I ignored the screaming as I happily scrambled up sun-drenched sandstone ledges toward the ancient kiva. Behind me, the Escalante River licked against the base of an overhanging cliff 500 feet high, sherbet orange with shining black zebra stripes of mineral accretions. I was 40 miles from the nearest blacktop road and stepping into an American dwelling as old as Notre Dame Cathedral. The gestalt filled me with an electric kind of energy elusive to normal life that I wanted to guzzle by the liter. The shouting, though, incorporated my name, so I left the kiva and descended to the clifftop. Twenty feet below, the guys stood around Callas, who was lying on his back in the sand.

“Callas fell off the cliff,” Mike said.

 Callas moaned, and I understood where the screaming had come from.

“The rope broke,” Mike added.

I looked at the bleached log where the faded length of yellow mooring rope had been anchored. It was indeed gone. Instead of worrying about Callas, I was consumed with selfish concerns. Namely, how the hell was I going to get down?