The Grand Canyon Reader

"I've been on his raft in the Grand Canyon, so I can attest to the fact that Lance Newman can row through both the currents of the Colorado River and the many literary tributaries that have given us great literature on this most unique of American places. The canyon is so many things to so many people: a holy land, an incision into the deep time of geology; a place of great and dangerous adventure; an imperiled landscape and a site in which to think about what our relationship to the natural world could and should be. Newman's superb anthology gives us splendid selections that carry the reader along on the current of the best and most varied nature writing." --Rebecca Solnit, author Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas

"To really understand the wonders of the Grand Canyon, we need to see it through the eyes of others. In this reader, Lance Newman opens that world to us. The Grand Canyon of Craig Childs is a long way from that of Colin Fletcher, not to mention John Muir or Joseph Ives, but Newman guides us confidently through all these perspectives and many more. He has selected well, and we are the richer for it. Read this book." --William C. Tweed, author of Uncertain Path: A Search for the Future of National Parks

"These are the Canyon's literary 'greatest hits' alongside lesser known but extremely interesting accounts. Demonstrating an impressively refreshing range of perspectives and experiences, this is a remarkable anthology of 500 years of human interaction with the Canyon." --Michael Branch, co-author of The Height of Our Mountains: Nature Writing from Virginia's Blue Ridge Mounts and Shenandoah Valley

This superb anthology brings together some of the most powerful and compelling writing about the Grand Canyon--stories, essays, and poems written across five centuries by people inhabiting, surviving, and attempting to understand what one explorer called the "Great Unknown." The Grand Canyon Reader includes traditional stories from native tribes, reports by explorers, journals by early tourists, and contemporary essays and stories by such beloved writers as John McPhee, Ann Zwinger, Edward Abbey, Terry Tempest Williams, Barry Lopez, Linda Hogan, and Craig Childs. Lively tales written by unschooled river runners, unabashedly popular fiction, and memoirs stand alongside finely crafted literary works to represent full range of human experience in this wild, daunting, and inspiring landscape.

Lance Newman, Professor of English at Westminster College, has worked as a Grand Canyon river guide for twenty years. He is the author of Our Common Dwelling: Henry Thoreau, Transcendentalism, and the Class Politics of Nature as well as two chapbooks of poems, 3by3by3 and Come Kanab: A Little Red Songbook.

Introduction: Stories of the Great Unknown

The Rim

Amil Quayle, Grand Canyon

Craig Childs, Fear of God

Ann Zwinger, Bright Angel Trail

Edward Abbey, Havasu

Colin Fletcher, The Man Who Walked through Time

Joseph Wood Krutch, Where Solitude Is Easy to Find

Theodore Roosevelt, A Cougar Hunt on the Rim of the Grand Canyon

John Muir, The Grand Cañon of the Colorado

Harriet Monroe, The Grand Cañon of the Colorado

The River

Sharlot Hall, The Song of the Colorado

Patricia McCairen, Canyon Solitude

Terry Tempest Williams, Stone Creek Woman

Barry Lopez, Gone Back into the Earth

John McPhee, A River

Bill Beer, Lava Falls

Bert Loper, Three Boys and an Old Man

George Flavell, The Log of the Panthon

John Wesley Powell, The Grand Cañon of the Colorado

The People

Michael Kabotie, Grand Canyon National Park

Linda Hogan, Plant Journey

Wallace Stegner, Packhorse Paradise

Joseph C. Ives, Mojave Valley to Big Canyon

Francisco Garcés, Mojave Crossing to Oraibe Pueblo

Pedro de Castañeda, The Hopi Mesas and the Colorado River

G.{ths}M. Mullett, The Story of Tiyo

Hualapai, Tudjupa Creates the People

Ramson Lomatewama, They Told Stories

Further Reading

Credits