Visitors who stand at the south rim of Arizona's old-famous Grand Canyon are often moved to silence by the vast geological wonder that stretches for miles before them. Castles, turrets, towers, and immense walls of rock rise up from the floor of the enormous chasm. From sunrise to sunset, great dark shadows and wondrous colors move across the multilayered rocks. It's a show seen nowhere else on earth.
Far below, visible from above only as a narrow ribbon winding its way between the canyon's walls, flows the Colorado River, sculptor of this magnificent panorama. Once a wild, racing stretch of water, the Colorado has been harnessed by the Glen Canyon Dam, completed in 1963. But even though the dam now regulates the river's flow, the Colorado is no wimp. Its rapids remain the fiercest white water on the North American continent, a lure to river runners and adventuresome travelers from around the world. There, so dwarfed by the environment that they are invisible to viewers at the canyon's upper rims, men and women test their mettle in one of the seven natural wonders of the world. For some, that one trip down the Colorado unexpectedly becomes the prologue to a new life-style.
Michael Geanious first ran the river one summer thirteen years ago. "I was so deeply touched that I had to come back," he says. He returned the next summer, and the following ones. To date, the bearded, soft-spoken Geanious has made 148 trips down the river. He keeps planning to "do something else,” but the canyon keeps luring him back.
"I've said for the last three years that this was going to be my last season," says Geanious. "But the canyon is my home now in many ways. Initially, it was the rapids that drew me, but there are so many other facets that draw me now. It's magical."
Geanious gave up a job as a math, science, and physical education teacher in a junior high school to spend his days a mile below the rim of the canyon, "going with the flow" of the Colorado. He camps on its banks, hikes its side canyons, and teaches passengers on his rafting trips the geology, archaeology, and history of the awesome canyon. His knowledge has developed with each trip he has guided down the rapids during the annual April through October white-water season. For Geanious, being in the Grand Canyon, the greatest example of erosion on earth, is like being in a classroom. He has learned his material well and delights in sharing it.
"It's like putting yourself in a time machine and going back 360 million years," he says. "You look at the rocks and fossils, and you get an idea of the earth then, the climate and the animals that were alive." But no matter how much he learns, Geanious is quick to emphasize that no one person will ever absorb the many levels of knowledge the canyon contains. After all, some geologists spend a lifetime studying and exploring one rock formation.
Like many other guides in the Colorado, Geanious learned his trade from the ground up; he was in training for a number of trips before being allowed to take passengers down himself. Now he free-lances for the different companies that take passengers down the river. No purist, as some river runners are, he guides both oar-powered (the guide rows the raft) and motor-powered
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