Melissa L. Sevigny

“We go on,” wrote Clover, “thru restless water between sheer walls of black to reddish basalt streaked with white marble.” It wasn’t truly marble, but thick ropes of Zoroaster Granite interlaced with dark schist formed 1.75 billion years ago when life on Earth had not progressed beyond a single cell. The ribbons of pale pinkish stone were once living magma in the veins of the earth, now hardened, folded, and warped by tectonic convulsions, brought into the sunlight by the thin knife of the Colorado River. These rocks were the roots of mountains that had long since eroded away.”
― Melissa L. Sevigny, Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon

“People said that if you traveled too deep into the chasm, you could look up at midday and see the stars. It was rumored that whole plateaus inside of the canyon had been cut off from the outside world for so long that primordial monsters still roamed there, relicts of a ferocious past. The few scientific expeditions that had ventured inside—a few by river, the others on foot—came out with more fancy than fact. They spoke of a fabulously rich silver mine that nobody could find, and herds of feral horses no bigger than coyotes. They told campfire stories of a Petrified Man whose form shone out clearly from the canyon wall—and why not? The sculpted stone, sometimes, did look like it was trying to form living shapes, fluted into scales or fur by the constant wear of water.”
― Melissa L. Sevigny, Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon