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Walking the Unknown River: And Other Travels in Escalante Country by Ann Weiler Walka
This beautifully written collection of poetry and prose recalls a wild and lovely place. John Wesley Powell’s survey crew called this last river to be charted on the maps of the contiguous 48 states the Unknown River.
The little stream, later named the Escalante, flowed into Glen Canyon of the Colorado across from Navajo Mountain and just above the mouth of the San Juan. Walking the Unknown River investigates this hidden heart of the Colorado Plateau
Walka’s prose takes the reader on a walk down the Escalante in the rain, on an early mapping expedition of the Colorado Plateau, a trek around Navajo Mountain, and into a hidden glen in the Navajo Sandstone.
As a poet, naturalist, and guide, Ann Walka trains her curiosity and imagination on a landscape’s weave of geologic processes, life stories, ecological relationships—all pattern and surprise which make up the world. This is a wonderful book to take along on any journey around the Colorado Plateau.
Climbing at Night at Scorpion Butte
Surely I dreamed myself into this world
where stone hills gleam like upturned
bowls. Climbing I press my palms
on dented pewter, wedge bare
feet into shadow.
There is a pool curved into a crevice
between the hills, a sliver
of white shell shimmering
on its sleek black skin
The moon sighs as delicately
as a petal falling on yellow grass,
a cloud passing.
A man I knew claimed he carried the moon
in his pocket. I see now
she is her own person.
Blowing away the dust I drink her light
which keeps wrinkling
on the water.

Tertiary History of the Grand Cañon District
by Clarence E. Dutton
Clarence E. Dutton’s classic account of the Grand Canyon is now available in a new edition. Originally commissioned as a study of the region’s geology and issued in 1882 by the fledgling U.S. Geological Survey, Dutton’s Tertiary History of the Grand Cañon District remains beloved as the most beautiful and evocative early description of the Grand Canyon. The new edition was reprinted by The University of Arizona Press, in November 2001 and makes Dutton’s work once again available to Canyon lovers.
This seminal work offers an unsurpassed literary and scientific view of the layered stone walls and sinuous side canyons of the Grand Canyon, through Dutton’s eloquent text and stunning illustrations by Thomas Moran and William Henry Holmes.
The book is available from The University of Arizona Press at 520-621-1441 or www.uapress.arizona.edu. The clothbound Tertiary History of the Grand Cañon District is 368 pages and costs $75, isbn 0-8165-2181-6.