About fifty miles in is the confluence with the Little Colorado. The L.C. has an enormous drainage area, stretching all the way into western New Mexico. It is a very dry drainage, however, and for most of its length the L.C. has water only by way of flash flood, usually during the summer rains. But four miles upstream from the confluence is a place called Blue Springs, which produce a very respectable volume of water. The water is milk warm and cloudy blue due to high amounts of travertine, i.e. calcium carbonate, i.e. disolved limestone. The travertine builds up into extensive Baroque terraces and ledges. It's an idyllic place when the water is running clean and blue; but ater mid-July it is common to find it flowing thick chocolate brown due to flooding somewhere upstream.
When we arrived, the L.C. was blue, but a bit milkier than normal. We spent forty-five minutes or so swimming in the warm water, a welcome change from the 45 degrees of the main Colorado, floating through small rapids. We soon noticed the canyon of the Little Colorado filling with dense blue-gray thunderheads. Heavy desert summer raindrops began falling as we hightailed it back to the boats.
Mrs. Peculiar swims a Little Colorado rapid
The area around the L.C. confluence is of prime cosmological importance to the Hopi. A few miles up the L.C. near Blue Springs is the sipapu, a travertine formation that the Hopi believe is the hole of egress whence man and animals emerged from the lower world into this one. This sipapu is symbolically represented by a small hole in the floor of every kiva, both Hopi and Anasazi.
In the miles below the conflunce are numerous deposits where salt leaches from the canyon walls. The Hopi still make annual pilgrimages to gather their salt for the year here. They leave feathers and other offerings, which are considered to have crossed over to the Kachinas' world once they are completely encrusted in salt.
Floating past the Hopi salt mines on a stormy afternoon
