Author’s note: This describes a trip I took in 1992 with my brother. It took many years to figure out how to write it. I finally finished it with some great editing help from my cousin Gayle. To those who may see themselves in this story I hope my telling is true.

Journey

Copyright 2021 All Rights Reserved

Douglas Cushman Morse

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published To my brother Glenn,
Thanks for the adventures...

Jesus

Jesus walks into camp just before dinner is ready. He is quiet, tanned, and has several days of beard growth. Not quite what you see in the stylized high gloss lacquered pictures decoupaged on planks of wood or clock faces decorating Middle-American living rooms. Not that much beard, but with the improbable blue eyes in those pictures, thin and young and handsome. If he has been in the desert for forty days and forty nights, he must have had access to a razor.  He has been in the desert; in fact, he is still there. He walks in wearing sandals and looking messianic. That is to say, he looks as if he were expected. Which if you are a messiah, is the way you should look.

Canyon

The desert here is actually a canyon. It is deep; say a thousand feet of mostly vertical, though crumbling, sandstone. The sandstone is layered with browns, whites, reds, and oranges. The colors, normally muted by the brilliant mid-day sun, glow with an intense orange as the sun sets. The thin and elusive shadows of the day have stretched and now deepen. The canyon walls are riven with vertical gashes, where water has rushed to meet the river flowing deceptively gently in the bottom. The neat vertical upper cliff faces look down at jumbled piles of rock at their feet; whose flat surfaces cause them to appear like boxes discarded behind a store.

Appropriately, this disorder lies near its cause, the edge of a river flowing, soothingly mumbling of its troubles.

River

The river’s surface is wrinkled with the effort of wearing down the bottom of the canyon and is colored by that part it carries to the sea. Rocks and boulders telegraph the river’s troubles to the surface where waves, eddies, and holes form. The surface appears as a person’s furrowed brow in the middle of some distressing dilemma. At times the rumbling of some large stone is heard as it rolls and grinds invisibly along the river bottom, like a kind of riparian digestion.

The work of the river imposes another burden. The river carries a vast load of sand and mud and brings it closer to the ocean. It is possible to see but an inch into the river surface, so obscuring is this residue. The river’s burden is all-consuming, it has no time to show you its neatly scoured bottom. It is enslaved to this work. Lashed by the mountain snows and steep slopes, it cannot be bothered to know what its efforts have wrought.

Here, though, the river rests and is quiet.

Occasionally the river drops some of its load at the bottom of these quiet, resting stretches. The work does not relent, and finally the load piles up demanding attention. Reverie broken; the water rises in agitated waves. Waves that roil a once calm surface, form a series of breakers that slowly advance upstream and wear down the discarded sand, carrying it downstream again. This work has gone on for thousands of years.

Camp

In the camp Jesus’ arrival evokes scowls. The response to his appearance deriving from the simple pattern of the last four days on the river: Jesus always comes when the work is done and the food is prepared. He left when the boats had first beached. Where he wanders in the desert, nobody knows. He always returns reeking of pot, his lids half-closed, his eyes burning red like the desert sun. This and his laziness explain the timing of his arrival. He never shares what he sees on his journeys. Nor does he offer any pot to anyone in the group. He makes a poor messiah and a poorer camp-mate. All of this explains why the busy and happy mood of the group is broken by his arrival. By now everyone tries to ignore him when he is around.

Glenn is most vocal of his displeasure, though always when Jesus is out of earshot. Everyone in the group comes from a culture where one feels out of place if someone else is working and you are not. Perhaps it is a culture of America, or the inter-mountain West, or small towns in the West. Nobody in the group knows. Indeed, most don’t think much about it. It is just the way one behaves. Not a topic in need of great introspection.

Jesus is an outsider. He does not seem to understand these implicit laws. They will not teach them to him because they are self-evident. There is no shortage of work. One either pitches in or one does not. Jesus does not.

He comes from Southern California and a well-to-do family. He seems a stranger to this culture of work and shared responsibility. Glenn is polite; he will not voice his displeasure to Jesus, after all Jesus is a guest of his brother’s. Glenn harbors some secret doubts about his brother’s choice of friends though. But it is sufficient justice that Doug must ride in the same canoe with him. Jesus’ real name is Christophe, but because of his wanderings in wilderness he has been given another more appropriate, if ironic, name.

