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Downcanyon: A Naturalist Explores the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon
Every writer comes to the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon with a unique point of view. Ann Zwinger's is that of a naturalist, an "observer at the river's brim."
Teamed with scientists and other volunteer naturalists, Zwinger was part of an ongoing study of change along the Colorado. In all seasons and all weathers, in almost every kind of craft that goes down the waves, she returned to the Grand Canyon again and again to explore, look, and listen.ÌýFrom the thrill of running the rapids to the wonder in a grain of sand, her words take the reader down 280 miles of the "ever-flowing, energetic, whooping and hollering, galloping" river.
Zwinger's book begins with a bald eagle count at Nankoweap Creek in January and ends with a subzero, snowy walk out of the canyon at winter solstice. Between are the delights of spring in side canyons, the benediction of rain on a summer beach, and the chill that comes off limestone walls in November.
Her eye for detail catches the enchantment of small things played against the immensity of the the gatling-gun love song of tree frogs; the fragile beauty of an evening primrose; ravens "always in close attendance, like lugubrious, sharp-eyed, nineteenth-century undertakers"; and a golden eagle chasing a trout "with wings akimbo like a cleaning lady after a cockroach."
As she travels downstream, Zwinger follows others in history who have risked—and occasionally lost—their lives on the Colorado. Hiking in narrow canyons, she finds cliff dwellings and broken pottery of prehistoric Indians. Rounding a bend or running a rapid, she remembers the triumphs and tragedies of early explorers and pioneers. She describes the changes that have come with putting a big dam on a big river and how the dam has affected the riverine flora and fauna as well as the rapids and their future.
Science in the hands of a poet, this captivating book is for armchair travelers who may never see the grandiose Colorado and for those who have run it wisely and well. Like the author, readers will find themselves bewitched by the color and flow of the river, and enticed by what's around the next bend. With her, they will find its rhythms still in the mind, long after the splash and spray and pound are gone.
Teamed with scientists and other volunteer naturalists, Zwinger was part of an ongoing study of change along the Colorado. In all seasons and all weathers, in almost every kind of craft that goes down the waves, she returned to the Grand Canyon again and again to explore, look, and listen.ÌýFrom the thrill of running the rapids to the wonder in a grain of sand, her words take the reader down 280 miles of the "ever-flowing, energetic, whooping and hollering, galloping" river.
Zwinger's book begins with a bald eagle count at Nankoweap Creek in January and ends with a subzero, snowy walk out of the canyon at winter solstice. Between are the delights of spring in side canyons, the benediction of rain on a summer beach, and the chill that comes off limestone walls in November.
Her eye for detail catches the enchantment of small things played against the immensity of the the gatling-gun love song of tree frogs; the fragile beauty of an evening primrose; ravens "always in close attendance, like lugubrious, sharp-eyed, nineteenth-century undertakers"; and a golden eagle chasing a trout "with wings akimbo like a cleaning lady after a cockroach."
As she travels downstream, Zwinger follows others in history who have risked—and occasionally lost—their lives on the Colorado. Hiking in narrow canyons, she finds cliff dwellings and broken pottery of prehistoric Indians. Rounding a bend or running a rapid, she remembers the triumphs and tragedies of early explorers and pioneers. She describes the changes that have come with putting a big dam on a big river and how the dam has affected the riverine flora and fauna as well as the rapids and their future.
Science in the hands of a poet, this captivating book is for armchair travelers who may never see the grandiose Colorado and for those who have run it wisely and well. Like the author, readers will find themselves bewitched by the color and flow of the river, and enticed by what's around the next bend. With her, they will find its rhythms still in the mind, long after the splash and spray and pound are gone.
318 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1995
10 people are currently reading
166 people want to read
About the author
Ann Zwinger
29Ìýbooks15ÌýfollowersAnn Haymond Zwinger was the author of many highly-regarded natural histories noted for comprehensive detail and lyrical prose.
In 1976, she received the John Burroughs Memorial Association Gold Medal for a distinguished contribution in natural history, Run, River, Run.
