The longer we went down the river, the deeper the canyon became. This was not an entirely uniform process; there were dips and rises at the surface of the land tabled above us. But gradually, the walls grew higher, and time less meaningful. We stopped when we were hungry, or if there was something interesting to see. MT and T had taken their data already, so there was nothing to do but be on the river. We drifted past the sandy crescents of tiny beaches, populated with tufty grasses, shrubs and small trees, and strait sheer walls of rock that dropped strait into the water. Here and there we encountered other rafters, but we had long stretches of the San Juan to ourselves.
Our last campsite was the one I loved the best. It was on a broad, sandy beach which rose in a gentle slope to the canyon wall. The bottom of the wall had been undercut eons ago by the previous course of the river, making a deep bench under the massive weight of the canyon wall. The bench was maybe 100 feet long and cut maybe 12 feet into the foot of the cliff, and was perhaps 6 feet high and floored with extremely fine sand. As MT and T-and-family pitched their tents in the sudden breeze that presaged a storm, I unrolled my Thermarest in this declivity, feeling cozy and snug there, holed up in the flank of the canyon.
As the rain started to patter down sporadically, MT came up and asked if I minded sharing my snug-hole with her.
"Nope," I said. "Pull up some sleeping bag." So we lounged there under the rock, watching the rain come. At first it fell lightly, but we could see the bellies of the clouds above the cliff-top, 80 feet above us, and they were dark and heavy with rain. Pretty soon it was pelting down hard, with stinging force. The water ran down the cliff face and dripped in a thin curtain at the edge of my snug, but we were dry and cozy, nestled into the amazingly soft sand, cushioned by Thermarest and sleeping bag. For some reason, we started laughing about something - I have not the slightest recollection what - and after that we could not stop. Everything we said was incredibly funny, to us at least, and for 40 minutes or more we giggled and howled and chortled as the storm pounded down around us. We lay there in the fresh sweet storm-washed air, listening to the thunder roll down the canyon, watching the rain pock the smooth surface of the river, and we laughed and laughed. We laughed until we cried, and still we did not stop.
After a while, the storm started to ease up, and with it our laughter, subsiding to chuckles and hiccups and silly grins. L and T and LS emerged from their tent.
"Well, you sounded like you were having fun; what was so funny?" L asked us. MT and I looked at each other.
"We don't know," we said, and started laughing again. Maybe it was the ozone from the storm, or the fresh clean air or some magic of canyon or river, but L and T started laughing with us.
The next day I woke early, watching the light creep across the sky from under my rocky outcrop. The cliff wall opposite me grew slowly lighter, revealing the varnish marks - a trailing patina of dark streaks strafed down the rock from mineral washing down over the centuries - and the contours of the rock itself. This was our last day on the river; a thought that I could barely make sense of. The rest of my life - school, my house, my responsibilities - all seemed so strangely distant, oddly two-dimensional, like something I'd seen in a movie. Even as we packed up our kitchen for the last time, as we loaded our boats, as MT unshipped her oars and I shoved off from the bank and hopped into the boat, I could not shake that sense: that the rest of life wasn't really real, that this was the only reality under the sun.
The San Juan feeds into Lake Powell, a man-made lake created by damming - although some would say damning - the Colorado River with the Glen Canyon dam. Unknown beauties are lost now under the water, drifted in with silt, buried and perhaps destroyed. I never saw it before the dam was built - that was before my time, begun years before I was born - but as we floated the last leg of our trip, I could not help but wonder what lay beneath us, lost forever to our view.
The river here develops more of a laminar flow, a deceptively slow-moving surface underlain by a powerful current. It also begins to broaden out, its muddy back starting to verge out into what will eventually be Lake Powell. Our take-out was before the lake itself; MT hung back, back-rowing to give T time to land his Avon. More experienced than she, he would be able to drive the boat into the shore hard and neatly enough that his wife could grab mooring and hold the boat while he hopped out and stood ready on the bank to help bring us in. I soon saw why this was necessary: as MT put her back into it, hauling hard on the oars, digging them deep and sharp into the water, I suddenly saw just how much faster we were moving now than we had been upstream. This was a common take-out site, and there were other parties lined up along perhaps a hundred yards of river bank, pulling out boats and unloading gear, backing up trailers and loading boats up - but all with half an eye to the river, lest someone need help. I had maybe three seconds to realize that should we miss our landing, there were other hands downstream to try to pull us in before we went entirely past our take-out; but then I saw T splashing quickly along the river's edge from his boat - nestled amongst some vegetation, to which L was holding fast - to a clear area where there was room for us to try to land our boat. It was MT's job to aim us in, and she did it well; it was mine to fling the coiled line to T, a task I'd never performed before. But somehow it went perfectly, the coiled loops of rope unfurling in a flat graceful spiral, right into T's strong hands. He planted his feet and hauled back hard against the river's pull, reeling us in as MT laid on the oars, the two of them pirouetting our Avon in a smooth parabola into the bank.