Conflict

It is a well-worn truth that if you wish to know how compatible you are with someone you should canoe with them. And to make it interesting one should do it in whitewater in May, in full flood when the water is cold. After all, there is no point in playing a game unless the stakes are sufficient to make it interesting. In this case the game consists of both parties remaining as dry and safe as they can. This can only be achieved if there is cooperation.

And cooperation is not defined in some high-minded democratic sense. No, someone must lead and the other follows. In the stern the steering and directing is done. There is little time to vote or debate decisions. Orders are shouted out over the roar of the river and they need to be heeded quickly. ‘Paddle left…paddle right... eddy out!’. Perhaps in more experienced crews this cooperation is natural, less explicit. This was Doug’s second river trip in a canoe and Jesus’ first. There are no reflexes and experience to rely upon. Everything becomes exceedingly specific.

Camp

Camp is a narrow strip of sand begrudgingly surrendered between the river’s edge and the tumbled boulders at the cliff base. There are three tents and some distance off in a suitably scenic location is the bucket that makes up the latrine. Unlike when John Wesley Powell traveled in this land, everything brought in must be carried out; everything. It is tradition to give this crude bucket the honored position of view and privacy and its location is selected with care and debate.

Mingling with the smell of sage and juniper; the smell of roasting game hens. Glenn has fired up the Dutch oven and now the scent of burning juniper and roasting bird have filled this corner of the canyon. The smoke settles in low above the camp, the setting sun has seen the breeze die and the dry air hangs still and cool for the first time all day. Heat surrendered readily in such dry air. Soon it will be time to don warmer clothes. There is the smell of sweat from a day of hard effort in the hot May sun and four days with only river water to bath in. Everyone feels the grit of sand and silky clay on their skin. The river has taken much energy and warmth and the group finds they are vulnerable to the cool air.

River

Most of the plunges into the river are involuntary from the rapids or rollover or swamping. The water runs fast and cold from the San Juan’s fresh-from-snow melt in faraway Colorado; the short Spring days hardly warming it a few degrees. For the canoes loaded to within a few inches of the gunwales it is a treacherous journey. Every wave ships water aboard which must be bailed. One must muster all available strength on each paddle stroke to guide the heavy-laden canoe down-river, to keep it pointed into the oncoming waves. The canoes are reluctant, sluggish. They are, rather like old mossbacks, stuck in liquid ruts and difficult to motivate to the proper path. Struck from the side, they roll over, some great beast too tired to stand any longer. This has happened twice today.

Once with an unexpected trick of the current; the second time because of some fancy of Christophe’s to chase after some floating item amongst a half-submerged rock garden. This ended in Doug and Christophe getting dunked, flailing about trying to avoid getting downstream of several hundred pounds of canoe and cargo.

There are far too many ways to die here. For those not comfortable with water the mind magnifies them all.  Besides the water and its energy-sapping cold there are eddies and holes that re-circulate punishing currents to pin you to the bottom or keep you just below the surface until your air runs out. One is minded of these hazards from stories told. Nothing so dramatic today, just the shock of cold water and the exhausting struggle to control and right the canoe.

Once, Glenn had fallen into such a hole in the Salt River, which after pinning him to the bottom expelled him only after he had fully exhaled the air from his lungs.

The river, like an ancient god, demanded blind faith or a sacrifice, faith that it would deliver him only after he had relinquished any last doubts in the form of a last breath; or a sacrifice for the selfish keeping to himself the doubt in the power of the river, unwilling to humble and give over to its power.

On the river and in its grip, one feels that more than physics is at work. Its turbulence and calm speak of moods. Determination and constancy speak of a journey that is something more than a fluid running off an impermeable surface, drawn by gravity to seek its level.  The power of the river will make itself known on this trip, and it will forever change those on this journey.

John

John is the most unlikely of characters on this trip. John is the most unlikely at any time you meet him. Quiet and low-key, what must be a great intellect lies unadvertised just below the surface. This is perhaps why Glenn and Doug love him so much. He is smart and quick but not presumptuously so. Indeed, it is hardly detectable most of the time. Glenn met John when they worked together in a retail camera store in Flagstaff. Their enthusiasm for photography and the outdoors drew them together. John must be five or 10 years older though. John will later emerge in life a college professor teaching English and writing, with some of his works published. This was his dream and he achieved it. He will have been improbably married and perhaps all too inevitably in this age, divorced.

Here is what little we know (or guess) of John: he smokes and drinks a lot. Not sure it is right to call him an alcoholic, though.  He is not overweight, but he is in terrible shape; Glenn and Doug have the shared same premonition they will be resuscitating John in some remote Western region after he has had the big one.

