It’s called the Grand Canyon, not the Eternal Canyon

YOU don’t need me to tell you that the Grand Canyon is magnificent. Otherworldly. Sublime. But, having rafted through 145 km of the canyon with a group of scientists and grad students, I can tell you that it’s quite a bit more fragile, and less permanent, than you might think.

I wrote an article about the canyon this week in The New York Times. If you’ve seen it only from the rim or in photos, you probably think of the place as a bunch of rocks stretching to the horizon. Dramatically sculpted, gorgeously layered rocks. But still, rocks. Rocks are ancient, eternal, unchanging, at least for any species that thinks in years and decades.

It was something far more transient, however, that cut a chasm into all that rock. The Colorado River is the water knife that gravity dragged through the landscape over millions of years. Then, humans came along and started building dams to control the Colorado. This is when the canyon began to change.