Chapter 43

November 18 - 25, 2000
Flagstaff

As expected, the turnout for the season wrap party at Al's the next night was large -- in fact, larger than Crystal and Scooter had expected. Many, although not all, of the summer crew were there. Glenn couldn't make it, and Bill had called to make his apologies. There were a lot of people who had helped to make the season a success, including Jon and Tanisha, who had driven up from Phoenix several times to help with the groceries and loading. Usually they went up to Lee's Ferry to help with the rigging; Michelle's folks were there, and others, including a number of people from other rafting companies.

In talking with Wade and Hannah, Scooter was pleased but not very surprised to find out that they were doing well in their freshman year in college. She had little doubt that they'd be boatman, possibly as early as the end of next summer -- but whether they'd stay with it seemed doubtful, even though they had some of that rafter blood that seemed to run strong with Michelle's relatives. Carl was doing well with his studies, although Barbie was complaining that she was getting a little tired of sitting in classrooms and wished she were out on the river more.

Considering the cool fall, there was a good collection of leftovers from the drag bags, and there were plenty of good stories going around. The dinner was a buffet, but everyone was used to that since it was how meals were normally served on the river, and no one had room to complain.

Once everyone had finished eating, Al got everybody's attention. "I'm glad everyone made it," he said. "At our wrap party, we celebrate the tripping season being over with. We had a good year this year. In many ways, it was better than last year, and you know the tragedy that drug last year down. We had a safe year, which is always nice. We narrowly avoided two potentially serious incidents, mostly because Scooter had the good sense to listen to Norma Dieshu, because she'd learned that Norma knew what she was talking about." He briefly told the story of Norma, her extraordinary weather sense, and her prediction of two different flash floods. "We all learned a lesson from that," he continued. "To be more careful about flash floods in general, of course. But if you're ever on a hike up a side canyon with Norma and she says to run, run like hell!"

There was a round of laughter and applause. "Norma, we've told you before, you done good, kid, and there's no way we can reward you or thank you as much as you deserve. But thank you anyway, and I'm sure everyone else in the room thanks you as much as I do."

He went on the next few minutes and praised several people who had contributed to the season. "So, again, thank you everybody. Now, I'd like to get on to a special announcement. Crystal, would you come here, please?"

Crystal went over to join them, obviously wondering what was going on. "As most of you know," he said, "I had a terrible tragedy in the loss of Louise a year ago last summer. I went through a bad time, but several people worked together to pull me out of my misery. Crystal and Scooter played a key part of that; you all know about that. Most of you probably know that Crystal's mother, Karin, also played a big part when she showed up here unexpectedly. We were old friends that hadn't seen each other for many years. If things had worked a little differently we might have gotten together back then, but they didn't, and it could be just as well. Again, most of you know that Karin has been going through a divorce. Although we decided this some time ago, we agreed that we had to hold off on the announcement until the divorce was final, which came just a few days ago. But, under the circumstances, and just to be sure, I'm going to ask you again: Karin, will you marry me?"

"Of course I will, Al," she grinned. "There is one more thing to announce that we've kept covered up for a while for a good reason. I suppose I ought to be embarrassed about it, but what happened, happened, for good or ill." She took a deep breath and continued, "What I have to say a few people here already know about, but now we're going to make it public. When Al and I get married, he's not going to gain a stepdaughter in Crystal. This is because of the fact that as a result of our little Canyon romance when I first ran the river in 1974, Crystal is already his natural daughter."

That set the room to going with a buzz and a few gasps before Al continued. "Not long after I met Crystal, over two years ago now, she commented to me that she thought that everything she'd done in life had been to prepare her for the Grand Canyon, because she felt it was where she was supposed to be. All I can say about that is that she was right."

There was some laughter and applause, and Karin picked it up. "On the first day of the trip I took with Al a year ago August, he said to me that he was sorry he'd never had children, but that if he'd ever had a daughter, he hoped she'd turn out like Crystal. She did, and her mother and father are very proud of her."

"What's more," Al said. "While neither Louise or I knew about it, while she was still alive, I'm pleased to say that she knew and liked Crystal. One time she made pretty much the same comment to me, that is, if we'd ever had a daughter, she'd have hoped she'd have turned out like Crystal. Had she known, I think Louise would have been happy to accept Crystal as her stepdaughter. Crystal, would you like to add anything?"