Go hiking with John and you will understand. He sweats alcohol and exhales second-hand smoke while walking up a hill. Never complaining, he is enthusiastic about such suffering, if he even is suffering. His love of wilderness is uncontestable.

John always has a camera with him. He loves his classic old Leica, it seems to always be around his neck.  Furthermore, he is often taking pictures. Nobody has ever seen a picture he has taken with it. Even Glenn, his roommate, has never seen John load film into the camera. There is a strong suspicion that John never actually takes photographs or if he does he doesn’t bother developing them. There must be some great photos in there.

There is reason to believe that safely within the camera the ideal is captured. That the beauty John records is so personal and so in the moment of the shutter’s release that he fears development will reveal the flaws in the heartbreakingly crystalline image he imagines to be on the film. One could imagine shoe boxes of latent disappointment in his bedroom; perhaps haunting or maybe comforting. 

Dianna

Less at this point is known of Dianna. John has his girlfriend on this trip. Glenn calls her Indy for short (no doubt a great joke at one time, but one that Glenn never gets tired of).

Dianna is a recent girlfriend, and one gets the sense this doesn’t happen often in John’s life. She is very nice looking, not only in an objective sense but in the sense that John has really outdone himself. She lives with John and Glenn. For a woman like this to live with John (who could be charitably called a slob) and Glenn in the same house she must be remarkable or perhaps kooky. The consensus seems to be remarkable.

Anyway, when you are dealing with an enigma there are reasons a person is an enigma; at some point energy is wasted explaining it (after all that is why the word exists). This is all a good development and John seems supremely happy, which is what anyone would wish for him.

John

What about John’s intriguing but well-hidden intellectual side? He is getting his Ph.D. in English Literature. Yes, that means he has his Masters in English Lit. His sharp wit is the only way to tell.

Everyone gives John shit about his Ph.D. work. (Privately they all ask how it’s going and how many more classes he has and what his dissertation is on.) He never brings the topic up on its own.

He is always ready with a quick cynical remark or disgusting metaphor or double entendre. That of course is part of John’s attraction to Glenn and Doug -  John’s ability to appreciate their crude humor, that if overheard might be subject to criminal investigation.

There is also the sense that there is not some subject that John doesn’t have at least a passing acquaintance with.

Another little fact about John is that he served in Vietnam. In the Marine Corps. Jumping out of planes flying 500 feet off the ground. That blows most people’s minds. John is as far from some rifle-toting yahoo screaming ‘Geronimo!’ while training for some covert insertion at night, as one could imagine.

John also writes, or so people say. Like the photos he takes, these two facts have never born proof.

It turns out that John is also quite a kayaker and he demonstrates this on the river early in the trip with an expert Eskimo roll. Says he learned it in Montana. John has apparently lived many lives.

John is complicated.

Christophe

Christophe is a recent acquaintance and possible friend of Doug’s from work. He is younger, thinner and fit. He works as a computer chip designer and comes from a background of loving parents and privilege. From California, he has a naïve open-minded optimism that intrigues others not brought up in it. He is sure of himself beyond his years.  This will form the basis for the tensions and drifting apart of any possible friendship.

There were some warning signs on a simple day-hike a few months earlier. Christophe and Doug got together to go hiking on the Pacific Crest Trail near San Diego. This was in the Cuyamacas not terribly high up in the scrub and manzanita and California lilac near Warner’s Spring. 

On this day, the tops of the mountains are covered in thick fog. So rather than the clear views east to the Anza Borrego desert or west to the Pacific Ocean one is cocooned in soft moist air with rare glimpses of nearby hills, canyon-sides, and vegetation. It improves the hike immeasurably; there is a sense of isolation and mystery, as if the landscape is a small private garden. Noises are muted; roads and their noises do not interfere. The walk is pleasant, not strenuous, and contemplative.

Doug and Christophe stop for lunch of fruit, cheese, and crackers. This is the hiking meal of Doug’s childhood. Doug’s mother would pack cheese and fruit and crackers. Mostly oranges and apples and cheeses like Longhorn cheddar and Jack. Sometimes Pringles, or avocados, summer sausage, or boiled eggs. Mostly, practical rugged food that would survive the journey.

As the day moves past noon the fog begins to burn off; the surroundings now easier to make out. They decide they could navigate cross-country directly back to Doug’s truck.