In 1976, she received the John Burroughs Memorial Association Gold Medal for a distinguished contribution in natural history, Run, River, Run.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
September 6, 2011
The first Ann Zwinger book I've read - I've enjoyed most the way way her focus adjusts from the Micro to the Macro. Details about the various insects encountered, give way to early history of the canyon. Not to mention that the reference list added about 20 books to my "to-read" list
October 25, 2018
Finally finished this book. It wasn’t what I thought it would be, but I respect the author’s knowledge of natural history and geology. There are interesting vignettes of insect behavior and anatomy but too many (for me). For anyone keenly interested in the specifics of the flora and small fauna of the Grand Canyon, I think the rating would be 4 or 5 stars.
And, unfortunately, I never like reading about rocks and how they were formed and landed where they are. Which many GC writers feel compelled to explain. So my 3 star rating reflects my lack of curiosity rather than the author’s poor writing.
Having said that, I did keep reading as there were passages and paragraphs scattered throughout that interested me enough to keep reading.
And, unfortunately, I never like reading about rocks and how they were formed and landed where they are. Which many GC writers feel compelled to explain. So my 3 star rating reflects my lack of curiosity rather than the author’s poor writing.
Having said that, I did keep reading as there were passages and paragraphs scattered throughout that interested me enough to keep reading.
September 17, 2017
I was searching for books at my local library to prep me for an upcoming trip to the GC. I'm so glad I stumbled on Downcanyon. This book is many things. Zwinger does a wonderful job describing the abundant natural life on her frequent trips through the Canyon. I love her irreverent descriptions that encompass everything from the Canyon's geology to the history of people that used to call it home to the scientific history of its first Eastern explorers and researchers to the modern day studies of the impacts of Glen Canyon dam on native flora and fauna. This book gave me a much greater appreciation of the Grand Canyon and a newfound admiration for Ann Zwinger, who no doubt had a life well-lived.
March 4, 2025
“The strenuous effort, the chance of failure, and the eager stimulation a difficult task inspires—all are ended. And yet, strange to say, I feel no sense of elation. Possibly it is because the hurrying years are leaving more and more of my life behind, and this, to which I have eagerly looked forward so long, has now passed into the shadows that fall and lengthen toward the east.�
August 31, 2024
I just returned from a trip to southern Utah and pilgrimaged to the North Rim of Grand Canyon. I had forgotten, all the time spent in red rock country, how incredibly vaster the Canyon is, and how more colorful. Mauve, raspberry, purple, gray, alongside the brick reds and pinks and oranges of Utah. I had forgotten. I forgot how world just opens into this chasm in the earth that takes your breath away and makes you awestruck. It is not hyperbole or exaggeration, it is that stunning. What is craziest is that I forgot. I had a gorgeous sunny day as well, and the light and color was hallowed. This book brings the inner canyon, the river alive for those of us who are rim dwellers. It was the best book from a naturalist that I have read in a while, accessible, lyrical, and I learned some new words, which can be rare.
New words:
Usufructuary
Descant
Imbricated
Quotes:
I sit watching until dusk, hypnotized. I think of the sea as continually sloshing back and forth, repetitive, but my psyche goes with the river- always loping downhill, purposeful, listening only to gravity.
The Big Dipper wheels on its bowl. In years hence it will have stopped looking like a saucepan and will resemble a sugar scoop as the earth continues to wobble and the dipper’s seven stars speed in different directions.
The sky is a meadow of wildstar flowers.
As dawn leaks into the sky it edits out the stars like excess punctuation marks, deleting asterisks and periods, commas, and semi-colons, leaving only unhinged thoughts rotating and pivoting, and unsecured words.
Unkar Delta at Mile 73
The layers of brick red sandstone, siltstone, and mudstone of the Dox formation deposited a billion years ago, erode easily, giving the landscape an open, rolling character very different that the narrow, limestone walled canyon upstream, both in lithology and color, fully fitting Van Dyke’s description of “raspberry-red color, tempered with a what-not of mauve, heliotrope, and violet.� Sediments flowing in from the west formed deltas, floodplains, and tidal flats, which indurated into these fine-grained sedimentary rocks thinly laid deposits of a restful sea, lined with shadows as precise as the staves of a musical score, ribboned layers, an elegant alteration of quiet siltings and delicious lappings, crinkled water compressed, solidified, lithified.