Then it was just a matter of doing as everyone else was, hauling our boat out of the water, loading things up, getting in the truck for the drive back to Moab. It's maybe a good thing we had the drive ahead of us; it allowed a little time to transition back to the present, something that might have been terribly jarring otherwise. But gradually as we drove I started to feel the mantle of my everyday life begin to settle, gently, upon my shoulders again. By the time we got to Moab and decided to end our trip with really excellent pizza in one of the local restaurants, I was almost back to the present. Almost... but not quite. The world seemed just a bit different now, in some way indefinable, but both subtle and profound. And I can feel that still, all these years later: that sense that I was different, now, that I fit into the world in a way not quite like I had, before the river. Looking back at it, through the filter of time, I wonder if I was aware, then, of that small half-step to the side, that change of perspective; I wonder if I knew, then, that it would live in me, ready to be called up at any time.
Really have to dig that journal out, one of these days.
Showing posts with label river rafting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label river rafting. Show all posts
Monday, July 27, 2009
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Rafting the San Juan: Deep in the Canyon
The second night after our "auxiliary" companions left us, I was pitching my tent, and suddenly I thought: Why? MT had her tent; T and L and LS had theirs. With our smaller company, there was plenty of space in the campsite. I wasn't invading their privacy, and they wouldn't be treading on mine. So I slid my still-rolled tent back into its bag and instead laid out my Thermarest and my sleeping bag, slipped some folded clothes into the sleeping bag's stuff-sack for a pillow, and made my bed under the open sky.
There's something about sleeping in the open like that that is satisfying in a sort of visceral, atavistic way. I don't know what it is; maybe the light play of the night breezes over your face, maybe the sense of openness that even the thin wall of a tent shuts down. Maybe it's the unmuffled whispers of the wild, the small sounds of insects and tiny night-dwellers going about their nocturnal business. But... there's something about it.
One morning I woke up with the coming dawn; in the canyon, the sunlight doesn't strike your face, but the sky is light above you, calling you gently to the waking day. The murmur of the river was soft in my ears, and a cool, fresh breeze played lightly over my face, flirting with my hair. I lay nestled into the soft breast of the sandy earth, my body warm and my face cool with the fading night, and I noticed, on the riverward side of me, tracks. I leaned up on one elbow, frowning at them, trying to decipher them. They came in a line from the river, spreading paw prints bracketing the thin, broken line of a tail-drag, delicate and graceful as a brush stroke. Looking close, I could see the sharp tics of claws, the print of a broad pad, the marks of toes. The tracks were muddled and trodden-over by my head; they circled above me like a halo, knotting together again at the left side of where my head had lain; then they arced back above me and angled away, back toward the river's bank. I narrowed my eyes speculatively at the river, wondering what denizen had come from its waters, paused to peer at me from my right, circled to inspect me again from my left, and then gone on about its business. Clearly a mammal, and the tail stroke looks too thin for a beaver. Foxes have more upright feet, their tracks more dog-like in appearance, not so broad; and coyotes ditto, and much larger than these prints.
Otter, maybe?
This puts a little smile on my face. I was born in the otter moon. Otters have always enchanted me; a juxtaposition of opposites: Playful, yet fiercely protective of their young, sleek yet muscular, equally at home on land on water, in summer and winter. Somehow it pleases me to think that, at least for a few minutes, I might have been as interesting to one of them as they are to me.
I sit in my puddled sleeping bag, looking at the morning coming on, writing now and then in my journal. After a while MT stirs, emerging sleepy and smiling from her tent.
"Look at this," I say, pointing at my little nimbus of tracks.
"Otter," she says, without hesitation, and then, looking at the pattern, she laughs. "It must have come right up to you; I bet it had its face not six inches from yours. You didn't hear it?"
"Not a thing," I said, laughing with her. T and L are stirring now and come to see what we're laughing at. T grins, his teeth white in the dark thicket of his beard.
"Sneaky little buggers," he says, going off cheerfully to start the coleman stove for breakfast.
There's something about sleeping in the open like that that is satisfying in a sort of visceral, atavistic way. I don't know what it is; maybe the light play of the night breezes over your face, maybe the sense of openness that even the thin wall of a tent shuts down. Maybe it's the unmuffled whispers of the wild, the small sounds of insects and tiny night-dwellers going about their nocturnal business. But... there's something about it.
One morning I woke up with the coming dawn; in the canyon, the sunlight doesn't strike your face, but the sky is light above you, calling you gently to the waking day. The murmur of the river was soft in my ears, and a cool, fresh breeze played lightly over my face, flirting with my hair. I lay nestled into the soft breast of the sandy earth, my body warm and my face cool with the fading night, and I noticed, on the riverward side of me, tracks. I leaned up on one elbow, frowning at them, trying to decipher them. They came in a line from the river, spreading paw prints bracketing the thin, broken line of a tail-drag, delicate and graceful as a brush stroke. Looking close, I could see the sharp tics of claws, the print of a broad pad, the marks of toes. The tracks were muddled and trodden-over by my head; they circled above me like a halo, knotting together again at the left side of where my head had lain; then they arced back above me and angled away, back toward the river's bank. I narrowed my eyes speculatively at the river, wondering what denizen had come from its waters, paused to peer at me from my right, circled to inspect me again from my left, and then gone on about its business. Clearly a mammal, and the tail stroke looks too thin for a beaver. Foxes have more upright feet, their tracks more dog-like in appearance, not so broad; and coyotes ditto, and much larger than these prints.