Doug grew up since second grade in Flagstaff, a small college town of 40,000 people in northern Arizona. Located on the vast Colorado Plateau at some 7,000 feet above sea level; four seasons with harsh cold winters, contrary to Arizona’s desert reputation. Pine trees and mountains to over 12,000 feet. It was a place where he spent a great deal of time out-of-doors. The forest provided opportunities for fishing, camping, hunting, and woodcutting. There wasn’t a lot of money in Flagstaff, so the wilderness was always affordable diversion.

This was probably where Doug developed his sense of direction. His parents clued him and his brother into reading maps and knowing which way was north. He grew up in a house at the very northern frontier of the town where the backyard blended into forest, a pipeline right-of-way and then another mile or two to Mt Elden. This great rounded rhyolite mound, checker-boarded stone and cliff, formed the backdrop of the town. Further north the San Francisco Peaks and then the Grand Canyon, Utah, and the closest city in this direction - Salt Lake City 350 miles farther on. Doug spent most of his spare time exploring these woods.

Doug read books on the outdoors and survival as well. His sense of direction was shaken only after a long plane flight resulted in disorientation; a constant sense of ill-ease not knowing the cardinal directions in some new city. Having never been truly lost out-of-doors, he developed confidence.

The conflict starts here, though, as Doug points in one direction and Christophe another. A discussion follows about landmarks (not terribly useful when they hadn’t been visible all day), distance, and direction. It seems clear enough to Doug, given the direction and distance traveled, where the truck would be: about three ridges to the south. Christophe points west and feels the truck is closer. Afternoon is moving on and they need to get moving soon.

Christophe follows Doug until he becomes too convinced of his own direction. Another discussion ensues, this time more tense. They would not convince each other. As the sun sets lower it is clear they have one chance to find the truck. Each is determined in their own way; they strike out on separate paths. Doug keeps an eye on Christophe who stubbornly goes his way. As they cross each ridge they are farther and farther apart and Christophe more difficult to see. Finally, at the top of the third ridge Doug spots the red truck and calls to Christophe to come join him. The hour and a half ride back home is quiet.

Doug

This is a peaceful and good time in Doug’s life. He is probably not aware of it as such. He is busy in school, work and a family on the way. He is young, still, and quietly ambitious.

Little foreshadows the tragedies that await him. He has always thought of himself as fortunate. His parents good and decent and still married through his childhood, unlike for some of his friends, whose parents have already split or were too self-involved or not present for their children. Doug and Glenn’s parents were the envy of most and sometimes they had to share them with friends.

Jerry with a father who died at an earlier age of a heart attack and a mother whose seldom-consumed Lithium was all that would keep her 350 lbs. on a steady course would come to live with them. Some of Glenn and Doug’s friends, Frank for instance, were also friends with their parents and would stay in better touch with their parents than with the brothers as adults. It was hard to be prouder of one’s parents.

Doug’s wife, Sarah, back in San Diego, was 5 months pregnant with his first child, a son.

There should have been some warning that this seemingly perfect life would have some cost later. Some would say it was karmic perhaps but that would be reverse karma. One who enjoys too much fortune must suffer some bad? Nemesis, perhaps, but how much hubris?

No, some wouldn’t say that, this Calvinistic Karma, nonsense really.

Doug’s mother had died of cancer a few years previously when he lived in Tucson. The following year his brother was diagnosed with cancer and treated successfully.

Five years later, however, Glenn would lose his second battle with cancer, and succumb, bald, thin, resting in an easy chair in his living room with an IV in his arm.

Doug’s son Redington would grow up strong and healthy but witness his sister’s drowning in a small-town Oregon pool with too few or inattentive lifeguards. This would lead to a bitter divorce between Doug and Sarah, loss of custody, and placing greater distance between Doug and the son he would cherish above all else.

Doug’s long-time friend Terry would say in response to this long string of tragedies that Doug was like the Kennedys. Doug would remain dismayed by this verdict. He still considered himself fortunate. Denial or irrepressible optimism, you decide. A preference for optimism, but so would someone in denial

Perhaps we get ahead of ourselves.

Journey

The river journey continues and if Doug were perhaps sensitive to its symbolism, he might understand what it would tell him. This journey is perhaps not unlike his future life. Unexpected turns and brushes with disaster. How to know what to cherish and regret? It might be a portent and, were he sensitive to its meaning, …

His wife is not present, she never would have gone on such a ‘rough’ trip, pregnant or not. She is not one for camping and it was just as well she has not come along. Glenn’s portrayal of a lazy float down a river is well off the mark.