Most of the pebbles are rounded, the ones that are two inches long the most whole and symmetrical. Above that size, they still betray their original irregular form with odd angles and hollows. Below that size they are generally shattered. It is as if between one and two inches the integrity of the rock and the abrasive power of the river reach eloquent equilibrium in a harmonious ratio of surface to volume creating the perfect oval.
I pave the shallow sea, walking the time between, reflecting on the type of fossil I’d like to be. I guess I’d like my bones to be replaced by some vivid chert, a red ulna or radius, or maybe preserved as the track of some lug-soled creature locked in the sandstone- how did it walk, what did it eat, and did it love sunshine?
Low clouds lie like jigsaw pieces on a blue table, negative and positive shapes slowly moving across the sky as if the wind were working the puzzle.
This landscape is animate: it moves, transposes, builds, proceeds, shifts, always going on, never coming back, and one can only retain it in vignettes, impressions caught in a flash, flipped through in succession, leaving a richness of images imprinted on a sunburned retina.
The question haunted me, and the real answer came, as answers often do, not in the canyon but at an unlikely time and in an unexpected place, flying over the canyon at thirty thousand feet on my way to be a grandmother. My mind on other things, intending only to glance out, the exquisite smallness and delicacy of the river took me completely by surprise. In the hazy light of early morning, the canyon lay shrouded, the river flecked with glints of silver, reduced to a thin line of memory, blurred by a sudden realization that clouded my vision. The astonishing sense of connection with that river and canyon caught me completely unaware, and in a breath I understood the intense, protective loyalty so many people feel for the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. It has to do with truth and beauty and love of this earth, the artifacts of a lifetime and the descant of a canyon wren at dawn.
New words:
Usufructuary
Descant
Imbricated
Quotes:
I sit watching until dusk, hypnotized. I think of the sea as continually sloshing back and forth, repetitive, but my psyche goes with the river- always loping downhill, purposeful, listening only to gravity.
The Big Dipper wheels on its bowl. In years hence it will have stopped looking like a saucepan and will resemble a sugar scoop as the earth continues to wobble and the dipper’s seven stars speed in different directions.
The sky is a meadow of wildstar flowers.
As dawn leaks into the sky it edits out the stars like excess punctuation marks, deleting asterisks and periods, commas, and semi-colons, leaving only unhinged thoughts rotating and pivoting, and unsecured words.
Unkar Delta at Mile 73
The layers of brick red sandstone, siltstone, and mudstone of the Dox formation deposited a billion years ago, erode easily, giving the landscape an open, rolling character very different that the narrow, limestone walled canyon upstream, both in lithology and color, fully fitting Van Dyke’s description of “raspberry-red color, tempered with a what-not of mauve, heliotrope, and violet.� Sediments flowing in from the west formed deltas, floodplains, and tidal flats, which indurated into these fine-grained sedimentary rocks thinly laid deposits of a restful sea, lined with shadows as precise as the staves of a musical score, ribboned layers, an elegant alteration of quiet siltings and delicious lappings, crinkled water compressed, solidified, lithified.
Most of the pebbles are rounded, the ones that are two inches long the most whole and symmetrical. Above that size, they still betray their original irregular form with odd angles and hollows. Below that size they are generally shattered. It is as if between one and two inches the integrity of the rock and the abrasive power of the river reach eloquent equilibrium in a harmonious ratio of surface to volume creating the perfect oval.
I pave the shallow sea, walking the time between, reflecting on the type of fossil I’d like to be. I guess I’d like my bones to be replaced by some vivid chert, a red ulna or radius, or maybe preserved as the track of some lug-soled creature locked in the sandstone- how did it walk, what did it eat, and did it love sunshine?
Low clouds lie like jigsaw pieces on a blue table, negative and positive shapes slowly moving across the sky as if the wind were working the puzzle.