"Not really, Dad," she grinned, using the term for the first time in public, "Other than to say that for the first year I knew you I often thought it'd be great to have a neat guy like you as my father, instead of the man I thought was my father. I wasn't any less stunned to find out the truth than you were. Even though it took a while to work out, I'm glad it worked out that way."

"Thanks, Crystal," he replied, "You have no idea of how much I appreciate that. But now that this news about Karin and me is out, the only thing left is to make it legal. Because of the Grand Canyon connection in this family, there could be no more fitting place to hold this wedding than in the Canyon. We've decided that it will be held next spring at the place where we discovered we were already a family, which is to say at a place that some of the Canyon Tours crews call the Baseball Man Water Pocket, a few miles below Crystal Rapids. You are all invited."

Again there was some buzz. "Al," Mary piped up. "How are we going to all make it from three different crews?"

"It's complicated, and all the details aren't worked out yet," Al said. "But we'll do this right at the changeover when the summer crews come on. What we're thinking is that your crew launches on time, but runs very slowly down there. The second crew, Crystal and Scooter's, will do a burnaround off their first trip, launch three or four days early and run fast. We should be able to meet up about the same time at Phantom, where we'll be met by anyone who wants to come to the wedding but can't take the time off for a whole trip. After the wedding, they'll hike out the Bass Trail, along with Scooter and the crew that will form Team 3. It's going to mean a lot of special preparations, and there's going to be some inconveniences like a double burnaround for Scooter and probably some of her team, but it can just barely be done, so we're going to do it. That's just the rough idea; we'll probably be ironing out the details until it's all over with."

That perked the party up quite a bit; more cans of drag bag overage were opened, and there was quite a bit of talking around, much of it centered around Al and Karin. After some time, Scooter, Crystal, and Michelle found themselves together in the kitchen, and they decided to head out onto the patio for a few minutes to be by themselves, even though it was a pretty coolish night.

"It caught me totally by surprise," Crystal told them. "I was honestly thinking maybe Christmas, kill two birds with one stone. And then with the crowd here, I figured they might just go ahead, surprise us all, do it tonight, and be done with it. But hell, spring? Just glancing at the calendar, they have to be talking May 1, May 2, somewhere along in there."

"Something about like that," Scooter nodded. "Boy, doesn't that just show what you get for being the junior trip leader? Two burnarounds with a week separating them!"

"It shouldn't be too bad if we're prepared for it," Michelle said. "But that means that we're going to have to have all three teams pretty well rigged before the first of April, so what with you two on the Park Service trip that pretty well takes care of March. That's starting to cut Hawaii pretty close."

"There is a bright side," Crystal said, "And it's that we don't have to blow up anything over the winter for a wedding. Just throwing out an idea, what do you say that we do Hawaii the first of the month? Keep it light, don't even take our surfboards, just do rentals. As far as that goes, the same for when we go to Florida, since we've pretty well decided we're going to have to fly."

"Good question," Michelle said. "We're pretty well committed to going to Florida, though. Wouldn't it be a big letdown to go to Hawaii, come back for a couple weeks and go to Florida? I mean, wouldn't we rather do it the other way around?"

"Yeah, you've got a point," Scooter said. "I mean, I haven't been to Hawaii, but everything I've ever heard is that the surfing there is the best there is."

"It's pretty damn good and the water will be warmer than Florida," Michelle pointed out. "If we keep Hawaii to a week or ten days at the end of February, maybe edging into March a few days, it still would work."

"Or we could wipe it out if it gets too tight," Crystal said, thinking about it. "Maybe we could get some of the summer kids in on the weekends in March to help with getting everything rigged."

"It's possible that Al could have Dave and Mary show up a little early, too," Michelle commented. "I mean, especially since the two of you will be on that Park Service trip."

"OK, I guess that pretty well means that we just have to sit back until we get back from the Bahamas to see about Hawaii," Crystal summed up. Maybe we'll have had enough of the tropics by then and will want to get in some more skiing before we get busy. And that means we do the ski trip in early December. We've got de-rig and maintenance stuff that's going to eat up the next few days, but if everything goes all right we might be able to get an early start, say around the middle of the week after next. We'll just have to see when we get there."

"I want to go to Hawaii if we can possibly manage it," Michelle said. "I'm not going to be able to head for Florida until like January second, and we have to fly over to get to the Felicity Ann on the sixth. That's not a lot of surfing if it's good, and what happens if it goes flat?"