Glenn brought along his girlfriend and live-in partner Barb. Barb has two children Sean and Sarah from two different fathers before she met Glenn. Barb was a good match for Glenn in that she enjoyed his outdoor lifestyle. They met while Glenn was being treated for his cancer in the hospital where she works. Barb was always warm and friendly.

Barb was, however, an inattentive parent. Her children’s fathers lived out of town and were themselves apparently wrapped up in their own worlds. Glenn made for a stern but caring father figure as far as anyone could tell. Sean came to adore him. When Glenn’s cancer finally consumed him, one must imagine that was an unravelling for Sean. He was reported in one angry outburst to have blamed his mother for letting Glenn die. A nurse should save people.

Sean was himself a tragic figure, a decent kid failed by broken family life and tragedy. How could one foresee in this kind, outgoing child an angry young man addicted to drugs and sent to prison?

Is there enough love in the world to heal these deep scars?

For now, Sean is an engaging and smart little boy.

Morning

You are first struck by how cold your nose feels, then the smells of the inside of the tent: artificial fabrics and stale sweat. The first gray light of dawn is floating through the tent fabric. Lying on the sand is better than gravel but nonetheless you feel stiff and uncomfortable. The bladder now forces thoughts toward movement and action. Urgency begets panic in the fumble for the zipper on the sleeping bag now hopelessly twisted during a night’s restlessness.

Finally, released from the sleeping bag, on to the tent zipper.   The morning air is bracing, laden with moisture from the river that coats the dome of the tent in silver droplets. The sand clings to the bare skin on the feet; the top layer of granules wet with the dew; as moist as it will ever be that day.

Walking down the hard-packed wet sand at the river’s edge, feeling the stiffness, and stretching of muscles, peering down-river past the rapids a long stream of steaming piss summons relief as it splatters on the muddy river surface.

In the canyon bottom the sun reaches here last to warm you. Already blazing on the cliffs above, the sun lights up the yellow, orange, and cream rocks. The constant background roar of the water still present, as it had been all night. A wisp of smoke curls from the white ashes of the night’s fire giving the fragrant scent of pine and juniper.

This is the reward for being first awake. The solitude of the sunrise, the sense it is all there for you alone and nobody to disturb your thoughts or intrude on your world. Time to get away while the others sleep.

Slip on the sandals and climb up; where is not important, just up where the view changes, up where you will be alone. Up a side canyon where the layers of sandstones form ledges and steps. Careful to step around the thorns of cactus, muscles warm and loosen, the breath becomes deeper and easier. Warming and soon sweat flushes the body. High on a ridge the roar of rapids is distant, and silence can be heard around and above. A raven leaps and wheels over the cliff edge, its rusty growls express avian contentment. Below people stir from their tents and set about fueling the fire.

Geology

From the ridge the reason for these first set of rapids is clear. Downstream the land is suddenly tilted up sharply. The normal beddings of rock layers, of sandstones in alternating colors with horizontal bandings of distinct thicknesses is abruptly canted, rising out of the riverbed like some stone leviathan breaching from the landscape.

Where the river before was wide and flat in a shallow canyon of beige sandstone it is now restricted and flows faster. It enters an increasingly deeper canyon here and takes on a new personality.  No longer content to wear down the surrounding sand and mud it is clear the river has had to fight this intrusion, what geologists call an anti-cline, to keep its appointment with the Colorado river and finally the sea. The river works harder here to carve its course at a rate that keeps pace with the rising rock.

River

These rapids are the first real challenge of the trip. Yesterday there was the put-in on the river at Sand Island. The water was swift but flat. Sand waves, those ephemeral events when the river scours the deposited sand and silt, would break the surface at intervals to make the only disturbance of the turbid brown water. Loaded down with a week’s worth of provisions, there was the chance to use this smooth swift water to get used to river canoeing. More like a lake than a river, it sucked them along forgivingly. Chances to practice eddying-out near the bank, to wait for others, or even the strenuous test of paddling against the current with some exhausting success.

It is clear from this viewpoint that the river along yesterday’s route had been running parallel to the anticline, probing for some weakness, a crack or fault in this rising fortress of rock and perhaps here a fault allowed the river to push through and widen and deepen its purchase.

Beginnings

Down in the stirring camp people are rousing themselves for breakfast. Glenn, the self-appointed chef, has halved cantaloupes and added granola and yogurt into their scooped-out bowl-shapes. Simple and good. The ripe cantaloupe is fragrant and its sweetness mixes with the herbal sage scent of the high desert air.

