The Clouds Are Playing Again In The Gorges

Curley Maple: Shawnee Town

The day is employed
in making portages,
and we advance
but two miles
on our journey.
Still it rains.
While the men
are at work
making portages,
I climb up the granite
to its summit,
and go away back over
the rust-colored sandstones
and greenish-yellow shales,
to the foot
of the marble wall.
I climb so high
that the men and boats
are lost in the black depths below,
and the dashing river
is a rippling brook;
and still there is more canyon above than below.
All about me are interesting geological records.
The book is open, and I can read as I run.
All about me are grand views, for the clouds are playing again in the gorges. But somehow I think of the nine days rations, and the bad river, and the lesson of the rocks, and the glory of the scene is but half seen.
I push on to an angle, where I hope to get a view of the country beyond, to see, if possible, what the prospect may be of our soon running through this plateau, or at least meeting with some geological change that will let us out of the granite. But arriving at the point, I can see only a labyrinth of deep gorges.
--John Wesley Powell
journal entry for August 18, 1869