While scientific investigation was the overt motivation, what becomes clear from Powell's writings was the allure of the sheer impossibility of the undertaking. Powell notes in his report Explorations of the Canyons of the Colorado that the West was full of myths and legends about lost souls who had tried to conquer the Colorado and her canyons. More than once I have been warned by the Indians not to enter this canon, he writes. "They considered it disobedience to the gods and contempt for their authority, and believed that it would surely bring upon me their wrath." It's as if Powell sensed a direct challenge in this warning, and set out immediately to prove it wrong.
This fearless, matter-of-fact defiance characterizes Powell's entire account of his harrowing trip. The ten men and their small wooden boats were constantly bashed against rocks, sucked into whirlpools, capsized, flung out of control and generally abused by the wild water. Alternatively, they were schlepping the boats and provisions (the technical term is "making portage") across river bank terrain that would seem impassible without these burdens, sometimes only progressing a mile or two a day.
In his narrative, Powell describes encountering a particularly violent stretch of rapids. "There is, a descent of, perhaps, seventy five or eighty feet, in a third of a mile, and the rushing waters break into great waves on the rocks, and lash themselves into a mad, white foam." He and his crew look around and realize, "we must run the rapid, or abandon the river. There was no hesitation."
No hesitation? Faced with roiling mad waters and jagged rocks, all hungry for your little wooden boat, how could you not hesitate? This is surely why Powell succeeded. Perhaps the only way to achieve the impossible is to dismiss its dangers as irrelevant.
