Sprinkled over everything like stardust were the fresh droplets of the recent rain. It was an enchanted garden. I felt ecstatic, as if I were dancing elf-like through a magic forest. It occurred to me that Nature had planned the storm just to share with us this special place, like an old woman opening her hand to show us one of her most treasured jewels. It cleared after lunch, so we picked up and continued down the river. The canyon remained fairly wide, with vast areas of sandy sage brush behind the narrow zone of green along the river. We camped near a large sand slide, three or four miles above Harris Wash. An old-timer in Boulder named Doyle had told us that there were Indian petroglyphs on the far side of the canyon from the slide, but although we spent a half hour the next morning searching for then, we couldn't find anything. We reached Harris Wash, the first major tributary from the west, at 10. Up to there the river had been relatively clear. It was potable and we had seen numerous small fish. But Harris Wash was completely silt-laden, a dark brown stain flowing into the Escalante. By the time we made camp that night the Escalante itself was saturated with silt. We couldn't see the bottom of a Sierra Club cup dipped into the water. From there on we had to carry drinking water, which we got by letting the silt settle in pans overnight. Fortunately, the water cleared reasonably well if left for just an hour, and a pot left overnight produced clear delicious water. The opaque waters greatly complicated the problem of stream crossing. We became adept at reading the ripple patterns on the surface and at feeling our way with our feet. I concentrated so much on my feet that they seemed to be extra eyes, seeing the bottom of the river. Amazingly, in 349 crossings made between Highway 12 and Coyote Creek we had only one fall, when I stepped off the edge of a rock into a hole four feet deep. Fortunately, no real damage was done, Although I did lose one days pictures. Except for that one mishap, we never got any deeper than mid-thigh. Another problem caused by the silty river was soft footing along its banks. Two or three times I stepped into quicksand, but each time hit solid rock only a foot or so into it and was able to struggle out. In other places it was just soft, like a bowl of Cream of Wheat. Frequently, when we stopped, we found ourselves sinking into the ground and many times the ground the leader crossed was turned into almost impassable goo by his passage. It was also about the fourth day that we began to suffer from sore, burning, scaly skin on the backs of our legs. Since it was apparently caused by the constant wetting and drying, coupled with exposure to wind and sun, we named the condition "dishpan legs". Next time I will be sure to take a large bottle of skin lotion. The spirit of the trip also seemed to change after we got past Harris Wash. For one thing Harris Wash is less than half way down the river and we had hoped to reach it sooner. As a result, we began to push harder. We didn't know how difficult the rest of the trip would be and it added a sense of urgency to our journey. For another, the day after we left Harris Wash it got very overcast. We hiked all day under threatening skies. That night we camped among some small trees on a bench 30 feet above the river and prepared our tube tents. Although it cleared around noon the next day, we remained uneasy about the weather. We could only see a narrow slit of sky overhead and after being caught in one storm, we never really trusted the weather again. In addition the canyon again became deep and narrow, adding to our feeling of uneasiness and isolation. Of course, scenically it was magnificent. The walls were a thousand feet high and fell almost vertically to the river, which ran smoothly between them, making the hiking easy although the footing was frequently soft. But the great walls made us feel small and insignificant, so that it took us a day or two to adjust to being at the bottom of such a canyon. At first it was a little overpowering.

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