Standing at the river’s edge Doug and John observe the rapids just downstream. Doug makes some comment about being up for promotion at work and John politely acknowledges this. Doug is now embarrassed for an intrusion of ego on this contemplative moment. John has the grace to let it pass.

The thought of these rapids played on his mind before sleep overtook him last night. Never comfortable with water there is the undeniable fact he has never navigated white water before. The sun continues to rise on these thoughts and the sound of packing up moves the moment of departure closer. Departure: what a word, and how strangely appropriate it now seems.

The tents are being pulled down; Jesus is nowhere to be seen. Everything is packed and made tidy in dry bags and secured to the canoes. This Glenn insists on making sure it is done right and for good reason. He jokes we do not want to have a ‘yard sale.’ A derisive river-runner term to indicate strewn belongings along the river bank, a consequence of careless packing and an overturned canoe.

A friend of Glenn’s and John’s is along on the trip. Gill is quiet and confident in an inflatable kayak called a Tahiti. He does not leave much of an impression on the trip except that it is good to have him along. Dianna is in another Tahiti and John is in a kayak.

There was a consultation amongst the experienced of the best line to take, what to avoid, and order of departure. Fingers point to waves and rocks and landmarks. The kayaks embark first and try to show the best course through the fat part of the rapids. Glenn and Barb and Sean in their canoe go next followed by Doug and Christophe.

A thrilling and flurried paddling brings them to the middle with the highest and cresting waves, deepest water, fewest rocks. The front of the canoe bucking first up and breasting the static breaking, white-crested waves. With each successive wave the water rises above the gunwales and brown water washes over the contents of the canoe including the paddlers. Each wave adding a new load, the canoe settling in deeper and deeper in the water.

But the boats stay true and soon the last canoe shoots placidly out into the pool below the rapids where the others had eddied out to watch and help. Rapid bailing brings the canoe back to its normal buoyancy. Everyone congratulates themselves on what is probably mostly good luck.

River

Despite apparent placidity, the river is running at a furious pace made fat by the melting snows of the San Juan mountains in Colorado. The San Juan is one of the highest gradient rivers of its size. The gradient is mostly constant and not minded to steep falls but a kind of long liquid ramp. By the end of summer, it would slow to a comparative trickle with time to swim and play between rapids. But for today that is far in the future.

The river is in full revolt against the confining sandstone thrown up by the rising terrain. Gradually it descends like some meandering geological submarine, layer upon ancient layer of rock rising above the water as the canyon is deepened.

The route the river pursues is as if someone has thrown rope on the ground and challenged the river to follow it. Twisted like an estuary creek but embedded deep into rock banks hundreds of feet deep, evidence of improbable oxbows, goosenecks, scatterings of the letter S. Not at all The River Why.  

Journey

The river swoops around its well-worn bends and progresses steadily to the town of Mexican Hat where the highway crosses the San Juan river in this most remote part of Arizona and Utah. At Mexican Hat, the canyon relents a little and the ground flattens where the small town has settled.

Here the party hauls out on a beach on the edge of town. Other parties of rafters were putting in here and there is a happy atmosphere as someone plays guitar and another a banjo, they plunk out some bluegrass tunes. Lunch is eaten and more beer drunk.

Another rafting party starts out first, then the canoes and kayaks go in and they encounter Gypsum Creek rapids. Here the creek’s stony outflow compresses the river against the rock wall. This is a smaller set of rapids than previously encountered but hidden here is a complexity, a trick, of shifting current.

As they avoid the rocky cliff, the canoe is slammed from the side by the current which catches the bottom of the boat and flips it, spilling Doug and Christophe into the freezing current.

There is a frenzy of yelling. Remembering to hold onto paddles, god this water is cold, how come my swimming makes no progress? “Don’t get downstream of the canoe!”, the river is so wide now. Three swirling entities; two holding onto canoe and paddle swimming furiously to no avail. The river is ahold of them and would now toy and play; all in its immense power.

A nearby raft tries to maneuver, and a rope is thrown. Immediately it is invisible in the beige muddy water. More yelling “Don’t let it get around your neck!” So much to think of, so much adrenaline.

Finally, they are standing on the rocky shore just beyond the highway bridge. The river is finished with them for now. The rest of the party eddies out nearby or floats slowly downstream. The canoe is righted, bailed, boarded and drifts down the now calm river to catch up with the rest of the party.

A quick chance to rest and reconnoiter. Camp is to be made at a beach just downstream. Earlier than planned in recognition of the exhaustion.

