I drove up to Flagstaff and waited to meet B (my favorite ex) and her young half-sister, J, whom I haven't seen since 1988. I met them in a coffee shop called "Late For The Train", which, true to the tradition of modern coffee shops, serves umpteen varieties of heated, steamed, and sugared milk with pure caffeine stirred in. I had a regular coffee.
I had purchased a book across the street by a woman who rafted the canyon solo. Almost from the first page I was crying. I have such a strong emotional attachment to this place, to this ancient tear in the fabric of the earth. maybe it is that I feel more at peace and more at home floating the ice cold waters between these majestic walls than I have ever felt anywhere.
Anyway, I met B and J, who has grown from a rambunctious child into a beautiful and intelligent teenager, we had a brief and new ageish lunch (sprouts everywhere), and they headed to Phoenix to stay at my house, while I went on to Page to spend the night at B's with her twin, J, and our friend T, who will be my companion on the trip.
We went for a swim in Lake Powell. No matter how beautiful this lake is, and no matter that the whole ecosystem in the Canyon, and my ability to raft it depends on the dam, i am still a MonkeyWrencher at heart. It thrills me to envision the day when the soft sandstone walls around the dam finally give way, and all of Lake Powell rushes downstream, scouring the Canyon, and taking out Hoover Dam too, eventually flooding its way to the dry river delta at the Baja Gulf.