Beth & Gary Schwartzman
commercial passengers, private boaters, sailors

   For us the touchstone for the Grand Canyon is wilderness. Absolute wilderness is unattainable as long as our species (and the dam) persists, but if it were up to us we would try to bring the Grand Canyon closer to wilderness than it is today.

   There are three areas where this could happen: First, reducing mechanical noises, basically outboard and aircraft noise. Second, raising the river temperature, both for the native fish and for the appearance of verisimilitude. And third, dealing with the unbalanced nature of the suspended load in the river: too few tons of sediment and too many tons of people .

   When the river is running green above the Little Colorado River it almost certainly carries more tons of people than sediment each day, a situation that must be changed if the upper reaches of the river corridor are not to be scoured clean of beaches. A way must be found to transport the sediment now choking the San Juan, Green and Colorado to the river below the dam. It is not likely to be easy, but it is not beyond us. At the same time we must decrease the number of people on the river each year, to something like 100,000 userdays. Despite a decrease in some of the human impacts (such as litter) annoying to humans, the human load is still detrimental both to the river-running experience (camp availability, trails, crowds at Havasu) and to the canyon.

   These changes toward wilderness would affect our relation to the canyon and the river: fewer guide jobs, fewer commercial trips, fewer private slots, muddier water, but also more and larger beaches, more quiet, and an environment less determined by the constant presence of humans. Although we would see the canyon less often if those changes were implemented, it would be a canyon more like the one in our dreams.