Otter, maybe?
This puts a little smile on my face. I was born in the otter moon. Otters have always enchanted me; a juxtaposition of opposites: Playful, yet fiercely protective of their young, sleek yet muscular, equally at home on land on water, in summer and winter. Somehow it pleases me to think that, at least for a few minutes, I might have been as interesting to one of them as they are to me.
I sit in my puddled sleeping bag, looking at the morning coming on, writing now and then in my journal. After a while MT stirs, emerging sleepy and smiling from her tent.
"Look at this," I say, pointing at my little nimbus of tracks.
"Otter," she says, without hesitation, and then, looking at the pattern, she laughs. "It must have come right up to you; I bet it had its face not six inches from yours. You didn't hear it?"
"Not a thing," I said, laughing with her. T and L are stirring now and come to see what we're laughing at. T grins, his teeth white in the dark thicket of his beard.
"Sneaky little buggers," he says, going off cheerfully to start the coleman stove for breakfast.
Somewhere later along the river we come to the hanging gardens. You have to walk up a little side-canyon to see them; at river's edge you'd never know they were there. But if you know where it is, there is a tiny tributary stream feeding the San Juan from a narrow canyon. If you hike up a bit, you come to a place where a series of descending pools gather on flat pans, dropping in little waterfalls from one level to the next. Most of the pools are relatively shallow; some are warm, heated by sun and rock; many are populated with the fry of what will one day be much larger river fish. Some of the falls are only a matter of a foot or two; some drop eight or ten feet. Especially wonderful are the ones where a lip of overhanging rock pours the water down to the next level. Under the overhanging shelter of the previous level, guarded by the thin, narrow veil of the falling water, grow miraculous little aqua-gardens made of ferns and moss and other water-loving plants, astonishing to find here in the arid heat of southern Utah. Its very unexpectedness makes it a gift of enchantment, a thing of magic. It is tempting to sit in the cool shade behind the falling water and lose one's self in timelessness; but there are other wonders to discover, and the river awaits.
Much of the San Juan is relatively flat, with long, roundabout ox-bows that take three miles to move you one as the crow flies. Here and there there are underwater sand dunes that make "sand waves", little dips and gullies in the water, small, gentle bumps in the ride. But our course will take us through Government Rapids, a class-three rapid. On the day we arrive there, T and MT row over and tie off; we all get out and hike downstream, up a rocky outcrop overlooking the rapids, so that the boat pilots can scout the water. The water flows thick and glassy-smooth over a tongue of rock, flanked on one side by a tall boulder and on the other by the wall of a cliff. I've had cause to wonder if that's where the rapid gets its name: you're between a rock and a hard spot. Just over the falls there's a boiling pit of water, spray flying and water roiling. T and MT engage in a serious, intent conversation about how the water is running and where to aim the boats; T has many years of practice on this and other rivers, and he knows his job. The conversation woud make me nervous elsewhere, but even here it lights a small spark of disquiet; they are spending a long time discussing how not to get in the hole, where the boat can be swamped or flipped, and how to keep off the rock so as not to spin the boat sideways over the drop. MT is frowning in concentration and there is a line of tension in her posture and the set of her shoulders, something that surprises me; she has been so causally competent all along that I'd forgotten that she has only been doing this for a year or so.
After a longish conversation about the best way to shoot the rapids, we hike back to the boats.
"Where do you want me?" I ask MT.
"Right up front, and hang on," she says. "You're going to get wet."
Okay, then. I wriggle down amongst the dry bags and grab the lines on either side of the prow, getting a solid grip. MT rows us out into the current, hauling hard on one oar to turn us nose-on to the rapids, back-rowing to control our pace, digging in light and quick with the opposite oar to straiten us out. We watch T pilot his boat over the drop, catching a glimpse of the tossing Avon as he leaps back up from the water pit, and then we are at the rapid. MT hits it perfectly, strait in, digging her oars to turn a perfectly-executed pirouette around the flank of the boulder, spilling us down the river-race on the center of the wave. We hit the churning cauldron below and bound up like a leaping seal, the sturdy Avon flexing and buoyant, and MT is right: I am soaked by the slap of the waves, shocking cold against my sun-heated skin, and I am laughing hard.
"Okay up there?" MT asks.
"That was perfect!" I crow. "Let's portage back up and do it again!" MT laughs with me, pleased, and well she should be. It was perfect execution, maximum ride and no mistakes. Damn good at what she does, that girl.
[Next: The River's End.]
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Rafting the San Juan: In The Water
Once the boats hit the water, a new world opened up to me.
A lifelong victim of earaches - sometimes caused in childhood by swimming, and eventually resulting in a ruptured eardrum - I am not by and large what I'd consider a water person. But it didn't take long before I started to see the allure of a float trip. MT captained one boat - with me, and a majority of gear, on board - and her Boss T piloted the other, larger boat, with his wife L, their son LS and another couple with a child. Also along was a young woman in a canoe, paddling along beside us, and laden with her own gear.
