Dino
Dean is big. Not just his body, which towers even in middle age–dark curly hair and moustache framing his grinning face. It’s the booming baritone, the expressive dark and bushy eyebrows, the sausage fingers illustrating a long career as tradesman. As it turns out, he managed a crew building sets in Hollywood. He’s got that California confidence–envelops a room, or a beach, with it. The knee wraps he wears to reduce the painful limp only exaggerate his size.
I met an old geezer once on my way down from an awe-inspiring overlook in Zion National Park called Angels Landing. It’s a long way up there, via an asphalt and natural stone-paved trail in a notch canyon, thence along a narrow, airy Navajo sandstone ridge complete with cables in particularly dicey spots, to the top: an edge in space, in a remote region of pure splendor that reluctant, fist-shaking oil drillers and miners and ATV hooligans have left of Southern Utah, care of the National Park Service.
This old guy had a cane in each hand, and was hunching his way up to the final ascent in the evening violet. In my surprise and gladly on my way down for a Ramen and warm beer from the back of the pickup, I hailed him as I passed.
“Hey, old-timer. You’re doin’ pretty good. Not far now. How long ya been goin’ for?”
The look he gave me was straight out of The Exorcist. Gargoyle eyes and a grimace meant to scare little kids away. Ace-wrapped bow-legs and splayed canes, his feeble voice offered “Sonny… (pant, pant) … at my age, you don’t count the miles. (pant) You count the milligrams.”
Dean–Dino–eats Ibuprofen like it’s going out of style. I can relate. I keep forgetting and ask him from time to time if he wants a beer, or some scotch, or. He gets this smirk on his face and says “no thanks.” When I ask him why he doesn’t drink, his boisterous response is “I got tired of waking up in the wrong zip code.”
His wife, Kayla, is of Japanese descent. Dignified, smart as a whip, quiet–Japanese female style. She watches Dino’s antics with a proud, loving, amused smile, occasionally shaking her head. His meaty hands gesticulate his earnest spirit, finger pointing for emphasis. Dino is on this Grand Canyon Dories trip as my guest. Translate: he helps me cook and wash up, helps the baggage boatmen load and unload their boats, helps set up La Pooperia, enjoys the Colorado from an awkward perch amongst the baggage on one of the big yellow rafts.
The wind here at Eminence camp can howl like Chicago’s downtown. It’s at the end of a miles-long stretch of river that is as straight as a Republican. Fifteen-foot tall mature Tamarisk trees help to break the wind, so to speak, but the dunes are agitated and easily movable. We boatmen sleep on our rigs, tied to shore and safe from the blown sand, bows shielding us from at least part of the blast and allowing fitful sleep. Not so for the “peeps”, the folks on shore, who, on day three, are still trying to figure out how to get a good night’s sleep on an inch-thick foam pad laid down on the unruly earth.
I arise before dawn, as usual, to putter about starting to shop for breakfast, me and the Canyon. I prefer to take my time in these early moments, savoring the quiet, the indigo beauty, a nice crap, before the coffee conch-shell blast and it all starts. This time, however, Dino limps his huge frame towards me from the dunes. Not smiling.
“I’m hiking out” The bass voice booms.
Not quite sure if he’s serious for a change, I wait, head cocked.
“I have sand… in my ANUS!” Finger points to the general area, then hands on hips. I stagger towards the crapper in hysterics. He does not think this funny.
Later in the trip, on a beach in a narrow canyon below Havasu, mile one hundred sixty something, dinner over, everyone happily exhausted and bedded down amongst the crowds of blooming Sacred Datura and sculpted dunes. The darkening sky paints the radiant clifftops with rust as I check the gas bottle valve, cover the dregs of the chocolate brownies with the heavy Dutch Oven lid so the ringtail cats can’t get to it before I can turn it into Coffee rolls tomorrow morning. I hear a noise over by the coffee table and turn.
Someone is stirring something, spoon rattling in glass and liquid. Someone Big. I stroll nonchalantly towards the stirring behemoth, which inevitably morphs into Dino.
“Hey, boyo. Whatcha makin’?”
He glances up, face barely visible now in the gathering dark, and I hear “Psyllium Seeds” in his familiar baritone.
This is the stuff they use in Metamusil and other fiber products for better bowel movements. Mostly for the fasting, the vexed, and the middle aged, not necessarily in that order.
“Oh. Huh. Having a bit of trouble, are we?” I’m smiling. My voice gives me away.
The stirring stops. I imagine the finger. “It’s not about that.” I wait, and I think I see him look up at the cliff tops above, then back at me. He leans across the feeble folding table. “Chinchillas.”
“Huh?”
