Chapter 17

August 23-24, 1999

Grand Canyon Trip 7

It was good to be out on the river. It was a comfortable day, not too hot; they got under way into a comfortable breeze that made things just about perfect. Scooter spent a couple minutes talking about John Doyle Lee, the Mormon assassin with nineteen wives who founded the Ferry back in the 1870s, the only place the river could be crossed for hundreds of miles in those days, and pointed out the old roadbed that led up the far Canyon wall. They ran around a slight curve and bounced through Paria Riffle; Scooter swung the boat sideways and looked back upriver, to see Randy already at the oars of Crystal's raft. Didn't waste any time, she grinned. This trip's just getting started and it's already one for the books. "Take a long look back, folks," she said to the people on her raft. "That's civilization we're leaving behind."

Like most trips, they didn't run far, only to Cathedral Wash, where Crystal had them pull up onto shore and break out lunch. That was a little awkward; Scooter had become used to having Norma and Barbie do a lot of that, and they weren't with them this time. As people worked on their sandwiches and cans of soda, Crystal spent a lot more time going over the orientation to get people set for the river, and warned them there would be another go around when they got into camp. There were things she'd go over again as needed, she told them.

Soon, they were back on the water. After running a couple miles more, they floated under the twin steel arches of Navajo Bridge. "And that really is the last we'll see of civilization for a while," Scooter told her passengers. "Now the good part begins."

A few miles later they came to Badger Rapids, which they ran with only a little water slopped aboard. Back at lunch, Crystal and Scooter had agreed they wanted to run just down to Badger so there'd be plenty of time for the camp orientation, supper, and some getting acquainted. On the real hot days of the last few trips, they'd tried to get into the sand bar on river right just below the rapids, the Badger Creek side, because it was a little cooler and seemed to catch an upstream breeze a little better. But this day was cool by comparison, so cool that Scooter hadn't even stripped down to her swimsuit, and on those kinds of days, both she and Crystal agreed that they preferred the river left side, the Jackass Creek side. Even as she was coming down the wave train, Scooter glanced over to see that the river left site was open, so she pulled into the eddy and headed for the beach, with the other rafts following one by one. She was not surprised in the slightest to see Randy at the oars of Crystal's raft as they ran Badger.

As always, the first night on the river, the orientation and everything was strange to the customers and made things take three times as long as they would in a couple days when everyone was used to the routine. It was a busy time for a while, but finally things settled down and the crew got started on dinner: halibut steaks and dirty rice. As things slowed down, Scooter noticed Karin and Al sitting apart from the rest of the group a little, having a long conversation. She was really trying not to snoop, but she had to slide down to the river for a bucket of water at one point, and heard Al talking about Louise. Of course, Karin would have known her, Scooter thought with naming her daughter after her. Although Al still seemed pretty solemn, he seemed to be perking up a little, in spite of everything. Apparently, they had some memories to compare and some notes to share, she thought.

The dinner was very good, of course; they liked to get off to a good start, and halibut didn't keep on ice too well, so it was the usual first night dinner. As they got down toward the end of the trip there wouldn't be the abundance of fresh food, but by then no one noticed, either.

After the cleanup was pretty well complete, Scooter got the fire pan out of her raft, set it up on a likely spot on the beach, and used part of one of the several small bundles of firewood they'd brought and a part of a Presto-log to get the first of their evening campfires going. Randy was sitting nearby, not doing anything in particular, so Scooter asked how he liked running an oar raft.

"It's a new experience," he admitted. "I was only in a raft with Crystal once, on the Ocoee. While it's a lot different than a kayak, I think it's easier. It's just that it handles like a loaded concrete truck on an icy road."

"Yeah," Scooter nodded thoughtfully, "That sounds like a fair description. I don't have the kayak time that I have the raft time, but they are pretty different. What you have to remember is that you have to figure out what the raft really wants to do and then try to help it."

"Crystal said that," he snickered. "We were going down that rapids right before we got off the river, and she said, 'Randy, this ain't a playboat so don't be trying any enders on us, OK?"

