I was dropped at a vacant beach below Horseshoe Dam. My companions rolled away toward the mad, overcrowded world beyond the hills while I slid into a clear, cold river. The dam came partly into view beyond shoreline phragmites, and it looked like it was spilling. Paddling upstream to investigate, I ran straight into a powerful wave train. This was no longer the elfin Verde I’d been following for 120 miles. This was a river of 2,000 cfs.

At the far end of the pool, one-third of the river went right, and two-thirds went left. I slid down the left-side ramp into a short pool where the flow further divided into five more channels. Back-paddling, my drift carried me deeper into the maze of brush. That exploration ended safely enough, with a short portage back to open water. At the second riparian-forest-rapid, most of the water raced into a willow-shrouded passage displaying a spectacular splash where a stout limb elbowed into the current. I opted for diminishing floodplain channels and a boat drag through cobbles. When a potential camp appeared on the bench above, I was happy to call it a day.

The riverbed narrowed, making for exciting but open sluices all the way to Bartlett Reservoir. After a few hours’ slog across the lake, I stopped into the marina to query about portaging the dam. Naturally, nobody knew much. A store clerk from Alabama was onto me immediately, sharing her tremendous accent, and honesty. “I stay away from da-ums and thangs like that,” she confided, “you know, stuff that might cause me…DEATH!”

A rope haul up and over the spillway followed by 30-minutes of boat bushwacking through the spiny Sonoran Desert got me to a platform of granite at the river. Stripping off my stick-adorned portage clothes, I tip-toed to water’s edge for quick rinse when a demure little sound stopped me. A rattlesnake. It seemed rather relaxed in its little coil there on the bedrock, so I proclaimed us camp-mates. When I got up to pee in the morning, there was Mr. Snake again, this time on MY side of camp. Apparently it had crawled past me during the night.

At Needle Rock, the Verde leaves the last of its phragmites tunnels and spills past grey pinnacles. People appear occasionally below here and you can feel that the city is near. But the river maintains its own world. I pulled over at a sandy nook in the shade of a mesquite to say goodbye, and once more watch the incessant flow of my partner for the past two weeks. Sounds of the outside world—jet airplanes, prop airplanes, whining motorcycles, heavy trucks, barking dogs—all played a background to the birds, and the happy jingle of the resilient Verde.