Naked Wild and Free in the Grand Canyon: Rowing and Roaming

Photographic and adventure document. Rowing rafts and hiking and climbing with lots of time to do it. Feeling at home living in the Grand Canyon. Communal living in the wild. Back to nature at its best.

The author was fortunate enough to be included on four river trips which took place between 1969 and 1975.

This book contains an expanded version of the written journal kept by the author during a passage through the lower half of the Grand Canyon in 1975. Some of the photos included are from other earlier trips.

These adventures involved descents of the Colorado River through Cataract Canyon and the Grand Canyon, the Yampa River through Dinosaur National Monument and Echo Park, and the Green River through the Gates of Lodor, Grays Canyon, Desolation Canyon and Canyonlands National Park.

The rafts were of our own design and took a lot of muscle to row through the numerous white water rapids. The pace was leisurely, with plenty of time allowed for each trip. Our passage through the Grand Canyon, for example, was designed to take more than a month. Riding the river for only 2 or 3 hours a day meant plenty of time for hiking, climbing, caving and enjoying the endless varieties of pools and waterfalls which can be found sometimes far up in the side canyons. Spending weeks at a time on the river also meant getting to know each more deeply and allowing the spirit of the canyon rock-scapes to enter our beings more fully. It felt like we were truly living in those canyons, not just passing through.

Cameron's extensive experience in wilderness and cross-cultural adventures include mountaineering in the American West and the Peruvian Andes as well as river-running in the extended Colorado river basin. Cross country ski adventures were also a large part of his earlier life style during his twenties. But the adventures were musical, spiritual and linguistic as well as physical. From the Mississippi River Blues Beginnings I grew up in as a 14-year-old electric guitar-playing band member in St Louis, Missouri, where I had the pleasure of hanging out at the Lindy Ballroom and Roller Skating Rink where Ike and Tina Turner were playing... Soaked in the Chuck Berry ecstasy of alcoholic rural partytimes... To the Tear-Soaked musical high-altitude musical majesties of the Peruvian Andes... To the Time-stopping hesitation Black Hole musical mysteries of Athens, Greece... To the Divine Feminine Eternal Worship Dance in the Telepathically Jeweled Musical Venues of Cairo, Amman and Damascus... To 70,000 miles of Touring the Amalgam Mix of the Cauldron called the USA... I have had the amazing wild ride of a lifetime spent playing for people to dance... I use the Oud, the Fretless Turkish Banjo, the Egyptian Flutes, my Voice... I weave the magic and the magic weaves me... Come Sing and Dance and Play with me... Love Love Love... Cameron Cameron's musical and linguistic careers recently led him to stand in solidarity with the people of Iraq by sharing Iraqi love songs on the streets of Baghdad in 2003. His lifelong musical adventures with Latin American and Middle Eastern peoples have culminated in a series of recent concerts and multi-media presentations designed to promote peace. High points of these adventures included performing in the Cairo stadium before an audience of 60,000 Egyptians to help raise funds for a new Children's Cancer Hospital. Fascination with Peruvian Indian peoples encountered on mountaineering expeditions led Cameron to spend 8 years going to and from Andean villages back in the 1960's and 70's. He immediately discovered the value of learning to play their music with them as an easy aid to bonding in trust and friendship. Cameron graduated with BA in Anthropology and Linguistics, University of Colorado, Boulder, with an emphasis on the study of Quechua, the language of the Incas. Cameron also received a fellowship to attend a two-month intensive immersion program in the Inca language at Cornell University. Cameron also received a scholarship to work on a Doctoral program in Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. He continued to study the Inca language and began studies of the Tibetan language. The warmth of his musically-oriented "extended family" in Peru served to draw him away from an academic career toward a performing musical career. It was there in Peru that he began to realize the value of being a musician as well as a linguist. In 1973 Cameron lived in Greece with the Papanastassiou family and studied Greek language and Greek music. Returning to Boulder, Colorado, Cameron performed Greek music and began the study of Arabic music with various local bands: "The Silk Route," "The Boulder Bouzouki Band," "Solspice," and "Sherefe."