Camp

All the gear that is a camp is hauled out. The honey bucket finds a new hallowed location, tents are erected, food prepared. Jesus resumes his wilderness wanderings. Lasagna in a Dutch oven tonight. The day’s efforts and clean wilderness air make the simple food taste better than anything in memory.

Drinking around the fire and Jesus turns up in time to share in the drinking and food and then everyone retires.

The next morning dawns cold and dew-soaked for a quick breakfast before packing again and pushing off into the cold San Juan current. The canyon has burrowed again here into the soft sandstone layers below Mexican Hat. The elevated cliffs shielding the sun that would beat incessantly during the day.

Journey

This next day is long, full of fast cruising, swinging back and forth around the switchbacks and goosenecks of this part of the San Juan canyon. One looks at a ridge rising above the river and realizes that just over it is the same river either where one has just come from or where one is heading. The sense of traveling a mile over the river to cover a few hundred feet on the ground is not far from one’s mind. Fascinating to contemplate riding this brown tide through a desert labyrinth. 

Canyon

There are deep gashes where some episodic flows of water over the millions of years have carved a side canyon on its way to dump its runoff into the San Juan. They are almost always dry, like today, the land here is rocky and impermeable. When rain comes the water runs away quickly and collects in these defiles where its volume magnifies in force so that the hydraulic effect on the land is as if a river has flowed here continuously. Incompressible, laden with abrasive sand and boulders, water is all powerful in a land of little rain. The land alternates between long periods of peace and is then suddenly forged to a new shape by the water. Sand shifted, rock sculpted, boulders moved. Every storm a cataclysm punctuating calm lazy days.

Where these canyons are particularly big, the boulders and rocks pile into the river’s course and constrict and narrow it and make a short run of rapids.

River

Even without these rapids, navigating the river takes constant attention. The deceptively smooth surface reveals upwellings and bellows of current that spin, jostle and push the canoe off its course.  These betray the rocks, ridges, and boulders on the bottom. Left to its own the canoe would drift and twist down the canyon like a fallen leaf. The opaque water makes difficult the avoidance of rocks secreted beneath the surface until almost too late.

There is from the stern of the canoes a steady “paddle left” “paddle right” commentary. And rather than drift aimlessly the canoe must be rowed faster than the current so that the stern paddler can set a paddle as a rudder and thus gain a watery purchase and some control.

Journey

Christophe grows ever obstinate to this routine and at times refuses to paddle. He thinks he knows better and resents being told otherwise.

Rounding a bend, a side canyon foretells more rapids. The orders come out to paddle and guide the canoe down the throat of the rapids. Christophe merely downs tools and lays back, paddle arrested, in some long pout and leaves his partner in the stern to paddle and steer a course through the crashing water. Fortunately, success, but not before almost foundering; a canoe practically submerged having taken on so much water.

The long day continues past Ross rapids and others on to another camp and another day of wonder and paddling and staying dry. By now Sean has been put in a small inflatable raft tied to the back of Glenn and Barb’s canoe. He enjoys the relative freedom.

At John’s Canyon, camp again and the canoes portage these rapids and those further down at Government rapids. The portage is not a lifting of the canoes for they are far too heavy, but instead they are guided around the edge of rapids by ropes. In this way some capsizing is avoided.  The smaller boats to great fanfare show their skills on the rapids, dancing and pirouetting in the creamy white froth.

At Slickhorn canyon there is a break and a brief hike up the canyon where a clear blue stream cascades into a pool and everyone takes the chance to wash in the clear water to remove that ever-present feeling of silt on the skin. It is good to feel clean and have some lunch.

Disaster

Something goes wrong. Launching back into the water Sean’s little boat breaks loose and he is plunged down the rapids alone. Everyone is then shocked to see Sean bounced from his small boat and into the rapids - only his orange life-vest visible.

The canoes had planned another portage, so the smaller boats plunged through the rapids giving chase. The descent of the river through the rapids is so steep that one must often stand up at the head of the rapids to see their entire course. Sean quickly disappears from view. His terrified screams are eventually drowned out by the roar of the water in the enclosed canyon and then shockingly the river sweeps him around a bend where his mother is left to imagine her distressed son has met his end.

Reassuring words are made with worried voices as work begins to get the canoes around the rapids until they can embark again.  Furious paddling around the bend and finally there is Sean bundled and shivering over a small camp-stove on shore while John makes hot cocoa to warm him up.

