The Hidden Canyon: A River Journey

by John Blaustein (Photographer), Edward Abbey (Text by), Martin Litton (Introduction), Kevin Fedarko (Afterword)

Overview

One of the great wonders of the natural world, the Grand Canyon has long enticed visitors to gaze down upon its expansive beauty. For others, it is best observed from the river that flows through its majestic walls. In The Hidden Canyon, renowned photographer and river guide John Blaustein and environmental hero and bestselling author Edward Abbey document their epic journey through the canyon from the vantage point of the Colorado River. Abbey's humorous and lyrical journal, accompanied by Blaustein's stunning photography, recalls the excitement and wonder of navigating the alternating calm and churning waters of the Colorado with a group of fellow adventurers in small wooden rowboats known as dories. This revised and updated edition, including dozens of new photographs and an afterword by Kevin Fedarko, captures the grandeur of the canyon and depicts their life-altering journeys through hundreds of miles of breathtaking landscapes, secret gardens, stunning wildlife, and demanding white water.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781937359744
Publisher:	Cameron + Company
Publication date:	07/07/2015
Edition description:	Third Edition
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	8.40(w) x 12.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

John Blaustein started rowing in the Grand Canyon in 1970 as one of the first river guides with Martin Litton's Grand Canyon Dories. Having been a guide on more than 80 trips during his 40+ years on the river, Blaustein still rows the river once or twice a year. In addition to photographing the Grand Canyon, he does commercial assignments that have taken him around the world. Blaustein lives in Berkeley, California.

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) was a novelist, essayist, social critic, and outspoken defender of the American wilderness. His many books include Desert Solitaire and The Monkey Wrench Gang.

Martin Litton (1917-2014) was the founder of Grand Canyon Dories and the recipient of the John Muir Award—the Sierra Club’s most prestigious honor. In 2004, Litton celebrated his 87th birthday by rowing a dory down the 277 miles of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon and became the oldest person in the world to do so.

Kevin Fedarko has written for Outside, Esquire, National Geographic Adventure, and other publications and was on the staff of Time Magazine. His book, The Emerald Mile, won the National Outdoor Book Award and the Reading the West Award and was a New York Times bestseller.

Editorial Reviews

"Blaustein's color photographs are spectacular." - Los Angeles Times
"I cannot recall a better collection of Grand Canyon photographs than these." - Library Journal

From the Publisher

The Barnes & Noble Review
Many people have photographed the Grand Canyon, but in The Hidden Canyon: A River Journey, photographer John Blaustein shows readers an entirely different yet equally spectacular Grand Canyon than they've seen in previous pictures.

Readers float down the Colorado River as they see the famous canyon, reading journal entries from Edward Abbey and viewing Blaustein's companion photographs. While Abbey's writings are definitely overshadowed by the stunning photographs, he provides an account that is rather adventurous. Anyone thinking of rafting or canoeing down the river will get an accurate assessment of the toils and excitement that come with this trip. And it is not without descriptive language:

"You can walk for only a mile or so till you come to an impassable waterfall — dry now — fifty feet high. Below is a small clear pool, evaporating. The silence here, away from the river and the people, is intense. The clash of stone against stone, in the dry air, is harsh, brittle, without resonance or echo. A silence almost supernatural that reminds me of the oppressive stillness in the final scenes of Kubrick's 2001. I can hear the blood singing in my ears. The sky above, beyond the crooked canyon rim, is a pale metallic blue. Storm coming."

The story of Abbey, with his constant comparisons to Major John Wesley Powell's 19th-century diary and amusing anecdotes depicting a vacation on the Colorado River, is worth reading. Yet time and again, the eye is drawn not to the rich text but to the glossy photographs of the crisp, frosted-looking rivermeanderingthrough the dark and rugged canyon, the muddy waters splashing onto the people braving the rapids of the Colorado, and the azure sky and golden wall of the canyon reflecting in the river as it flows over shallow rocks. Each photograph is explained thoroughly, so you understand the history of each place depicted in Hidden Canyon.

With Abbey's text and Blaustein's photographs, each page of Hidden Canyon is its own adventure. And it does what every successful travel book can only hope to do — take its readers to the place in question each time they open the pages, even if they've never been there before.

Visually stunning — as is evident in these excerpted photographs — Hidden Canyon is a book that won't just sit on your bookshelf collecting dust.