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Show 262 MADELYN CANNON STEWART SILVER the human race, the infinitude of men that had lived and were still living, and the magnificence of man's creation in the tem ples of the old and new gods. The voyage down the Colorado River was away from civi North lization, into some of the most desolate regions of with took America. The items of man's creation that the group them hardly bore testimony of man's greatness-nor represent ed Harold's inventive mind: the pudgy rubber rafts that bumped down the river, the absurd costumes of the partici awkwardly and old pants, with their broad bonnets, orange life-jackets, defenses against the ravages of nature, and the clothing, meager the suntan lotion, the insect repellent, the halazone tablets, and sunglasses. In one of the passages quoted by Madelyn in her notebook, Frank Waters says that the mysteries of the Colorado "wear the mask of the common-place," and appropriately Madelyn's story not ends on a note of seeming unimportance. Yet the story is that truth a here. Masked within the narrative is complete had written the Madelyn herself did not realize until after she entire story, whose close correlation with letters and other detail. of the expedition proves its truthfulness down to minute notes Madelyn's realization of her central, and of course, entirely Genesis. And in ural, metaphor may be seen in her thoughts of added: "My Rainbow Bridge a final note to the story, Madelyn the first thirty years to the Harold's and mine: spans our life, But perhaps we've had our last hike." next, and ever afterward. still pro Though she was in absolute wilderness, Madelyn that she saw. She tells jected the world of man onto the things of walls tapestried sandstone, of "gliding between sky-high erosion hieroglyphics, expanding turning into pillared spaces of nat ... into wide vista distances of castles and cathedrals." Her usage of these similes perhaps betrays a slight inability to face nature it also unconsciously betrays her poeti on is own ground, but universal presence of nature, her sense of the cally religious hiero God, even in the divinely-inspired tapestries, pillars, nature.' glyphics, and cathedrals of the expedition, Alice and Leland after The very next year Redd (but not Madelyn and Harold) went on tour with a |
