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GOBLIN CITY Clay Johnson White River row of heron tracks across the moon It began, as much in this country does, with John Wesley Powell, with, in fact, a single tantalizing sentence on page 182 of Major Powell's Canyons of the Colorado. He called the place Gob- lin City. For three years after reading that sentence, I haunted libraries and historical societies, dug through old diaries and jour- nals. Goblin City was something special. No one knew where it was, not anymore. The mysterious diary of General Hughes, mentioned by Powell, had vanished. Trappers and explorers from the 1820s through the 1890s had traveled out of their way to see the place, had written in their journals of Goblin City. A map of the Colorado and Utah Territories from the late 1880s had Gob- lin City located in Colorado Territory, too far up the White River to agree with the travel information gleaned from the diaries of Dellenbaugh, Steward and Bishop, who had walked up the White River for two days in hot July of 1871, just to see the place. Fi- nally, thanks to a chance to view Captain Bishop's original diary, I held a copy of a tiny pencil sketch of Goblin City, hardly larger than a postage stamp. Hopefully, the rock formations as shown in the sketch would match the terrain in the place I'd found using clues from all the old diaries. It was time for an expedition. I'm ten years older than the Major was, several inches taller, and unlike the Major, have two arms. Still, on this expedition, I am the Major. My crew: my spouse Cliftia Johnson, Louise Murch, and Neisha Gates. The equipment consists of two canoes (un- named) and provisions for a week (which we'll consume in two days). It must be appreciated that Gates, like the rest of the crew, 3