They shot the bull for a couple minutes, mostly talking about the finer points of handling rafts, and Scooter had a couple funny stories. They were so wrapped up that they hardly noticed Crystal tuning up her guitar, and then playing a couple of campfire songs, not very well -- she was hardly the world's greatest guitar player but she could perk up a campfire with it, a skill Scooter wished she had.

"Aw, I don't know what I'm doing picking away on this thing when we've got a real guitar player with us," Crystal said finally, handing it over to Randy. "Folks, like I said earlier, Randy and I have been around a few blocks together. He and I used to be considered the craziest people at Northern Michigan University. You all know that this river is pretty cold, and like I said today, if you get washed out, don't chase the raft, but get to shore and get out of the water. Randy and I know what cold water is. We used to go surfing on Lake Superior when the water was so cold our surfboards would ice up, right Randy?"

"Yeah," he grinned. "We'd have to sit under the car heater to get the ice out of our wetsuit zippers so we could get them off. I suppose you're fishing for Edmund Fitzgerald? They don't let you carry a guitar onto the NMU campus unless you can play that."

He shook his head, and started in on Edmund Fitzgerald. "It's a big lake, and it's cold, and it has a cold heart," Crystal said quietly at the end of the song, and took the opportunity to drive home a little safety message. "Randy and I got to play on it some, but we learned to respect it, like I've learned to respect this river. We can play on it, and we can have fun, but we have to respect its power. That's why we insist on life jackets. Randy, do you remember Dawnwalker?"

"Of course, I remember it," he said. "But I can't play it here. Myleigh's not here with her harp, and that's a woman's song, anyway."

"Oh, all right, I'll sing it if you play it," Crystal said. "Folks, Myleigh was my roommate in college. That was a while ago -- she's got her Ph.D. now, and she's a college professor. Her hobby was playing the Celtic harp, and she was pretty good. If any of you are Jenny Easton fans, it's her playing the harp in Jennifer's recording of this song, and I was there when they cut part of it. Sorry, folks, but I'm afraid you're going to hear a lot of Jenny Easton stuff around these campfires, especially if we let Randy play very much. I don't sing much like Myleigh, let alone Jennifer, but Randy, let's take a swing at it."

Dawnwalker was familiar to some of the group; it had been on the charts a couple years ago. It was a sad, haunting song of an Irish fisherman's wife walking along the seashore in the dawn, looking for her husband's fishing boat, almost certain it's never returning but hoping against hope. Crystal was right, she didn't sing like Jenny Easton, but down here it didn't sound too bad. As they wrapped it up, Scooter figured that Crystal would draw a story and a message out of it, and she did.

"Most of us have folks at home, wondering how we're doing," Crystal started. "Like that Irish woman, they're walking the beach in the dawn, waiting for our return. I know what the other side of that coin is like. Scooter mentioned that I worked a fishing boat in Alaska. Well, one day Chuck and I were crossing Queen Charlotte Strait in a storm. It was rough out there, huge waves, bigger than anything on this river, cold and dangerous, the ocean at full roar. Our fishing boat, the Glacier Bay, got swept by a wave and got beaten up pretty badly, and Chuck -- he was the skipper -- he got knocked unconscious. He was hurting, in a lot of pain, and I couldn't leave the wheel to help him, since there was only him and me. I fought it out the best I could for hours, thinking I was going to die in every wave, until finally I could get the boat into the lee of some islands and get him down to his bunk and stabilize him a little. Then I had to go out and fight the ocean some more, until finally I could get us into a little harbor with the best name in the world: God's Pocket."

She let out a big sigh and continued. "It may have been the closest I've ever been to buying it, but I learned something out there. Don't give up when you're in trouble. If you get washed out of a boat in a rapids, don't give up. The rapids don't last forever, ride them out. Swim hard, keep your head up, try to get out of the fast current, keep your feet downstream if you're in rocks, and try to get to shore as soon as you can, because this water is cold enough to kill you pretty quick. This ain't the ocean, we're not out there alone, like Chuck and I were. If there's a swimmer in the water and you're in a boat, try to pick them up. If you're in the water, try to help yourself, but someone will come for you."

"You never told me that story," Karin said from the edge of the group.