“Chinchillas. Mink Stoles.” Silhouettes of is expressive hands, attached to gorilla arms, emphasize to the sky. His voice lilts and rises and falls with the nearby waves and the uncontainable emotion of his great spirit. I see in front of my face his great paw, palm up and fingers touching like an Italian describing a sumptuous meal. “Everyone always thinks that it’s about a problem. It’s not about that. It’s about shitting Mink Stoles. Soft and smooth. You don’t even need toilet paper.”
Duff, attracted by my guffaws, sidles alongside. Strong, quiet Duffy. Long white-blonde hair, muscled and taut, exuding the youthful confidence that has long since waned in ourselves.
Duff says “What’re you guys doing?” Then, noticing the suspended spoon and glass, “Huh. What’re you mixin’ up, Dino?”
Dino glances at me, says “watch this”, turns to Duff, says, all nonchalant, “Psyllium seeds.”
Duff says “Oh. Havin’ a bit of a problem?”
Dino exclaims to me “See!? I told ya!” then, turning back to Duff, says “It’s not about that! It’s about Chinchillas. Mink Stoles!”
Duff turns to me and asks, innocent and puzzled, “What’s a Chinchilla?”
Nearing the end of the trip, camped at the brink of Lava Falls. It’s at that level where you can run left and avoid the V-Wave and the Black Rock on the right, but only if you get up before dawn to beat the already falling water level.
Way upstream at Glen Canyon damn, they’re letting out higher water daily to turn the turbines that power the air conditioners in Phoenix, a few hundred miles to the South. Peak Power, they call it, when the demand is highest, they can charge the most. Not ones to waste water, the damn operators like to turn it down at night, saving the precious resource for the next day’s heat. They used to fluctuate it from flood stage to a trickle–five thousand cubic feet per second (cfs) to thirty-three thousand cfs every 12 hours. Ruined the beaches and hammered the fishing, while we broke a lot of boats at low water and flipped like madmen on the high. Now, after being forced to do an environmental impact study, the fluctuations are milder, taking longer to complete the riverside destruction downstream in one of the seven wonders of the world.
When they open the gates at the dam, a wave builds. The way this wave moves downstream, the time and even the day that the highs and lows hit you depend on which part of the canyon you’re in, how many miles downstream. Here, at Lava, the water from a day and a half ago is starting to go down very early in the morning. In these higher, summer flows, that means that the left, safer run at Lava is closing down fast, and you better get on it in a hurry if you don’t want to sweat breaking your fiberglass and wood dory on the Black Rock. That’s kinda how we like to play it, anyway.
So, we make dinner the night before, camped as close to Lava as possible, then tear the kitchen down to bare bones to be ready for a super-quick breakfast: the “blaster”, a one-burner jet engine that can boil a pot of water for thirty cups of coffee in minutes, some sugar and milk, some sweets. We’ll make a real breakfast downstream at Fat City, the huge, duned beach BELOW Lava, nice and relaxed, appetites restored.
Dino and I are on dinner. Pork Loin on the grill. Everyone’s got their way of cooking it just so, so it’s tender and juicy. I always screw it up, somehow, but manage to come through with compliments anyway.
One of the passengers, Dan the fireman, comes up while I’m racing barefooted and aproned from grill to serving table.
“Whadya got for me?” Dan doesn’t eat pork. Says so right there on the trip manifest.
“No worries, Dan. As soon as I got some space on the grill, I’m gonna throw some chicken on for you.” I pause, reflecting, being sociable. “You mind if I ask you why you eat chicken but not pork? Just curious. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want.”
Dino, for a change in the background, stoking himself for the dishes with a bit of coffee, watches, leaning on the nearby table. Other clients, casually passing through the tight kitchen surrounded by greasebush and tammies, pause and perk their ears.
“Pigs are filthy animals” says Dan. “Says so right there in the bible.”
I haven’t noticed, but apparently Dan likes to read the bible every morning before breakfast.
Before I can respond, one of the folks stops in his tracks and says “What about chickens? You ever seen a chicken? They live in their filth!”
Before I know it, the whole beach explodes, a dozen people crowd in. “Yeah..you ever see cows shittin’ on themselves?...unbelievable…but the bible says…them chickens eat shit all day …” All of a sudden, I’m afraid we’re going to have a riot. Dan’s keeping up his own end of things, debating furiously. Things are getting rather animated. Hell, all I want to do is not dry out the damn loins.
Then, Dino’s booming voice cries out from outside the circle, arms high in the air like he’s a preacher in ecstasy or something. Cuts a pretty formidable figure there in the shimmering heat of the sand, framed by lava and in his sandals and sheet-robe.
“Hang on hang on hang on hang on!” he bellows. The crowd stops in their tracks, all eyes on the big man. Out comes the finger, pointing in the general direction of us.
“That’s NOT the answer.” He says, pauses.
“The answer is…” he looks up into the sky for inspiration “The answer is: It makes my testicles swell up.” Pause. “End of Conversation!” Walks away.
