. But driving down Lakeshore Drive and looking out across the lake and its surrounding country I didn’t want to be anywhere else and I thought the Chinese knew what they were talking about.
I pulled up around 5:30, checked in, rested in my room for a while, and then walked down to the lake to take a few pictures. The resort overlooks Wahweap Bay where there are hundreds of boats docked at the marina. The water was glass and the air cool and clear and looking at the lake and sandstone cliffs I forgot to take my pictures. I stood for a while and enjoyed the scenery and the quiet and then, hungry, made my way back up to the resort where dinner was scheduled for 7:00. Remembering my camera I turned around, snapped a few photos, then continued on up to the Rainbow Room, the resort’s restaurant, where I joined the group I was going to be seeing Lake Powell with and our host, Steve Ward.
Dinner was delicious and the environment elegant and comfortable. I had the wild salmon, which was served with braised leeks, garlic mashed potatoes, and a roasted corn and black bean salsa. Salmon is my favorite fish and I’ve eaten plenty of it but the Rainbow Room’s was the tastiest I’ve had. You know you’ve got a good piece of fish when you bite into it and you don’t find yourself looking around for the waiter to ask for a sauce to flavor it with. Everything on the plate was prepared just right and needed no further attention. I walked back to my room feeling content and looking forward to coming back for another meal.
The next morning we walked down to the marina, boarded a tour boat, and started off toward Rainbow Bridge, the largest natural stone span on earth, 50 miles up the water and almost three hours away. The trip went by quickly, however. Besides the beautiful scenery, our captain, Melvin, kept cracking jokes and pointing out interesting details about the lake. At 186 miles long with almost 2000 miles of shoreline, Lake Powell—named after explorer John Wesley Powell, a one-armed American Civil War veteran who explored the Glen Canyon area in 1869—is longer, in toto, than the entire west coast of the U.S.A. In 1963, the Glen Canyon Dam was built to stop the mighty Colorado River and create the lake. It took 17 years for the canyon to reach “full pool.” Since 1980, Lake Powell has become a favorite destination for lovers of nature and outdoor water. It almost seems inappropriate to refer to it as a “lake,” however. It’s massive and sprawling and stretches on and on, splitting off in every direction, filling over 90 major canyons and hundreds of small offshoots and caves. It’s a world of water, really, and on it, with the sandstone walls rising up and creating the limits of the lake, you feel walled in, but not caged, as the water widens and narrows and often breaks into beaches and flat places. As you make your way through, its appearance continually changes, almost presenting itself to you, creating a photographer's and nature lover’s paradise. Rusty Rath, who would later take us through some of the narrower areas on a speed boat, has worked at Lake Powell for over 20 years, and he told me he’s never been bored because “the lake has a life of its own, a personality almost, and it’s always surprising you.”
After 50 miles of experiencing what Rusty so aptly described, we wound into Bridge Canyon, docked, unloaded, and began the mile hike to Rainbow Bridge. The air was cool and it started to drizzle. Hiking up in garbage bags and raincoats, the earth was soft under our feet and the red canyon walls rose up high on both sides and walking towards the arch with the lake at your back and a lovely creek to your right you felt all right.
Rainbow Bridge appears suddenly and with its 290-foot-high opening that spans 275 feet across it has a commanding presence. Theodore Roosevelt once traveled through the area and of his first experience seeing the arch, he wrote, “At last we turned a corner, and the tremendous arch…rose in front of us. It is surely one of the wonders of the world. It is…triumphal…and spans the torrent bed in a majesty never shared by an arch ever reared by the mightiest conquerors among the nations of mankind.” He noted that when they passed under the arch, the Navajo they were traveling with “rode around outside. [The Navajo's] creed bade him never pass under an arch, for the arch is the sign of the rainbow, the sign of the sun’s course over the earth, and to the Navajo it is sacred.” Standing at the arch one does indeed feel in the presence of something both majestic and sacred.
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