国家地理-2008-08-09 黑峡谷国家公园（在线收听）

The warm glow of the summer morning settles on the slopes of western Colorado. But as the sun climbs higher, deep shadows shield the landscape that remains dark and forbidding. It is among the nation's deepest, steepest and narrowest canyons. You may hear varying explanations for how the Black Canyon of the Gunnison got its name. "Well, there are two theories on that. I think the one that's most popular is that it is so deep and narrow that the sunshine only reaches most of the canyon a short time each day."

As one of America's newest national parks, Black Canyon struggles for the recognition enjoyed by that other canyon park of the Southwest. "Grand Canyon of course is so fabulous and everybody goes there and knows all about it. But you come here and it's so deep and so narrow, and it's just, just awe-inspiring."

Much of the Black Canyon is wilderness, but almost from the moment white settlers arrived in the area; plans were hatched to make this "a canyon of commerce". "By 1880 you saw the Denver and Rio Grand Railroad (and) starting to look at the canyon as a possible way to bring the railroad from the Front Range of Colorado, Denver and Colorado Springs, on a route through to Salt Lake and then perhaps on to San Francisco."

The railroad made its way through 15 miles of the Black Canyon, but today it's mostly under Morrow Point reservoir. "We've got real technical class three whitewater in here." Not far from Black Canyon, Bill Dvorak has been guiding rafting and fishing trips in the Gunnison Gorge Conservation Area since 1982. "Yeah, I really like bringing people into these kinds of places and showing them what it's like when we do preserve these places and how, you know, just how spectacular and how beautiful it is."

Gunnison Gorge National Conservation Area is adjacent to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. At its heart is a wilderness area that is especially popular for rafting and fishing. "You're humbled as a human. Let's put it that way. You go through that and you're a very little piece of something very big and very old and very dramatic."

For millions of years, the Gunnison River has been carving this canyon at work across eons of isolation. Even now it's easy to imagine that you are the first to peer over the rim into the dark soul of the Black Canyon. "Because we don't have so many people, there is, you know, millions of people a year coming to visit the canyon, people do have that opportunity to have a personal relationship with this place."