“She’s a Dirty Devil”: Resilience on the River by Ariana Brennhofer

The Dirty Devil, aptly named by Dunn during Major John Wesley Powell’s 1896 expedition of the Colorado River, is a 200 mile meandering stretch of chocolatey brown waters. It was once a prosperous location for farming and ranching, but after a dam and irrigation drew water from its mark, it began to wash away the fertile soils of the river, pushing people out of the Dirty Devil banks. Now managed by the BLM, this region adopts a multitude of other uses we see today such as canyoneering, rafting, off-road vehicle uses, and the extraction of natural resources. If anything, this land is resilient.

After contouring down the slickrock edges of the canyon, my eyes fell upon a slow-moving current of water. At first glance, I couldn’t help but think “Wow, the river really does look dirty!” (The devil thought wouldn’t come until later.) When traversing through the Dirty Devil, the water wrapping around my shins, stinging my feet with its cold bite, I knew I was in for it. 

There are large mud flats that flank the edges of the water, which squish underfoot. The tension of it threatens to give way, and the thought of it sucking you up stays nagging in your mind. Oh, and yes, of course there is quicksand, of course it’s real, and of course you would find it in a river named “The Dirty Devil,” the same river you will be hiking through for the next twelve days with a thirty-five pound pack on your back. If you decide to leave the muddy waters of the river, bushwhacking is in the description. The washes are high and sandy, surrounded by willow and tamarisk, though if lucky, you can follow a path of broken reeds and soft, trampled trails of cattle from times past as they worked to accomplish the same goals as us: to find a sheltered side canyon with crisp water to drink and a place to spend the night. 

I have never had to consider whether I was resilient or not, but while following these tracks, braiding and swerving from river to land as we amble downstream, surrounded by steep walls of wingate and chinle, I couldn’t help but take in and notice how adapted, how naturalized I began to feel to the natural world around me. I could recognize plants and species, identifying animal tracks; the imprints of ungulates and the webbed, waddling steps of the Canada goose as it moseys its way to and fro. I began to look for cottonwoods to try and seek out a viable water source nestled beneath them, and I rose and slept with the sun. My pack felt lighter, my skin darkening from the desert sun rays. It is with this that I find myself changing and adapting to this landscape, and I have found myself better for it. I was given the opportunity to persist and transform somewhere within the dynamic and gorgeous landscape and its system that is the Colorado Plateau. This was my resilience in practice. It dawned on me then: this river, forever on its endless mission to meet with the Colorado, also encapsulates this resilience. Despite all it has been, to what it has become, itself and the natural world around it continue to thrive. It may not look the same as it was before touched by settlers; nonetheless, it still goes forward, capturing moments of life that would otherwise remain unseen or unnoticed, allowing a visitor such as myself a glimpse and ability to persist and absorb change in a landscape. 

This river is a thread of life, forcing me to question myself and my previous assumptions of it. This river is no devil, it is a gift, and the ability to be able to experience it in all of its wonder has been nothing short of a life-changing miracle.