As I discussed before, I decided to take the Salt River Canyon chapter out of the book. Instead, the chapter on Arizona will focus on a different part of the same trip, the nearby Apache Trail. I have incorporated parts of the original essay into the second one; I am also considering including excerpts from the Salt River Canyon essay as appendices in this edition of the book, or a later one. Here is the opening paragraph of the Salt River Canyon essay; please let me know what you think, and thanks for your feedback.
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It’s faint, but you can hear it. It is discernible from far above, on the canyon rim, when no cars are going by and the attention is diverted for a few valuable moments to nothing else. You can hear the faint-but-undeniable roar of thousands of gallons of rough, pitching fresh water on its way from cold creeks and mountain washouts, down through once-dry washes, into forgotten desert streams, hidden ponds, and sprawling suburbs. The sound you hear is the assertive water gushing over piles of rocks that form rapids, proceeding in its stately way over a straight section of its course, or rounding one of the many curves through the mountainous rock. It is the Salt River, and it travels from this point high in the mountains of east central Arizona all the way to Phoenix and beyond. There, in the city, it is an unremarkable, silted stream that merits the name “Salt;” here, however, it is a mighty western river like its kin the Colorado and the Arkansas, and here is its great project, the Salt River Canyon.
Out West Writings 