"Damn, first morning after camping on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. We've been gone since the 27th. We've run less than 100 yards of river and it's already an unbelievable trip. No one who has never done this can appreciate (Canyon Wren) the tremendous amount of planning that goes into a trip like this. Sweeney is incredible"
Unfortunately my "journal" didn't do the trip justice. On August 3rd I wrote:
"Too damned busy to even keep a journal. I'm going to try to do an abbreviated one at least". On August 3rd I wrote, "The problem with trying to keep this journal is that you get behind and then you forget stuff. As a matter of fact, just now Brian said, 'Where did we camp on Day 3?' That was only two nights ago. We had to discuss to decide". That's what I mean by so much going on.
On the 17th of August in the car riding back near Holbrook, Arizona I wrote that I was going to try to catch up on some of the journal. I got two pages and that was it. Certainly disappointed that I didn't keep a good journal but at the same time I'm happy that I had so much fun and stayed so busy that there just wasn't time. Of course the other way of looking at it is that I didn't make the time. Oh well, water under the bridge. No pun intended. I did write a paper about the trip for recertification credit when the new school year started.
Amazing life experience that I am grateful to have had. Here are just some of the hundreds of pictures that we took, even the best of which don't do justice to the true beauty of the Canyon.
I'm going to close this out with a few notes from my poorly kept journal.
July 31 - My 52nd birthday. "Our boat got caught in a big eddy today. That was a treat. We had to go around twice before we were able to punch out back at the top. You don't want to many of those, you wind up rowing the whole trip twice. 225 miles is more than enough"
August 9 - "We didn't hit our run yesterday in Dubendorff. Oh was it a wild ride. We had a plan if we missed our run but the river owned us. Once we got caught sideways we went completely up on my tube. Thought we were going over".
August 15 - "It has been a spectacular trip. I'll never find the words to do it justice but I'll use photos, my river guide notes and hopefully memory to get down as much as I can. I hope to write a lot in the car on the way home". (The writing in the car didn't happen but I do have the pictures and the river guide.
And final, a quote from the book, The Emerald Mile by Kevin Fedarko that really gives life to what you feel right before dropping into a rapid when the scouting and the waiting is done and there is no turning back.
"There were rapids that you feared, and rapids that you hated and rapids that you would be a fool to take for granted, even under the most benign conditions imaginable. But on those days of wonder, when the tumblers in the lock were oiled and turning flawlessly, any one of those rapids could also transport you into a dimension of pure, unadulterated joy that had no analogue in any other part of your life.
The taste of that joy was absolutely intoxicating, a kind of drug, and perhaps the most potent part of the charge lay in the irrevocability of the moment when you untied your boat, and you and your partners peeled out into the current above a rapid in a tight and graceful little arc like formation of miniature jet fighters. For a minute or two, you would find yourself drifting on a flat and glassy cushion of serenity as the current slowly gathered its speed and heft beneath the bottom of your boat and you drifted toward this thing that waited, invisible, just beyond the horizon. It was silent during those minutes, the only sounds being the creak of your oars in their locks and the dipping of the blades as you made a few micro adjustments in the hope of putting your hull squarely on the one tiny patch of current that would insert you through the keyhole in the cosmos. Then in the final seconds, you would start to hear the dull, thunderous roar, and you would see the little fistfuls of spray being flung high into the air.
This, perhaps, was the most riveting moment of all, because now all of your decisions had been made--you had done your homework and sought a point of balance between instinct and analysis, listening to the data flowing from both your brain and your gut, and now you were well and truly committed. This thing you were running down had no brakes, no rewind, no possibility of a do-over. You would ride the surge of adrenaline and surf the watery crescendo that was about to explode before you, and you would accept the consequences, good or bad, along with whatever gifts or punishments the river was prepared to dish out. There were lessons there, insights a man could put in his pocket and take out later, long after he was out of the canyon, tiny compass points to steer by during those seasons when the river that was your life turned turbulent and ugly. You could learn things about yourself that you would never learn in civil society. And if you were lucky, you might navigate to a place that would enable you to glimpse, however obliquely, a bit of who you truly were". (pgs 110-111)
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