Dear Eddy

In Reference to “Grand Canyon Wilderness With Motors—Not a Contradiction, a Necessity,” by T. Destry Jarvis in bqr vol 16:1.
I’m not going to mess around much with the “yes for wilderness motorboats” argument of T. Destry Jarvis in the Spring 2003 issue. Just one thing.
“It is ridiculous,” he writes, “to suggest that [outdoor novices] cannot achieve a true wilderness experience by riding on a motorized raft through the park.”
Risking ridicule, I suggest exactly that there are people who consider Central Park a wilderness, but that doesn’t make it so. It is a bit sinister to argue that we can change the central definition of wilderness just because city folk won’t know the difference.
You know the difference. A “true wilderness experience” doesn’t have a motor on its tail.

Jim Malusa
Tucson

In Reference to “Grand Canyon Wilderness With Motors—Not a Contradiction, a Necessity,” by T. Destry Jarvis in bqr vol 16:1.
In his anti-wilderness article (bqr Spring 2003), T. Destry Jarvis mentions his impressive history of involvement with wilderness issues and his current position as consultant to Grand Canyon River Outfitters Association (gcroa). His job is to influence the Colorado River Management Plan (crmp) to benefit his employers, especially in D.C. where he resides. This is relevant since his various interpretations of the Wilderness Act appear to hinge on where his paycheck comes from. While employed as Federal Policy Director at National Parks Conservation Association, Jarvis wrote a letter defending the 1980 crmp’s proposed phase-out of motors to nps Director Russell E. Dickenson. Yes, you read that right. He wanted the motors out.
“Russ, the decisions to ban motors in the Grand Canyon…were not made lightly, but only after years of discussion, study and consideration,” he reminds the Director. He goes on to say, “The Service can not afford to allow additional years of contentious debate on these issues, if progress is to be made in any other of the many problem areas deserving your attention. NPCA urges you to stand firm on these important principles.”
So what changed? There have been no amendments to the Wilderness Act, no changes in the underlying spirit, values and principles of Wilderness. The intent of Zahniser and wilderness advocates and contemporaries Olaus Murie, Aldo Leopold, Supreme Court Justice William Douglass and Bob Marshall is clear. Time and again they wrote that motorized transportation is antithetical to Wilderness. If Jarvis is so sure powerboats are fine in Wilderness, why is it necessary to cherry-stem the Colorado River out of a proposed Wilderness Bill? Why not just allow Congress to designate the entire Grand Canyon, with the River, Wilderness? Is it possible he isn’t convinced and therefore must hedge his (or rather, gcroa’s) bets?
Now more than ever, we need the peace and solace of motor free Wilderness in Grand Canyon and elsewhere. The meaning of Wilderness was clear in 1964, it was clear in 1980 at the time of Mr. Jarvis’ impassioned plea to get rid of motors, and it remains clear now. If there is any place on Earth that deserves to be free of motors, it has to be Grand Canyon.

Jo Johnson
Co-director River Runners for Wilderness

In reference to “Put Me In Coach—I’m Ready to Play the Game” by Michael Ghiglieri, bqr 16:1
This is a letter for the up-tight who are out tiger-hunting. While I am the rawest of rookies in Grand Canyon, I started guiding in 1972. I am aware of the possible pitfalls outlined by Michael Ghiglieri. Over and over I have heard “Is there life after nols? Is there life after Antarctica? What do you do when you’re back in the real world?” Honey, it’s all real.
Michael,
I’m not sure I understand the tone of voice or even the purpose of your article “Put Me In, Coach”. I fear you may be succumbing to some version of a mid-life crisis. Thriving on the ego-feeding results of living on the river guide’s pedestal is very exhilarating and very dangerous. “Then what?” you ask. Find more things that feed your soul and your heart rather than your ego. Earn your good fortune and luck. Turn more kids on to the desert. Work your heart out on these environmental issues. Paddle a pond with fast-water virgins. Volunteer for the Whale Foundation. The recognition you crave may be the real tiger.

I’ll turn 50 on the river this summer. I can’t do all the things I used to do, but at least I no longer have to worry about what I’m going to do when I grow up. And I never am going to have much money, but if I pay attention, with a wide-angle point of view, some other passions will arise for a slower, creakier, perhaps broken body. To misquote Ivo, I hope to celebrate the progress I make working out this endlessly fascinating story of life.
You don’t even have to lighten up. Maintain your intensity and your convictions, but treasure your family, your loves, your river. “And when you come to a fork in the road, take it!”

Sarah Krall

In Reference to “Letters From Grand Canyon—Piracy and Capture Carve the Grand Canyon:part B”, by Ivo Lucchitta, bqr 16:1
As I read Ivo’s article “Piracy and Capture Carve Grand Canyon: Part B” [bqr 16:1], my mind flashed back to what Clarence Dutton wrote in “Tertiary History of the Grand Canyon District,” 1882, Chapter X—Structure and Drainage System of the Kaibab. “Along the greater part of the length of the Kaibab, and keeping very near to the median or axial line of the summit of the plateau, there is a long and comparatively narrow valley. Demott Park is a portion of the same depression. When the geologists first visited the plateau they were considerably perplexed by this long valley or chain of valleys. They observed that from the summits which overlook them on either side nearly all the drainage channels flowed away from it, and very few flowed into it. Powell and Gilbert were at first inclined to suspect that a long, narrow wedge on the summit of the plateau had dropped between two faults, but no faults could be discerned, and they abandoned the supposition. During the last season a thorough survey of the drainage system was made, and I think the mystery may now be cleared up. In the first place, the existence of the supposed faults was positively disproved by the discovery of the crossbedded sandstone of the Aubrey group just where it ought to be in case no faults exist, or where it could not be if the faults did exist. In the second place, the chain of valleys is to locus of an ancient river which once flowed from the north and emptied into the Colorado. This river was far more ancient than any of the other drainage channels now scoring the surface of the Kaibab, which are all of comparatively recent origin. What antiquity should be assigned to it may not be altogether established, but by far the most probable supposition is that it is as old as the Colorado itself and its tributaries, the Kanab, Paria, and Little Colorado. That it belongs to the system of drainage which prevailed when the structural conformation of the country was very different from the present on is self-evident”.
A few years after I read this I was flying over the southern end of the Kaibab at 13,500 feet, looking north. Sure enough, the chain of parks are part of a long medial depression. Dutton thought the medial depression we see today, held an ancient stream that ran from the north and emptied into the Colorado. But perhaps the depression is the trace of the ancestral Colorado running north and eventually northwest to the sea. Dutton also thought that the Colorado was impounded east of the Kaibab in an Eocene lake that may have overflowed to the north, down the depression toward the town of old Paria which he states is the shortest path to the sea. I talked to Ivo concerning this passage by Dutton, and he did not recall it, but thought it interesting. Ivo’s theory is more coherent and makes sense. It explains how a depression would have formed on the crest of the fold, producing “racetrack” valleys at either end where the fold plunges. The ancestral Colorado became stuck in such a valley at the south end of the fold and made the sweep around the end of the Kaibab and toward the northwest, that we see in the great bend of Grand Canyon.

Dick Clark