The Sound of Water

Two-Hundred-Seventy-Nine Miles Above Lava No More…

(That’s the length of the whole Colorado river in Grand Canyon, from Lees Ferry to Lake Mead. When you’ve just run Lava and you’re at the bottom, you have exactly that number of miles until the next time…)

Funny to watch the progression, the old adrenaline rush slowly settling like after a flash flood. Cracks and ripples in mud, a footprint here and there. How the place keeps changing. The sheer massiveness used to make my heart pound in my ears, gotta hit every hole and feel that energy. These days it kinda wraps around me like a blanket, still protecting me from that other, outside world, just different. In the old days I desperately needed our band of brothers and sisters, a tribe to belong to after escaping Chicago. Now I can just drift, finally able to just appreciate whatever floats by. In his later days, Drifter used to say; “The Colorado River through Grand Canyon is the best river trip anywhere, except for the rapids.” Now I get it.

My young pards think me too conservative, call me “Mr. Safety” and smile. Then I climb into my well-worn but now seldom-seen kayak and boof some drop and their heads crook ever so slightly, like confused puppies. Outside I’m fat, balding and slow. Inside I’m still that wild reckless bastard. We used to jump in above Hermit with the peeps, cackling at how their eyes were about to be opened, or night float below 210 mile. That was before all the best stuff was outlawed. Now I’m listening to their stories. Same story, different actors. I’m good with that. They don’t need some pathetic old fucker taking air-time.

Work enough free trips, get along, bust your ass, maybe you make it through to the tailwaves and are welcomed into the fold. Share some beers in the shade of the Great Umbrella. You walk up the hillside to the scout, gnarled hands like tree limbs adorned with turquoise and silver point out the rocks and holes, share the grace and growling bellies in tense camaraderie. There were others who wanted it as bad as I did. Some of ‘em were better boaters. Some were, well, less cocky. Or prettier or more bronzed and muscled in the summer sun. But I led every hike because I just couldn’t stay still in all that power. I devoured every bit of interp ‘cause I groaned to know my lover better, inside and out. So them stories and my music, I guess that was part of what convinced ‘em to let me in in spite of my, shall we say, idiot-syncrasies. Hell, any monkey can row a boat.

Mom sang with the USO during World War II. They’d motor her out into the Straights of Juan de Fuca to the warships returning from the Pacific, and she’d sing for the boys that made it home. She died young, so I borrowed her voice. She didn’t need it any more anyway. It makes people feel good, slows ‘em down a bit so they can have a look around. It’s one of the reasons they keep me around. Maybe the only reason, come to think about it. The crew can go have a bath, a beer, hang on the boats in the cool of the evening while I entertain. I don’t mind a bit. It’s good for my colleagues, good for the folks, keeps the callouses on my fingertips.

I’ve been watching crews for nearly fifty years. None of us are here because we fit in real well. Anti-authoritarian, smart, hard-working rogues, and damn proud of it. Talented misfits. Try keeping your cool for couple weeks, 24-7, when it’s way over a hundred degrees, black rocks baking your brains out, some passenger keeps crapping in the pee bucket, some helpful cook with a good back just put both cast-iron dutch ovens in the same com-box, and Lava is tomorrow.

“How do you guys do it? Man, that’s hard work!” But listen real good and you hear the tinge of envy. The part of ‘em that hungers for whatever “it” is—the sharing of the sweat, backs groaning against the wind, boats reflected in the green water, sliver of sky shimmering in the heat, tired, crazed, exhilarated. It’s an intimate secret, a sharing, a gift.

Crews come and go, binding with one another, building an unspoken creed, each clan speaking a language a little bit different from the others, a little bit the same, shaped by water flowing over boulders. You can’t do this job without ego, but it’s all about how it’s managed. I know—I was there. We thought we were the shit for sure. Clients worshipped us—River Gods, class 5, couldn’t miss, “Dude, nice line!” Out there I’m just another schmuck, but down here, I’m a river god. Figured it all out.

Now I get it. Everyone thinks they’re the shit. It don’t matter how we pull it off—whichever company, whichever equipment, whichever river, oar handle or motor cob, however we slice the freakin’ tomatoes, thinkin’ we invented it all. Wake the peeps at dawn with the recorder, paint the toenails, wear the sarong, tweet the whiskey bottle. We each must follow these ancient rituals in our turn, absolutely. I think it important, however, to try and remember our place in the progression. There’s been maybe nearly sixty years of professional river guiding, give or take. The roar continues in the background, we listen to the echoes.

I remember when it first hit me. I went for a coffee at Macy’s, someone saw my AzRA ballcap, started some small talk over a lattè about the best goddam trip on earth. Changed their lives it did, that river, that Canyon. Offhandedly I asked them who their guides were.

“Um, was there a Jim or something?”

I asked them what company they went with. They couldn’t even remember that part.

What they DID remember with the clarity of heavenly vision was The Canyon. The River. Our Colorado. The dawns and sunsets setting the cliffs on fire, the sound of moving water, the cool morning breeze before the Great Oppressor hit the beach, the smell of the wet desert after a summer monsoon, the coffee call echoing, the shrill buzz of the summer cicadas, the trill of the canyon wren.

I’ll take that with me, put it in my pocket. It wasn’t about me, as much as I once needed to think it was. Stories are written about how lucky we are and all that. I get it and I feel it too. But deep down where we don’t talk about it I think many of us do think maybe it’s really just a little tiny bit about us, don’t we? I’ve seen some crazy shit over the years—pards screaming till dawn on some tiny beach about lost platoon buddies, a woman with cancer asking if we’d be okay if she died right then and there, hitting the stupid hole in Crystal and by some miracle coming out upright, watching a five-ton motor rig flip with fifteen souls aboard. Folks need the extremes, it’s why they’re there, partly. Adds flavor. Wakes ‘em up a bit after all the baloney out there. Hell, that’s why I’m down there, partly.

Mabye sometimes life on the edge helps us see the magic in the everyday. Whacks us and wakes us to the grace of how precious each moment really is. Trip of a lifetime, changed my life. It ain’t about us.

Laying on my boat, gazing up at how the black cliffs shape and mould the starry sky a bit different at each camp, tomorrow’s river known; the strokes and ferry angles, which cookies to keep handy on top of the side-box for lunch, where the parking beach is for the next hike, savoring every moment as if it were the last. Not getting all belly-achy at Hot Na Na so I can eat my pancakes in peace. Watching the guests fussing with tents on night one, knowing how in exactly two days the magic will devour them and they won’t even bother. I’m slower, weaker of mind and sinew, guzzling the Gatorade and shading up a lot. This won’t last much longer. “Might be the last trip” is no longer just a metaphor, but that’s okay. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

Relentless as water flowing downhill past sandy beaches laden with memories, a story for each and every one, now kept to myself. An easing. Easing into the flatwater, sweeping the hikes now, letting others do the heavy lifting and not feeling too guilty. Watching the universe turn purple with scotch in hand after an especially warm day, the latest in a fortunate life of thousands of especially warm days. Boat gently rocking, ripples slapping the sides, soft laughter somewhere off in the dunes, that “pop!-wheet!” sound from the boat next door which is nicely within reach. I know you feel it. You want it to last forever, don’t you? Me too. It doesn’t.

Rowing over a ton of boat and blood and bone through Bedrock, dragging that old strength out of some depth, the physical and mental whatever, is slowly but surely fading in the hot sun. Handing it over to some young buck just like someone handed it to me nearly a half-century ago. Or maybe it’s taken. Both, probably. No matter. They want it, they deserve it, they’ll have it. Agile, strong, quick, hungry. They don’t care about how hard the work is any more than I did, how hot the desert gets, how much the upstream wind blows, how hard some people are to please. Maybe we bitch about it, but it’s a bitch with a smirk. How many times have you heard someone say “Oh, man, the Grand Canyon? It’s just a canal!”? But you just watch their face if someone offers them a job down there.

Marieke pulled into the Shady Ledges on the left below Son of Lava a couple years back, asking if they could share the shade with us for a bit, soak-in knowing Lava let them pass one more time. “Of course girlfriend, come on in!” I went about my business, napped a bit, sat up and noticed her sitting on her boat strumming her guitar for some folks, so I strolled over. She’d just finished a song, looked up and said “I have one for you.” Simple as that. So I sat down on the cool gray limestone and listened. It was a song about an old boatman, the river, saying goodbye. Choked me up, it did. I was glad I had on my sunglasses. Not self pity, no. The kind of grateful eye-welling that touched each of you the first time you came around that corner at the end of Blacktail and felt it. Walk in beauty, baby. She finished, the final note, and we gazed at each other for a moment. My heart pounds just thinking about it.

I keep saying “Can’t keep saving everybody else’s asses plus my own when the shit hits the fan in Lava forever.” It’s probably annoying. I can tell you it annoys the hell out of me to hear myself say it. I don’t want to be one of those boatmen who stayed on too long, retirement talk taboo, ignoring the head-shaking. I guess I’m really just trying to talk myself into it. Must this end? Really? So soon? I’m ready, but I’m not ready. I’ll never be ready. I’ll die inside when it happens, and it’s happening as we speak. My world will shrink, I won’t be part of the brotherhood any longer, won’t hear the river behind everything I do and say. Oh, God, don’t let it end. Oh, God, let it end gracefully, all at once. Drop dead right there on the edge of Lake Mead at Surprise. River gone, me gone. Sleep when you’re dead and all that.

I got me a little life out there. Lucky to have a woman who foolishly loves my idiot ass, put some money away, built a wonderful home on a pristine little whitewater river at the bottom of the world. We have lots of wonderful friends, which having been there I can tell you is all you got left on your death bed. You can hear our little river from the deck, scotch or coffee in hand.

Like shoving off from shore after a scout, you gotta get into your boat, grab the oars and head off downstream, pretending you know what the hell you’re doing, wherever it leads.