The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon (69 page)

“Thou shalt not” is soon forgotten,

but “Once upon a time” lasts forever.

The Legend of the Emerald Mile

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.

—E
DWARD
A
BBEY

I
F
the speed run was an act of consummate recklessness, it also stands as one of the purest and most perfect journeys the Grand Canyon has ever seen, a voyage that embodied the essence of the river by moving through its corridor under conditions that were not only beset by immense physical challenges but, more important, were freighted with the extraordinary power of metaphor. Although at the time many people saw the trip—and continue to perceive it today—as irresponsible and self-indulgent, the story of what Grua and his companions pulled off eventually came to assume dimensions that neither they nor anyone else could have anticipated.

Over the next thirty years, the speed run would undergo an evolution in the minds of the boatmen of the canyon. A tradition that had originally arisen out of a survival necessity—a “race for a dinner” in the final days of Powell’s journey—had already been transmogrified into a compelling quest by men looking to test themselves against the canyon. Yet, with time, the run came to be seen as something more: a statement of both commemoration and defiance—a celebration of the Colorado’s ancestral majesty, as well as a symbolic act of protest
against the manner in which the river had been so ruthlessly harnessed and sold. And then, finally, another idea arose, perhaps the most provocative of all, because its import extended so far beyond the boat or the men who piloted her, and, instead, spoke directly to the canyon itself.

The English novelist J. B. Priestley once said that if he were an American, he would make the final test of whatever men chose to do in art, business, or politics a comparison with the Grand Canyon. He believed that whatever was false and ephemeral would be exposed for what it was when set against that mass of geology and light. Priestley was British, but he had placed his finger on an abiding American truth: the notion that the canyon stands as one of our most important touchstones—a kind of roofless tabernacle whose significance is both natural
and
national. It is our cathedral in the desert, and the word
our
is key because although the canyon belongs to the entire world, we, as Americans, belong particularly to it.

As blasphemous as it may sound to those who love the river and the canyon most deeply, the speed run demonstrated that this space of worship and reflection includes not only the canyon but also the dam and the reservoir behind it. Like it or not, the Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell exemplify some of this nation’s greatest achievements. They are bold affirmations of the science, the engineering, and the bureaucratic discipline that built the American century, and which, among many other things, enabled the country to harness the power of the atom and to peer into the most distant reaches of the universe.

The tempestuous stretch of river below that dam, however, represents something no less central to the national ethos: the fact that another aspect of our character as a people derives from an extended encounter with wilderness. That quality achieved its first expression in men such as Don García López de Cárdenas and John Wesley Powell. But it survives and flourishes to this day within the community of boatmen who have made the canyon their home. The subculture that they have created is cantankerous and incorrigibly headstrong—its members are irritatingly independent, impossible as cats to herd. But they have preserved an aspect of the American persona that is uniquely vital to the health of this republic. Among many other things, those dirtbag river runners uphold the virtue of disobedience: the principle that in a free society, defiance for its own sake sometimes carries value and meaning, if only because power in all of its forms—commercial, governmental, and moral—should not always and without question be handed what it demands.

What is illustrative and bewitching about the Grand Canyon, therefore, is not merely the world of the canyon itself but the juxtaposition of that world with its opposite: the dam and the drowned Arcadia that lies beneath its reservoir. Each feature without the other is important in its own way. But the collision
of these elements is even more revealing. While those two worlds have always been perceived as separate and mutually opposed by their respective citizenry—the sober army of engineers above, and the fractious confederacy of river folk below—perhaps the most provocative aspect of the speed run was how it braided these narratives together in a way that had never before been done.

It may seem absurd to suggest that the canyon is somehow incomplete without the dam, but the speed run underscores the inescapable truth that every journey not only begins at the dam but is also enriched and challenged by it. And together the canyon and the dam offer a far more meaningful reflection of the society that claims them both: its triumphs and its failures; what it has been willing to sacrifice and what it has chosen to preserve; the things it celebrates and those it mourns; the price it has willingly paid for progress and modernity, as well as the lessons that have been levied by those transactions. Perhaps nothing else speaks so succinctly and with such eloquence to who we are as a people—where we have come from, what we have gained and lost on our journey, and what we must eventually embrace to make ourselves whole.

