We didn’t realize the significance of the moment as we pulled into home for the night. We just settled into the normal routine of unloading the boats and setting a camp.

The beach was sandy… there were a few still-green tumbleweeds to be pulled. We took our shoes off and enjoyed walking barefoot across the sand. The shade of the canyon wall had just settled over the river bank and brought some relief from the July sun. Downstream noises of river current pushing against and eddying around a large rock made for the nice comfortable background noises of a good river camp.

While our group was sitting together and preparing dinner, someone to make conversation stated, “Wow this is my first river camp in Glen Canyon proper. It’s not a reservoir anymore. It’s a river now.”

It gave us all pause.

From our collections of historic photos, I knew we had a 1958 photo of a group rigging boats for a trip through Glen Canyon. The photo was taken by a young George Rathbun who was taking a trip through Glen Canyon to see this stretch of river before it was inundated by the coming reservoir. One of his pictures was from a beach at the site of the old Hite Ferry — about a mile upstream from our camp.

The river has not flowed in this area since it was inundated by the reservoir in the late 1960s. Now it is a changed river. As the reservoir filled, it created a slackwater type of delta where the big muddy river’s current slowed and dropped sediment. While the reservoir occupied the uppermost part of Glen Canyon over 50–60 years, that delta filled the area with 120–140 feet of sediment. The river we were now camped by had been displaced, but has had a chance to reclaim enough of its canyon to restore the qualities of a good river camp — a beach with blond and red sand next to a point of rocks.

Just downstream near the Horn, a distinct paper clip like turn of the canyon, we will see the river’s current stop as it flows into the reservoir. Tomorrow we will start to motor 35 miles across the reservoir.

That night, we enjoyed a good dinner and the wonders of sleeping under a vast starry sky.

Laying on the beach in my sleeping bag I was mulling over the day and I couldn’t help but think about that simple thing — the first river camp in Glen Canyon proper in 50 some years.

Already this year, the reservoir has peaked and is beginning its decline from evaporation and downstream deliveries. The river will persist here for at least another annual cycle.

The next morning a lone mosquito woke me up early. The clouds in the sky to the east over White and Farley Canyons were starting to glow yellow and orange. I got myself out of bed to take a few photos.

It is fitting that the photos of our first river camp in Glen Canyon are of a dawning day.