This landscape is animate: it moves, transposes, builds, proceeds, shifts, always going on, never coming back, and one can only retain it in vignettes, impressions caught in a flash, flipped through in succession, leaving a richness of images imprinted on a sunburned retina.
The question haunted me, and the real answer came, as answers often do, not in the canyon but at an unlikely time and in an unexpected place, flying over the canyon at thirty thousand feet on my way to be a grandmother. My mind on other things, intending only to glance out, the exquisite smallness and delicacy of the river took me completely by surprise. In the hazy light of early morning, the canyon lay shrouded, the river flecked with glints of silver, reduced to a thin line of memory, blurred by a sudden realization that clouded my vision. The astonishing sense of connection with that river and canyon caught me completely unaware, and in a breath I understood the intense, protective loyalty so many people feel for the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. It has to do with truth and beauty and love of this earth, the artifacts of a lifetime and the descant of a canyon wren at dawn.
December 28, 2024
A very niche book that dives into the nitty gritty details about the flora, fauna, and geology of the Grand Canyon and Colorado River winding through it. For folks traveling to the region, it's a gem of a book to prepare mentally for all the things you might encounter! Or for folks who've been, it provides a fun, easy mental journey back to the canyon and river.
The prose is beautifully descriptive, poetry meets nonfiction science paper. However, sometimes it was so detailed that it carried me off to a gentle sleep picturing the canyon in all its hues, the river lapping at sand bars, and tiny critters continuously working for survival until tomorrow.
So many lovely quotes from this book:
As I gained the asphalt walk at the top of the trail, the number of people dismayed me... Out of one of the clusters of people stepped a nice-looking, neatly dressed, middle-aged woman, a question obvious in her face. I paused, uncomfortably conscious of how derelict I must appear. 'Excuse me,' she began,' is there anything down there?' [...]
The question haunted me, as questions like that often do, and the real answer came, as answers often do, not in the canyon but at an unlikely time and in an unexpected place, flying over the canyon at thirty thousand feet... The astonishing sense of connection with *that* river and *that* canyon caught me completely unaware, and in a beath I understood the intense, protective loyalty so many people feel for the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. With that came the answer: there *is* something down there, and it cannot be explained in a listing of its parts. It has to do with truth and beauty and love of this earth, the artifacts of a lifetime, and the descant of a canyon wren at dawn. [...] The 'down there' is bound up with care and solicitude, sunlight on scalloped ripples, loving life and accepting death, all tied to a magnificent, unforgiving, and irrevocable river, a river along which I wandered for a halcyon while, smelled the wet clay odor of the rapids, listened to the dawns, and tasted the sunsets."
"[the river is there,] nibbling at sandbars and rearranging beaches[...] dancing with raindrops, multiplying the sun in its ripples, taking its tolls and levies against the cliffs, pounding and pulsing with life that vitalizes anyone who rows and rides it..."
"Water seldom 'flows' in this country--instead it gobbles, rampages, breaks, topples, undercuts, gnaws, rips, gouges, falls, pounds, pummels, and hammers. 'Average precipitation' is not a useful concept in the Southwest, where annual deviations are often extreme and not all the rain that falls, falls kindly."
"This sunny November morning,[...] goldenweed and magenta windmills tapestry the ground, sunshine polishes the prickly pear pads, typical lower Sonoran Desert vegetation I've seen a hundred times, but this morning it is all festive and fresh because I own the untrammeled time to enjoy it." <3
"With this stupendous panorama before me I wish--but only briefly--that I had a camera. There is no way to catch in a photograph (or in a drawing or in words, for that matter) the breath and breadth of this river valley, the cutting bite of the wind, the clouds layered with shafts of sunlight, the flicker of Mormon tea, the snow wedges on the horizon, all the sweep and vastness. No single picture, no matter how elegant and comprehensive, can capture this riverscape--the delight of moving water, persimmon and lavender cliffs, the sound of freight-train rapids or the silence of a dune, the sassing of a rock wren."
The prose is beautifully descriptive, poetry meets nonfiction science paper. However, sometimes it was so detailed that it carried me off to a gentle sleep picturing the canyon in all its hues, the river lapping at sand bars, and tiny critters continuously working for survival until tomorrow.
