“You cannot see the Grand Canyon in one view,” said geologist/explorer John Wesley Powell of the seventh natural wonder of the world; “… you have to toil from month to month through its labyrinths.” Which is exactly what writer Kevin Fedarko and filmmaker Peter McBride did when they walked the trail-less length of the Colorado River as it flows through the majestic canyon, a feat that took one year to achieve.
“I kind of thought I was done with the canyon,” said Fedarko in a recent phone interview, referencing his 1983 white-water run down the Colorado River in a wooden dory. (You can read all about his harrowing adventure in his book The Emerald Mile). “But then I got dragged back into it with this project that my friend Pete McBride thought up.”
McBride, a nature photographer and filmmaker who has an affinity for riverside treks — he strode the length of the Ganges River, for example — uses walking excursions to “take a look at our natural resources, which we don’t pay enough attention to,” he told me via a phone conversation from his home in Colorado. “I use adventure and a creative approach as a way to remind people what’s important out there.”