In this sense, the speed run did more than simply demonstrate the feats that a small, rigid-hulled boat was capable of pulling off. Yet, it is also important to acknowledge that her record has never been bested. Not by other dorymen. Nor by kayakers. Nor even by high-tech jet boats with thirty-eight-horsepower, in-board engines. This is partly because the water monster that batted the
Emerald Mile
through the canyon has gone into hibernation. The runoff of 1984 was huge, but since then the floods seem to have disappeared, and the Southwest is now in the grip of an extended drought that may eventually turn the Colorado into a trickle. Those facts have not stopped others from making a run at the speed record—but so far, their best efforts have fallen short of the mark.

In the autumn of 2012, a talented young river guide named Harlan Taney, an independent-minded boatman not unlike Grua, wrangled a permit from the Park Service and gave it a go. He left Lee’s Ferry at midnight, timing his launch to the first in a series of “high-flow” tests that was being conducted at the dam. He rode in a touring kayak, a craft that is difficult to maneuver, but which can achieve speeds that far exceed those of an oar boat. And after paddling all night through the upper stretch of the canyon, he tipped over in Grapevine, a nasty rapid at Mile 82, where he was slammed into the granite wall and injured his elbow.

The accident forced Taney to abandon his attempt and hike out of the canyon, but he demonstrated something noteworthy. Prior to reaching Grapevine, he was averaging almost eleven miles an hour, a pace that, had he been able to sustain it, would have shattered the
Emerald Mile
’s record by ten hours. This suggests that in time someone will succeed. When that person does, he or she
will, oddly enough, have Kenton Grua to thank, in part, for the idea—because he dreamed of doing the same thing himself.

F
our
years after the speed run, Grua retired the
Emerald Mile
and embarked on a series of experiments in boat design, building two additional dories, each more innovative and radical than the previous. All the while, he continued to think about a craft that would enable him to best his own record. The vessel he envisioned would be long and thin and able to track effortlessly, achieving speeds that no dory could ever hope to match. In many ways, it would resemble a touring kayak—although it would have oars instead of a double-bladed paddle, a kind of white-water rowing scull. And when it was finished, Grua intended to pull off something so astonishing that it would have made John Wesley Powell turn over in his grave: to race from Lee’s Ferry to the Grand Wash Cliffs in under twenty-four hours.

Grua’s friends greeted this plan, like so many of his other bold ideas from the past, with raised eyebrows, convinced that he was once again allowing wishful thinking to cloud reality. In addition to requiring the perfect water conditions, such a boat would demand that a single boatman perform the work of three. Nevertheless, he refused to give up on the idea, droning on endlessly about it even as he threw himself into yet
another
project—a venture that would, in the end, have far more lasting impact than anything else he had done.

In 1988, Grua surprised everybody all over again by pulling together a few friends and sitting down in front of a typewriter—one of the few hand tools with which he had almost no prior experience—and creating Grand Canyon River Guides, an organization that brought all of the canyon’s boatmen and outfitters together under a single umbrella for the first time. His aim, which was directly inspired by the example that Litton had set, was for this to be an advocacy group, working to shield the canyon and the river from the depredations of dam operators, helicopter-tour companies, and anyone else bent on harming this world-class treasure. The organization has proved remarkably effective in this respect, but one of its most gratifying services has been for the divided river community.

At Grua’s urging, the group inaugurated a series of annual boatmen’s reunion parties, each of which culminated in a training trip through the canyon for young river guides—men and women alike—who would be mentored by veterans from every company, regardless of the kind of boat they piloted. As this new generation ran the river together, the ferocious clashes of the past—motors versus oars, rubber versus wood—fell away and were forgotten, and everyone became friends.

Meanwhile, Grua continued rowing his dories on a full roster of river trips each summer. His aim was to do so until he died inside the canyon, which would surely have been fitting. But along with the twenty-four-hour run, he was denied this wish. In the fall of 2002, while riding his mountain bike on a section of single track on the outskirts of Flagstaff, he suffered an aortic dissection, a tear in the inner layer of the large blood vessel branching off his heart, and passed away in the middle of the trail. He was fifty-two years old.

His memorial service was held in a mountain meadow just outside of town. Virtually the entire river community attended, and that night they built an enormous bonfire, a conflagration worthy of the Viking funeral that had once been planned for the
Emerald Mile.
Many people stood up and spoke about what a remarkable person he was. Many others wanted to speak, but found themselves unable to do so because they were crying too hard.