So many lovely quotes from this book:
As I gained the asphalt walk at the top of the trail, the number of people dismayed me... Out of one of the clusters of people stepped a nice-looking, neatly dressed, middle-aged woman, a question obvious in her face. I paused, uncomfortably conscious of how derelict I must appear. 'Excuse me,' she began,' is there anything down there?' [...]
The question haunted me, as questions like that often do, and the real answer came, as answers often do, not in the canyon but at an unlikely time and in an unexpected place, flying over the canyon at thirty thousand feet... The astonishing sense of connection with *that* river and *that* canyon caught me completely unaware, and in a beath I understood the intense, protective loyalty so many people feel for the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. With that came the answer: there *is* something down there, and it cannot be explained in a listing of its parts. It has to do with truth and beauty and love of this earth, the artifacts of a lifetime, and the descant of a canyon wren at dawn. [...] The 'down there' is bound up with care and solicitude, sunlight on scalloped ripples, loving life and accepting death, all tied to a magnificent, unforgiving, and irrevocable river, a river along which I wandered for a halcyon while, smelled the wet clay odor of the rapids, listened to the dawns, and tasted the sunsets."
"[the river is there,] nibbling at sandbars and rearranging beaches[...] dancing with raindrops, multiplying the sun in its ripples, taking its tolls and levies against the cliffs, pounding and pulsing with life that vitalizes anyone who rows and rides it..."
"Water seldom 'flows' in this country--instead it gobbles, rampages, breaks, topples, undercuts, gnaws, rips, gouges, falls, pounds, pummels, and hammers. 'Average precipitation' is not a useful concept in the Southwest, where annual deviations are often extreme and not all the rain that falls, falls kindly."
"This sunny November morning,[...] goldenweed and magenta windmills tapestry the ground, sunshine polishes the prickly pear pads, typical lower Sonoran Desert vegetation I've seen a hundred times, but this morning it is all festive and fresh because I own the untrammeled time to enjoy it." <3
"With this stupendous panorama before me I wish--but only briefly--that I had a camera. There is no way to catch in a photograph (or in a drawing or in words, for that matter) the breath and breadth of this river valley, the cutting bite of the wind, the clouds layered with shafts of sunlight, the flicker of Mormon tea, the snow wedges on the horizon, all the sweep and vastness. No single picture, no matter how elegant and comprehensive, can capture this riverscape--the delight of moving water, persimmon and lavender cliffs, the sound of freight-train rapids or the silence of a dune, the sassing of a rock wren."
October 3, 2016
"This landscape is animate: it moves, transposes, build, proceeds, shifts, always going on, never coming back, and one can retain it only in vignettes, impressions caught in a flash , flipped through in succession, leaving a richness of images imprinted on a sunburned retina."
One of many quotable passages. One of the joys of Zwinger is her language, her riffs of verbs and similes that relish her observation of all the wondrous minutiae of the Canyon.
One of many quotable passages. One of the joys of Zwinger is her language, her riffs of verbs and similes that relish her observation of all the wondrous minutiae of the Canyon.
September 6, 2011
Much of the book I enjoyed. Sometimes a bit over wordy: perhaps trying to use a word never used before. I loved the insect descriptions, plant a d geology descriptions, too. I read it while in the canyon, which brought so much to life. I was going to keep a journal, but instead I dog eared pages in the book; Anne said it better!
April 20, 2011
"spittlebug nymphs safely siphon sap" (106) - if not clunky, then at least overdone
discordant metaphors/similes
lyrical description of the flora, fauna, geology, and human history of the Colorado and its canyons.
discordant metaphors/similes
lyrical description of the flora, fauna, geology, and human history of the Colorado and its canyons.
August 16, 2011
Generally enjoyable but question naturalist status of author who reports there are only two raptors on the canyon - bald eagles and ravens - really? Many raptors there and ravens aren't raptors though they are ever present
June 4, 2008
I'm enjoying this book because I prefer to daydream about being in the canyon than deal with the reality of living (even temporarily) in Maryland!
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