The San Juan is an easy river, dropping only about 8 feet per mile (although it does have some class-III rapids, and occasional sand waves that occur unexpectedly along its course.) Early on, the river was smooth and quiet, a medium silty brown as we drifted on its gleaming back. There was a moderate amount of river traffic apart from us; it wasn't what I'd call crowded, but our little convoy was one of several that we glimpsed here and there. We drifted along pleasantly, rowing over and tying up to the shore for lunches, when we excavated in the cooler for roast beef and avocado sandwiches, bottled water and juice. In the evenings we tied up and pulled the kitchen gear out of the boats - lugging what seemed an outrageous amount of stuff back and forth, until you realized that it contained tables that cleverly folded up into tight cylindrical bundles, a four-burner Coleman stove, lamps, and a full assortment of cooking gear - not to mention food unlike any I've ever had on a camping trip. We had steaks, we had spaghetti and meatballs, we had chicken cacciatore - not a bit of it freeze-dried, dehydrated, reconstituted or otherwise robbed of flavor or texture. We had wine and beer and sodas. We had sour cream and fresh tomatoes and salad and sliced turkey and fresh bread and mayonnaise. It was like a magic act, every time the cooler was opened: what amazing thing would emerge from it next?
We'd pitch our tents in the evenings - me in my tent, MT in hers, T and L and LS in one, the other couple in another, the lone canoeist on her own. After dinner and clean-up, we'd lounge around, chatting, watching the night creep across the sky, waiting for the bats to come out in the twilight, along with the stars, and start their nightly hunt. We would talk and laugh and tell stories, and I would write in my journal and soak up the peace.
After the first two nights, the first take-out came up at Mexican Hat, a name I'd long known from Tony Hillerman novels. The canoeist and the couple with the young child departed and we continued on, just MT and I in one boat, and T, L, and LS in the other. Much of the weekender traffic on the river departed at the same site, and the river grew distinctly quieter. I lay back against the padded side of the boat, wriggling my rump down comfortably amongst the dry bags, letting my head lay back on the warm grey rubber of the Avon.
"There," MT said quietly. I looked around at her.
"There, what?" I asked, wondering if she'd seen some wildlife I'd missed by lounging.
"I've been waiting for that - the moment you finally relaxed. I knew it'd come, but sometimes it takes a few days."
"What do you mean?" I asked her, half-laughing. "I've been having a great time."
"Yeah - but just now you relaxed. All the way. You just put down the rest of your life and came to live on the river."
I looked at her for a moment, and a small smile started somewhere in my chest and emerged onto my lips. "So I did," I said softly, and laid my head back against the warm flank of the boat once more, smiling at the deep fathomless turquoise sky.
Now, many years down the line, I've come to recognize that as the cardinal sign of a really great vacation: that moment when you surrender yourself completely to it, letting go of your "regular" life so completely that you start to lose track of time; that all the world is Now. No past; no future. Just Now. Just what is right here in this moment, both timeless and eternal, completely sufficient unto itself.
Somewhere along the line (Sand Island?) we stopped at a Kachina panel, petroglyphs made by the Anasazi or other ancient cultures. This panel rises high above a rock bench; there are footholds carved into the flank of the bench, shallow dents that were somehow sufficient ladder for the artists to surmount the hump of the rock and gain access to the cliff face where they made their art. The panel rises impossibly high - too high for a person to reach - and there are, carved into the sandstone wall, holes where I guessed that some kind of scaffolding was once butted into the rock, allowing the artists more scope for their work.
Somewhere else along the way we stopped at River House, a small cliff dwelling. The river was faster and higher there, and tying up a bit tricky; there wasn't much bank, and we were moving relatively fast. MT rowed us hard toward the bank, and I managed to grab hold of some vegetation and, hauling hard, pull us in toward the poking, tangled branches of some trees that were half-submerged at the river's edge. T, having already secured his own boat, splashed over and caught the line I threw him, heaving back once with the skill of long practice, and effectively snugging our boat into a safe tie-down.
The walk to River House was extremely hot; we crossed a silty flat - striped here and there with unexpected slimy gullies of standing water, and thick with resillient, shrubby growth - assaulted in equal measure by the sun and a plague of small, stinging black flies. The air was completely still, hard as a brick wall with the heat. Once clear of the wiry thickets of undergrowth, the flat silty pan was easier going - but not much, as we struggled through the shifting sand and the oppressive glare of the baking sun. River House rose ahead of us, halfway up a cliff wall. The climb up the cliff was easier and more pleasant than the slog across the flats to get there, and once there, the wisdom of the Anasazi becomes immediately apparent: the dwelling is situated in such as way that it is bathed in a cool, pleasant breeze, one that is completely absent directly below us on the canyon floor. The breath of the canyon lifts our sweaty hair off our necks and soothes or hot skin, and we drop into timelessness once more.
