comment on structure

The book follows along chronologically except for a few places. The chapter regarding his raft trip mentions at least a week on the river, more than his usual two days a week off. His account of Havasu and his entrapment in the canyon takes five weeks, another unlikely event during his season in the wilderness. Still, both chapters bring in the elements of danger and conflict, and however jarring this is to the chronology, they fit into an overarching theme: The wilderness changes people, mostly for the better and sometimes terminally, such as the death of the sixty-year-old man.