Grand Canyon Journals - Part 7: The Dream and the Beginning

I stepped out of the airport into a brilliant white light that I hadn't seen all winter long back in Iowa; sunlight. I quickly shed my jacket and stuffed into my already bulging duffel bag containing all my gear for the next month. It felt good to be free of the 'canned' air that I had been breathing most of the day. After all, I was a mountain man and mountain men weren't supposed to be riding in airplanes but rather going on wild dory boat journeys down the entire length of the Grand Canyon.

Being unfamiliar with the Flagstaff, Arizona airport, I waited for a half hour at the taxi sign before it occurred to me that traffic might be so light that one wasn't going to come unless I called. I wandered back inside, found a phone and dialed myself a ride, which showed up about a half hour later. I threw my gear into the back of the cab and we took off, heading for a motel on the other side of town where my odyssey would begin. After awhile, the cabbie broke the silence by asking me what brings myself to town. In my best John Wesley Powell/mountain man/explorer/adventurer voice that I could muster I told him that I was spending a month boating down the Colorado River in a wooden dory boat. It didn't get the response that I had expected and in fact drew no response at all. Silence prevailed.

The last two years had been longer than most. I had negotiated being allowed to take a month off from work when I was hired to my current job, but it had still taken two years of saving it up to accumulate the time. I had graduated college with slightly more than one hundred dollars, a car, and what could fit in it for possessions to my name. This trip had cost a chunk of change to reserve a seat so I had saved and scrimped by on much less than I wanted for the last two years to afford it. It all started as a kid when I learned for the first time that my father had rafted a portion of the Colorado when in college. It peaked my interest enough to check out a book from the library on the subject and the haunting images of small wooden boats amidst huge muddy waves are still burned into my memory. Then in my teens, I discovered a book by Edward Abbey entitled "Down the River," which was an account of a trip he did down the river in a wooden dory boat and I just knew I had to go. Now here I am two years after I started saving for the trip and I am less than a day away from fulfilling my dream.

I arrived at the motel just after noon and being that it was hot and I had a lot of time to kill, I did what any mountain man would do; take a siesta. A few hours later, hunger drove me from my cool lair out into the heat and I started walking around town looking for a place to eat. I chose a McDonald's restaurant not only because I was poor and couldn't afford much else, but because I wanted to clog my arteries with one more greasy delight before disappearing off the civilized map for a month. Despite my financial situation, I ended up buying an extra meal and giving it to a homeless man sitting out front waiting for his luck to change. He had come in while I had been eating asking other patrons for money but the workers had shown him the door. Now as I spoke a few words with the man while he was hungrily eating, they were giving me a nasty look through the window. I just smiled, saluted them and walked back to my motel.

I had imagined a group of other adventuring type adults in their physical prime but when I walked in the room it looked straight out of a geriatric convention. I was the youngest person by over forty years! My stomach sank as I sat in a chair apart from the rest waiting for the trip briefing to begin and it wouldn't be until the next day before it rose back up and settled back in it's rightful place. Soon another older but physically fit man whom I later learned was named Bronco, strode into the room and started briefing the clients on the trip; everything from how to relieve your bowels to righting a capsized boat. He fielded questions from the geriatrics such as 'Are there port-a-potties at every camp?' or 'Is it true that there are hot springs at every camp?' or 'Should I take sunscreen?' or I'm supposed to go to the bathroom in that!' I was stunned! How could people sign up for a trip like this when they had to ask questions like that or be squeamish about crapping in an ammo box with a TOILET SEAT?

It was forbidden for legal reasons for the trip outfitters to provide alcoholic beverages for the guests and they didn't want guests to bring lots of heavy cases of beer on the trip that they would have to pack, so they passed around a sign-up sheet where you could 'buy' cases of beer and it would be waiting for you down at the boats tomorrow. I really didn't want to be boozing it up with 'grandma' and 'grandpa' every evening so when it came to me, I just passed it on by with out buying any. For the final order of business, we were issued two waterproof bags and an ammo box (not the one for crapping in) for all our gear and dismissed. All the geriatrics stood around probably discussing their AARP membership but I didn't wait around, instead heading back to my room to begin my final packing.

Long before the sun even though about rising I was up walking around trying to sooth my jumbled up nerves with brisk clean air as I anxiously awaited our departure time. I watched the sun rise up over the desert scrub behind the motel and then went in to eat my continental breakfast consisting of cold cereal and a bagel and really not tasting very continental at all. Finally two vans pulling what seemed like incredibly tiny and fragile wooden dory boats behind them pulled in, we loaded our gear, and set off for Lee's Ferry on the Colorado River.

When we arrived, the river seemed very unassuming and appeared to be like every other desert river you have seen, wide and stretched out between two rocky banks of scrub brush and sand. I can imagine Powell had thought the worst was open when he reached this point after surviving the narrow and turbulent canyons under the dirty waters of the current Lake Powell 'Sewage Lagoon.' I was pleasantly surprised when I met the rest of the crew that was in charge of giving the other 14 clients and I the time of our lives over the next month. Most of them were around my age and all of them were pictures of health with tans I hadn't thought possible for early April. They were stashing away case after case of beer in the boats making me instantly regret my decision to abstain last night. I didn't know then that as people left the trip in the weeks ahead, many of them would inherit their leftover beer to me so that I always seemed to have plenty.

The rest of the clients stood in a gaggle trying to stay out of the way while I strolled on down to the river that I had been dreaming about for most of my life. It was an emerald green and felt like a melted Popsicle on a hot summer day. I kneeled down at the edge of the river and watched the strong current go rushing by in swirling vortices of water. I prayed a little prayer of sorts to the Colorado River asking that if I respected it, would it respect me or more importantly my life? I took the silence as affirmative and walked back up the beach to the awaiting boats. I took the remaining available spot in the bow of one of the dories and we shoved off into the river. There was no going back now.