River House is small, maybe 7 or 8 dwellings, but surprisingly snug. The houses have been built close under the overhanging mass of the cliff above, floored by a soft, fine silt and roofed by the masive weight or rock overhead. I poke my head into one dwelling and see, on its ceiling, paintings. A handprint, made in some white substance. The unknown artist has then drawn wavy finger-lines down the palm. There are two or three such handprints there; and for a moment I imagine the reflected light of fire against the stone, the shine of eyes watching as this warm hand traces these lines on the rock, never realizing that a thousand years hence other eyes will see it, and think of the artist so long gone... and wonder.
Higher on the belly of the overhanging rock there are a few small petroglyphs... a snake, some bits of patterns I do not completely recall. Here and there on ledges of tumbled stone, where some of the dwellings have begun to crumble, people have placed tiny potsherds that they have found over the years in the dwelling: Some plain, some with fragments of patterning on them. Here too are bits of bone or flint, maybe part of some tool; here a feather, there the tiny skull of some animal, offerings of rememberance to a vanished people.
For a while we have River House to ourselves, but from our aerie I can see other people walking across the pan. Soon we are joined by others, smiling and friendly, but somehow hushed up here, as if this were a cathedral of some kind. And perhaps it is.
After a while we make our way back down the cliff and across the hot flats, even more oppressive now, with the memory of the cool, sighing breeze of River House. We battle our way back through the scrub and to our boats, now flanked by the boats of others. We pile in, untie our moorings and push off, down the river.
[Next: Deep in the Canyon.]
A lifelong victim of earaches - sometimes caused in childhood by swimming, and eventually resulting in a ruptured eardrum - I am not by and large what I'd consider a water person. But it didn't take long before I started to see the allure of a float trip. MT captained one boat - with me, and a majority of gear, on board - and her Boss T piloted the other, larger boat, with his wife L, their son LS and another couple with a child. Also along was a young woman in a canoe, paddling along beside us, and laden with her own gear.
The San Juan is an easy river, dropping only about 8 feet per mile (although it does have some class-III rapids, and occasional sand waves that occur unexpectedly along its course.) Early on, the river was smooth and quiet, a medium silty brown as we drifted on its gleaming back. There was a moderate amount of river traffic apart from us; it wasn't what I'd call crowded, but our little convoy was one of several that we glimpsed here and there. We drifted along pleasantly, rowing over and tying up to the shore for lunches, when we excavated in the cooler for roast beef and avocado sandwiches, bottled water and juice. In the evenings we tied up and pulled the kitchen gear out of the boats - lugging what seemed an outrageous amount of stuff back and forth, until you realized that it contained tables that cleverly folded up into tight cylindrical bundles, a four-burner Coleman stove, lamps, and a full assortment of cooking gear - not to mention food unlike any I've ever had on a camping trip. We had steaks, we had spaghetti and meatballs, we had chicken cacciatore - not a bit of it freeze-dried, dehydrated, reconstituted or otherwise robbed of flavor or texture. We had wine and beer and sodas. We had sour cream and fresh tomatoes and salad and sliced turkey and fresh bread and mayonnaise. It was like a magic act, every time the cooler was opened: what amazing thing would emerge from it next?
We'd pitch our tents in the evenings - me in my tent, MT in hers, T and L and LS in one, the other couple in another, the lone canoeist on her own. After dinner and clean-up, we'd lounge around, chatting, watching the night creep across the sky, waiting for the bats to come out in the twilight, along with the stars, and start their nightly hunt. We would talk and laugh and tell stories, and I would write in my journal and soak up the peace.
After the first two nights, the first take-out came up at Mexican Hat, a name I'd long known from Tony Hillerman novels. The canoeist and the couple with the young child departed and we continued on, just MT and I in one boat, and T, L, and LS in the other. Much of the weekender traffic on the river departed at the same site, and the river grew distinctly quieter. I lay back against the padded side of the boat, wriggling my rump down comfortably amongst the dry bags, letting my head lay back on the warm grey rubber of the Avon.
"There," MT said quietly. I looked around at her.
"There, what?" I asked, wondering if she'd seen some wildlife I'd missed by lounging.
"I've been waiting for that - the moment you finally relaxed. I knew it'd come, but sometimes it takes a few days."
"What do you mean?" I asked her, half-laughing. "I've been having a great time."
"Yeah - but just now you relaxed. All the way. You just put down the rest of your life and came to live on the river."
I looked at her for a moment, and a small smile started somewhere in my chest and emerged onto my lips. "So I did," I said softly, and laid my head back against the warm flank of the boat once more, smiling at the deep fathomless turquoise sky.
Now, many years down the line, I've come to recognize that as the cardinal sign of a really great vacation: that moment when you surrender yourself completely to it, letting go of your "regular" life so completely that you start to lose track of time; that all the world is Now. No past; no future. Just Now. Just what is right here in this moment, both timeless and eternal, completely sufficient unto itself.
Somewhere along the line (Sand Island?) we stopped at a Kachina panel, petroglyphs made by the Anasazi or other ancient cultures. This panel rises high above a rock bench; there are footholds carved into the flank of the bench, shallow dents that were somehow sufficient ladder for the artists to surmount the hump of the rock and gain access to the cliff face where they made their art. The panel rises impossibly high - too high for a person to reach - and there are, carved into the sandstone wall, holes where I guessed that some kind of scaffolding was once butted into the rock, allowing the artists more scope for their work.
Somewhere else along the way we stopped at River House, a small cliff dwelling. The river was faster and higher there, and tying up a bit tricky; there wasn't much bank, and we were moving relatively fast. MT rowed us hard toward the bank, and I managed to grab hold of some vegetation and, hauling hard, pull us in toward the poking, tangled branches of some trees that were half-submerged at the river's edge. T, having already secured his own boat, splashed over and caught the line I threw him, heaving back once with the skill of long practice, and effectively snugging our boat into a safe tie-down.
The walk to River House was extremely hot; we crossed a silty flat - striped here and there with unexpected slimy gullies of standing water, and thick with resillient, shrubby growth - assaulted in equal measure by the sun and a plague of small, stinging black flies. The air was completely still, hard as a brick wall with the heat. Once clear of the wiry thickets of undergrowth, the flat silty pan was easier going - but not much, as we struggled through the shifting sand and the oppressive glare of the baking sun. River House rose ahead of us, halfway up a cliff wall. The climb up the cliff was easier and more pleasant than the slog across the flats to get there, and once there, the wisdom of the Anasazi becomes immediately apparent: the dwelling is situated in such as way that it is bathed in a cool, pleasant breeze, one that is completely absent directly below us on the canyon floor. The breath of the canyon lifts our sweaty hair off our necks and soothes or hot skin, and we drop into timelessness once more.
River House is small, maybe 7 or 8 dwellings, but surprisingly snug. The houses have been built close under the overhanging mass of the cliff above, floored by a soft, fine silt and roofed by the masive weight or rock overhead. I poke my head into one dwelling and see, on its ceiling, paintings. A handprint, made in some white substance. The unknown artist has then drawn wavy finger-lines down the palm. There are two or three such handprints there; and for a moment I imagine the reflected light of fire against the stone, the shine of eyes watching as this warm hand traces these lines on the rock, never realizing that a thousand years hence other eyes will see it, and think of the artist so long gone... and wonder.
Higher on the belly of the overhanging rock there are a few small petroglyphs... a snake, some bits of patterns I do not completely recall. Here and there on ledges of tumbled stone, where some of the dwellings have begun to crumble, people have placed tiny potsherds that they have found over the years in the dwelling: Some plain, some with fragments of patterning on them. Here too are bits of bone or flint, maybe part of some tool; here a feather, there the tiny skull of some animal, offerings of rememberance to a vanished people.
For a while we have River House to ourselves, but from our aerie I can see other people walking across the pan. Soon we are joined by others, smiling and friendly, but somehow hushed up here, as if this were a cathedral of some kind. And perhaps it is.
After a while we make our way back down the cliff and across the hot flats, even more oppressive now, with the memory of the cool, sighing breeze of River House. We battle our way back through the scrub and to our boats, now flanked by the boats of others. We pile in, untie our moorings and push off, down the river.
[Next: Deep in the Canyon.]
Monday, July 20, 2009
Rafting the San Juan: The Beginning
So the last post reminded me, forcibly, of an altogether different wilderness trip I took, lo these many years ago, when I was in vet school. I thought about it with nostalgic smiles and a sort of vague, sweet longing; but it won't go away, so I'm bringing forth its ghost onto the blog to see what it looks like in the light of day.
I started vet school on the heels of my Master's Degree in Wildlife Biology, earned at the same University. In my Graduate School days I had a friend and compatriot, MT, who was a "Fish Head" - a grad student majoring in the Fisheries half of the Fisheries and Wildlife Biology department. We mammal-chasers were, by contrast, "Bunny Huggers", and there were our near cousins, the "Tree Huggers" (Forestry majors). At any rate, we formed a loosely-knit cadre of students; to some degree we were all in this together - as we all had at least oral exams to deal with, and some form of dissertation - but in other ways we were not: Some had doctoral exams to deal with, some had field work, some had advisor conflicts, others had TA-ships, and all of us had completely different projects upon which to work. As a result we were not nearly so cohesive a group as, say, my vet school class. In vet school, for the first two years we were almost without exception in the same classes exactly as all the other vet students (there being only a few elective options to the core curriculum for freshman and sophomore year); and while we diverged slightly more in Junior and Senior years, we had another reason to bond, and bond tightly: My class was the first of the vaunted but as-yet untried New Curriculum, a re-tooled course of study that my University had spent several years and a great deal of money and effort to create. We knew the eyes of the entire School of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Science were upon us, staff and student both, and we pulled together as a team: backing each other up and helping each other out, keen to prove that the education we were getting was better than what came before it, and that we were worthy of the doctorates eventually bestowed upon us, honestly earned and rightfully ours.
But I digress.
Despite something of a natural divide between the Fish Heads and the Bunny Huggers - us not sharing a great many classes in common - and an equally natural divide in terms of experience and personality, MT and I hit it off, finding in each other some kind of kinship of spirit that I, at least, enjoyed in both warmth and humor. MT was in many ways unlike me - but there was something about how her mind worked that I liked, and she had a forthrightness to her that I appreciate even now, though we many years ago lost touch. I'll always feel a kindness towards her, wherever she may be and whatever she may be doing. An interesting girl, and a good person, I think.
MT graduated from her Master's program before I did, and went off to Utah to work. But we stayed in touch as I fought my way through vet school, and she invited me, one summer, to raft the San Juan with her and her boss - plus his family, and some other people. This was to be partly a working trip - MT and her boss would be doing some measurements and gathering data along the river - but it was partly also for fun. Because the trip was a working gig, the State of Utah provided the boats (Avon self-bailers) and the gear. MT and her boss T provided the expertise, and the group of rafters provided the food. Luckily for me, my main job was to show up in Moab with my sleeping bag and basic camping gear; no need for a camp stove or a canteen or any of that: The State of Utah had better than I did, and there was no need to double up.
Moab is beautiful, in an arid sand-stony way; it's not for everyone, but having cut my Graduate School teeth on the works of Edward Abbey and Tony Hillerman, and having lived in semi-arid Colorado most of my life, I found it enchanting. Not everyone would appreciate the dry, red silty soil, speckled in little green knots of sage and other scrub, scantily shaded here and there by desert pinon and other scruffy, stunted trees; but I defy anyone not to catch their breath at the stunning skies, the deep intense blue of turquoise, punctuated with towering cumulo-nimbus formations, achingly white in sun, turning a deep glowering slatey purple when they were ready to break with rain.
There is a smell to the desert; dry and spicy, made of sage and pine and heat, underlain with the scent of oily resins baked hot in the sun. But I read somewhere, once (I wish I could remember where), a quote by a Native child, perhaps Navajo, maybe Hopi: Someone asked him what the desert smelled like. He said, "It smells like rain." I loved that idea... and certainly in our case it was at least at times true, as we did get rain there, in the desert: shocking downpours, sometimes, or quick spats; and other times we could see rain falling in the distance, a wispy veil descending from the belly of a storm cloud, dissipating before it hit the baking earth. And then, it's true: you can smell it in the air, taste it on the breeze: rain. The desert DOES smell like rain.
One thing I didn't have for camping was a tent. But as it happens, the State would sometimes go buy lots of used camping equipment off of some of the commercial rafting outfits who were retiring and replacing gear. MT, having been sent on such an errand, had sorted through one such lot, keeping what the State could use for its workers, retiring again what it could not. From that second-retirement lot I bought (for $10, exactly what it had cost the State) a used 2-man tent: a bit gritty with river silt, slightly battered in the tent pegs, but with a serviceable rain fly and more than roomy enough for me. The State provided her with a dry bag, so I used hers. I had my ever-handy supply of bug dope, sun screen, and film; my trusty Minolta (which later would be stolen by a roommate, and later still replaced as a graduation present); water shoes and lightweight hikers and sunglasses and hat and bandanna; toothbrush and castille soap and a journal. Clothes, including rain gear. My sleeping bag and therma-rest pad. The usual sundries of camping, but not pared down as far as normal: MT had coached me that rafting was not really like camping in that respect: You might have to carry your gear from boat to camp site and back, but in between the boat does the carrying for you.
In Moab, we did some shopping, and I "helped" gather and pack the gear for the trip. By this I mean I mainly watched MT and T do it, efficient and skilled in their comfortable teamwork. I lifted a few things, fetched and carried a little, but mainly just stayed out of their way. We gathered gear and people, and took everything to the put-in. Then we made the shuttle to the take-out sites, where we would of course need vehicles to return us home again. Because there were several people only coming along for the first few days, there were two take-outs, the near one needed only a vehicle, the far one had to have the boat trailer as well.
It was a long day, driving the shuttles; I, introvert child that I am, sat in the back of the vehicle and let the conversation flow over me, letting my eye wander over the ruddy landscape, letting my mind cast itself loose and fly along beside us as we drove. Sometimes MT would sing; she has a beautiful voice, clear and sweet. We had Bonie Raitt, Eric Clapton, 10,000 Maniacs to keep us company, though by and large all we needed was the landscape through which we drove and the easy camaraderie in the vehicle.
[Next up: we hit the water.]
I started vet school on the heels of my Master's Degree in Wildlife Biology, earned at the same University. In my Graduate School days I had a friend and compatriot, MT, who was a "Fish Head" - a grad student majoring in the Fisheries half of the Fisheries and Wildlife Biology department. We mammal-chasers were, by contrast, "Bunny Huggers", and there were our near cousins, the "Tree Huggers" (Forestry majors). At any rate, we formed a loosely-knit cadre of students; to some degree we were all in this together - as we all had at least oral exams to deal with, and some form of dissertation - but in other ways we were not: Some had doctoral exams to deal with, some had field work, some had advisor conflicts, others had TA-ships, and all of us had completely different projects upon which to work. As a result we were not nearly so cohesive a group as, say, my vet school class. In vet school, for the first two years we were almost without exception in the same classes exactly as all the other vet students (there being only a few elective options to the core curriculum for freshman and sophomore year); and while we diverged slightly more in Junior and Senior years, we had another reason to bond, and bond tightly: My class was the first of the vaunted but as-yet untried New Curriculum, a re-tooled course of study that my University had spent several years and a great deal of money and effort to create. We knew the eyes of the entire School of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Science were upon us, staff and student both, and we pulled together as a team: backing each other up and helping each other out, keen to prove that the education we were getting was better than what came before it, and that we were worthy of the doctorates eventually bestowed upon us, honestly earned and rightfully ours.
But I digress.
Despite something of a natural divide between the Fish Heads and the Bunny Huggers - us not sharing a great many classes in common - and an equally natural divide in terms of experience and personality, MT and I hit it off, finding in each other some kind of kinship of spirit that I, at least, enjoyed in both warmth and humor. MT was in many ways unlike me - but there was something about how her mind worked that I liked, and she had a forthrightness to her that I appreciate even now, though we many years ago lost touch. I'll always feel a kindness towards her, wherever she may be and whatever she may be doing. An interesting girl, and a good person, I think.
MT graduated from her Master's program before I did, and went off to Utah to work. But we stayed in touch as I fought my way through vet school, and she invited me, one summer, to raft the San Juan with her and her boss - plus his family, and some other people. This was to be partly a working trip - MT and her boss would be doing some measurements and gathering data along the river - but it was partly also for fun. Because the trip was a working gig, the State of Utah provided the boats (Avon self-bailers) and the gear. MT and her boss T provided the expertise, and the group of rafters provided the food. Luckily for me, my main job was to show up in Moab with my sleeping bag and basic camping gear; no need for a camp stove or a canteen or any of that: The State of Utah had better than I did, and there was no need to double up.
Moab is beautiful, in an arid sand-stony way; it's not for everyone, but having cut my Graduate School teeth on the works of Edward Abbey and Tony Hillerman, and having lived in semi-arid Colorado most of my life, I found it enchanting. Not everyone would appreciate the dry, red silty soil, speckled in little green knots of sage and other scrub, scantily shaded here and there by desert pinon and other scruffy, stunted trees; but I defy anyone not to catch their breath at the stunning skies, the deep intense blue of turquoise, punctuated with towering cumulo-nimbus formations, achingly white in sun, turning a deep glowering slatey purple when they were ready to break with rain.
There is a smell to the desert; dry and spicy, made of sage and pine and heat, underlain with the scent of oily resins baked hot in the sun. But I read somewhere, once (I wish I could remember where), a quote by a Native child, perhaps Navajo, maybe Hopi: Someone asked him what the desert smelled like. He said, "It smells like rain." I loved that idea... and certainly in our case it was at least at times true, as we did get rain there, in the desert: shocking downpours, sometimes, or quick spats; and other times we could see rain falling in the distance, a wispy veil descending from the belly of a storm cloud, dissipating before it hit the baking earth. And then, it's true: you can smell it in the air, taste it on the breeze: rain. The desert DOES smell like rain.
One thing I didn't have for camping was a tent. But as it happens, the State would sometimes go buy lots of used camping equipment off of some of the commercial rafting outfits who were retiring and replacing gear. MT, having been sent on such an errand, had sorted through one such lot, keeping what the State could use for its workers, retiring again what it could not. From that second-retirement lot I bought (for $10, exactly what it had cost the State) a used 2-man tent: a bit gritty with river silt, slightly battered in the tent pegs, but with a serviceable rain fly and more than roomy enough for me. The State provided her with a dry bag, so I used hers. I had my ever-handy supply of bug dope, sun screen, and film; my trusty Minolta (which later would be stolen by a roommate, and later still replaced as a graduation present); water shoes and lightweight hikers and sunglasses and hat and bandanna; toothbrush and castille soap and a journal. Clothes, including rain gear. My sleeping bag and therma-rest pad. The usual sundries of camping, but not pared down as far as normal: MT had coached me that rafting was not really like camping in that respect: You might have to carry your gear from boat to camp site and back, but in between the boat does the carrying for you.
In Moab, we did some shopping, and I "helped" gather and pack the gear for the trip. By this I mean I mainly watched MT and T do it, efficient and skilled in their comfortable teamwork. I lifted a few things, fetched and carried a little, but mainly just stayed out of their way. We gathered gear and people, and took everything to the put-in. Then we made the shuttle to the take-out sites, where we would of course need vehicles to return us home again. Because there were several people only coming along for the first few days, there were two take-outs, the near one needed only a vehicle, the far one had to have the boat trailer as well.
It was a long day, driving the shuttles; I, introvert child that I am, sat in the back of the vehicle and let the conversation flow over me, letting my eye wander over the ruddy landscape, letting my mind cast itself loose and fly along beside us as we drove. Sometimes MT would sing; she has a beautiful voice, clear and sweet. We had Bonie Raitt, Eric Clapton, 10,000 Maniacs to keep us company, though by and large all we needed was the landscape through which we drove and the easy camaraderie in the vehicle.
[Next up: we hit the water.]
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