Mr. Write's Page

The passage below is from the journal of Haldane “Buzz” Holmstrom, a gas station attendant from Oregon who built his own boat and rowed it, alone, down the Colorado River through Grand Canyon. It was November 1937.

—————

I am camped on the right at the lower end of the Bad Rapid — Lava Falls — that I have been looking for for nearly a thousand miles. I had thought, once past here, that my reward will begin.

But now, everything ahead seems kind of empty, and I find I have already had my reward — in the doing of the thing.

The stars and cliffs and canyons, the roar of the rapids, the moon. The uncertainty, the worry, the relief when through each one. The campfires at night. The real respect and friendship of the rivermen I meet.

—————

Buzz began his trip on October 4, 1937, at Green River, Wyoming. On November 24, he arrived at Boulder Dam below Grand Canyon and symbolically bumped his boat into the concrete.

When he got to shore, he sent a telegram to his mother that read, “Okay at Boulder. Haldane.”

Then he returned home to Oregon to his job at the gas station.

Buzz Holmstrom in 1938.