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Canyon Interludes Between White Water and Red Rock PAUL W. REA Paperback. 294 Pages. / 1-56085-054-X / Describing mind-altering adventures on the Colorado Plateau, Paul Rea hikes through Canyonlands, Grand Gulch, Havasu, and Zion canyons, and rafts the Colorado, Dolores, Green, and San Juan rivers. He explores and celebrates the enchanted, colorful desert in sensuous, introspective, and playful ways. "Seated on a mossy rock, nude," he writes, "I wave to the California Zephyr across the river. Many years ago, riding this train home from the Summer of Love, I first beheld the red rock country in this very canyon." Even the earth comes alive in Rea's prose: "The dark gneiss seethes, then shimmers like a translucent veil across the bare-boned rock." He tells how he repeatedly returned to the desert, evolving from "greenhorn" to "greybeard" as he became bonded to the landscape. These exciting, life-affirming, and thought-provoking stories are so seductive that readers will get lost in them, just as easily as a hiker traversing the landscape itself.
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Paul W. Rea has been a professor at the University of Northern Colorado, Southern Utah University, and currently St. Mary's College in California. His specialty is wilderness literature and environmental studies, and he has published in an array of natural history and literary journals, including Southwestern American Literature.