Horseshoe Bend at Page Arizona

A meander is a winding curve of a river or a road. To me, the Horseshoe Bend in Page, Arizona is one meander of a wonder.  Interestingly, an article by Tas Walker, a biblical geologist from New Zealand  suggests that this  spectacular  geological wonder along  the Colorado Plateau near the Arizona-Utah border is carved by a Noah’s flood kind of a phenomenon. On a quick Google search, results point out that Noah's flood probably happened off the coast of Turkey around Black Sea some 7,500 years ago.

I can only remember the  illustrated book I read as a child: Noah’s Arc. The story was about the time God got angry at all the wickedness in the world that he ordered some ethnic cleansing himself. God asked Noah, a righteous man who had no criminal record,  to build an ark out of a cypress wood with all his godly specifications. After the ark was completed and all the  other instructions were followed to the letter, God sent the rain that lasted for forty days and forty nights. Everyone else drowned except Noah and his  family and  the pairs of animals that God instructed Noah to save.

Two geologist from Columbia University however postulated that when the world warmed in Europe,  the European glaciers melted and filled  the North Sea. Areas around the North Sea somehow went arid and the  Black Sea dried out into a livable basin that eventually became Noah's hometown. When it rained, it poured and filled the Noah’s basin hometown and become the Mediterranean Sea of today.  

According to the exhibits at the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area visitor center in Page, Arizona, river bends and meanders are formed  in response to the  river's slopes and its channels. River bends and meanders also developed along  with the earth's tectonic plates that shifted  all the time. Movements and climatic interactions also continue to uplift the earth's surface and create distinctive landscapes out of canyons and rivers. 

As the Colorado Plateau was being uplifted by the shifting tectonic plates in,  the waterways that formed remained  in lower elevations.  These rivers  and creeks  drain westward eventually join other streams and creeks  to form the Colorado River. Geologists believe that the Horseshoe Bend has  been carved by the Colorado River in a process that started about six million years ago when local waterways took their courses and became the major forces of erosion.  Powered by climate, scoured by water and cracked by heat and ice, erosion is known to be the major force that continue to sculpt the Colorado Plateau and carve the Colorado River

Viewing the horseshoe shaped meander of the Colorado River  from a thousand feet, Johnny, a Navajo tour guide explained to me that the little white thing I saw floating on the dark green waters is a real boat. It got scary standing very close to the rim so I had to step away.
I did not believe Johnny one bit when he told me that a calf loitering near the trails to the overlook was wild. Cow Springs, a Navajo Reservation area  is a 75 mile-drive away. But maybe Johnny was not kidding. Maybe there was really an untended herd nearby. After all, five miles upstream is a watershed.

A watershed is an area or ridge or ridge of land that separates waters flowing to different rivers, basins or seas. The Glen Canyon Dam is a watershed structure at the mouth of the Colorado River.

"We all live in a watershed
When it rains up here, it flows down there
That's how it flows in a watershed."

So does a nursery song say.

So where is the water going?

Past the Glen Canyon Dam Bridge, water from the Colorado River goes a long, long way. Water from the Colorado River are allocated to the lower basin states like  Nevada, Arizona and California in compliance to the "Law of the River" which sounds like  the law of letting nature take its course. The Colorado River  travels through thousands of miles through canals and aqueducts. Mexico is also entitled by treaty to some 1.85 billion cubic meters of water every year for its agriculture and residential use.

Farmers, dam and power plant workers, plants and animals,  indigenous peoples and everyone including yours truly do live in a watershed.

"Ants live in a watershed 

Birds live in a watershed

They have homes and needs

In water, soil and trees

That's how it flows in a watershed."

Farmers not only live in the watershed, they also feed a quarter of America by irrigating millions of acres of farmlands from the water flowing from the Colorado River. Whether scraping the smallest invasive mussel off a damn equipment and turbines to deliver water and electricity to millions of people across the west, dam and power plant workers do depend on this watershed.

Speaking of Noah however, several floods  did plague the towns around the southern Colorado River area destroying the agriculture that depended on the river for irrigation in the 1900's. The Glen Canyon Dam was built to prevent future floods. Lake Powell was created in 1963 when the Glen Canyon Dam held back waters of the Colorado River.  Of course I would tell you that I still believe in this shit called Noah's flood, otherwise you would be calling me a pagan.


https://creation.com published in September 2012
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/evidence-for-a-flood
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZP0B8PsuNU
Rubyn Suddeth, "The Future of Glen Canyon Dam Management and the Implication for the Grand Canyon", UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences