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Water falls softly in cold snow crystals onto the mountaintop. It melts into drops, and moves in trickles that slip through the crannies and driven by rain slide into creeks that tumble downhill, and swelled by storms foam over falls and gush into brooks that splash in the sun. Joined by swift side streams, it cascades through the rocks to rush in a river that surges down channels, and crashes through boulders, and with mallets of masses of pebbles and with sandy razors of silt it carves out the stone. And through sun and rain, seasons and years, and stretching over centuries, as water wears down rock, wind weathers the stone, and gravel scours the sides, the river roars loudly as it runs, and drives and hammers and pounds, digging the river bed, steepening the cliffs. It sculpts, forms, shapes, changing the land, chiseling through time, creating the canyon. |