John Wesley Powell

I bought this book during the trip to the Grand Canyon. The splendour of the canyon shcked me to the core. When I stood in front of the boundless colorful canyons, I felt dizzy and in awe. The nature has her masterpiece in such scales and in this unrepeated way. There is no single view that is duplicated with another. The colors in the day lights, the forms of the rocks, the depths and the widths of the peaks make the grand canyon unique. We did not get chances to expore this marvellous piece ourselves. We strived to find a book that had.

John Wesley Powell, an adventurer with only one arm, managed to direct a team of 9 at a 3 month scientific expedition for this last unmapped territory of the the United States. It turned to be an adventure. From cliffs to cliff in the colorado river, with heavy privision in the boats. They had survived famine, attacks, mytiny and more of the most dangerous rapids know to man. The book is written as diaries in chronological way. I felt like reading maps. What John had seen and measures during the pitestops they made. The simply and factual writing syle succeeded in making me feel the emotions. Its from a person who was so deeply in love with nature and incredibly driven and intellgent. Without all this, He could not make the trip live.

"The glories and the beauties of form, color, and sound unite in the Grand Canyon - forms unrivaled even by the mountains, colors that vie with sunsets and sounds that span the dispason from tempest to tinkling raindrop, from cataract to bubbling fontain. But more: it is a vast district of country. Were it a valley plain it would make a state. It can be seen only in parts from hour to hour and from day to day and from week to week and from month to monty. A year scarcely suffices to see it all. It has infinite variety, and no part is ever duplicated. Its colors, though many and complet at any instant, change with ascending and declining sun; lights and shadows appear and vanish with the passing clouds, and the change seasons mark their passage in changing colors. You cannot see the Grand Canyon in one view, as if it were a chageless spectacle from which a curtain might be lifeted but to see it you have to toil from month to month through its labyrinths. It is a region more difficult to traverse than the Alps or the Himalayas, but if strength and courage are sufficient for the task, by a year's toil a concept of sublimity can be obtained nver again to be equaled on the hither side of Paradis" He is a scientist, a hardcore adventurer. He is also a poet, a romantic.