Sean’s mother hugs him, then John and Gill are vigorously thanked. Attempts are made to reassure Sean with bravado and praise. Nobody would deny the journey has not taken a darker turn. Sean is shaken, everyone is. The river is a force unconcerned with human welfare. It grumbles and hisses as we wait for Sean’s color to return before we continue.

River

In the depths of the canyon there are no options, just one way out: downstream. One could not paddle for long upstream. At Slickhorn gulch there is a trace of a 4x4 road but a long walk (how many days?) to a main road. After that nothing until the pullout area. Down and down, ever more into the canyon and wilderness farther away from habitation. Everywhere the canyon forms a cage. Only ropes and pitons would secure escape. The river alone could release, or perhaps disgorge a better word -- 125 miles, only one way out.

Mood

The mood now different, the group more purposeful. Disaster but not tragedy. Adventure sits on edge when the capabilities of the participants is in balance with the conditions and circumstances. This is not a difficult river but for so many with so little experience it might as well have been a much bigger river.

Thoughts might turn to John Wesley Powell -- that crazy-yet-so-sensible Civil War veteran determined to explore and map the course of the Colorado river in 1867. One-armed and sitting on a wooden armchair nailed to the deck of a small dory, his men rode the Green River in Wyoming to the confluence of the Colorado though Glen Canyon, Marble Canyon, Grand Canyon, and finally safely out at what is now Lake Meade. A mutiny on the way. The heart and courage of it.

Dreaming

Sleep comes easily despite the day's excitements. Good food, strenuous activities, and cold beer. Lying in the sleeping bag on the soft sand of the beach, drifting off to sleep and dreaming. . . .

Lying on the bottom of the river, the dark gritty water flows over him. The water murmurs comfortingly, the tumbling of rocks along the bottom and the hiss of sand. The river scours the skin and cleanses. Washing through him, his heart lightens, opens and joy flows like fresh blood. Despite the cold, the water is comforting. He opens his mouth and briefly struggles, fear bolts through him as water enters and he inhales.

He is still now and feels the sand and clay and minerals settle on him and move into his pores and his cells. Still conscious he can feel time stretching beyond years and decades and centuries to millions and a hundred million years.

He feels his body stiffen and the river sweeps away the sediment and the current grips him and he is tipped up like some thick plank, stood on his feet, his head briefly above the ripples and swirls in the starlit river surface before he slips under again and falls against a submerged boulder and is broken into pieces.

His torso settling to the bottom, small chips and broken bits lodge in sheltered places amongst the rocks and boulders, his head and arms roll and twist along the bottom on their way to the sea.

He wakes to the dim light of dawn seeping through the fabric of the tent. The smell of sweat and clay and the soft breathing of his companion in the tent. His head now clearer than it has been in years.

Oljato

The next calamity to befall the party happens at Oljato wash. Glenn and the others have already beached their craft for the planned hike up the canyon. Doug and Christophe approach the beach guiding the canoe closer to intersect with the sand where Glenn waits to help with the rope.

Suddenly sand waves, those great waves that arise from the smooth river surface when the river has dumped its silty load on the river bottom and now needs to scour it away again, appear around the canoe. The canoe finds itself in materializing rapids with all the slapping and bouncing and hazard.

The need to keep the bow pointed downstream now imperative to avoid rolling over. Christophe however decides he can make a desperate push across the waves from the bow and the canoe is now crossways to the waves and over it rolls.

Again, the two find themselves in the cold grip of the swirling water. Glenn acts quickly and grabs the rope tied to the bow. Christophe struggles ashore. Doug is swept along clutching his paddle near the stern of the canoe.

The current drags him around a tall boulder imbedded in the shore. The current swirls and eddies behind the rock where it plunges straight down under the rock. Quickly he forces the paddle into this hole and lunges up to grip the rock overhead while his legs are pulled under the rock ledge. Looking up he feels relief to see Glenn already there reaching to give him a hand and help him ashore.

“Christophe fucked you didn’t he,” Glenn whispers under his breathe to Doug who can only shake his head as they gather the canoe onto the shore.

They collect themselves; the rest of the party has already started up the canyon. Suddenly Sean’s panicked screaming can be heard again.

Glenn and Doug sprint up the canyon. Glenn running much faster gets there first to see a panic-stricken Barb shouting encouragement to Sean who is trapped in quicksand up to his knees.

“Don’t move!” she shouts. Everyone shouts this. Sean is struggling and trapped, sinking deeper.

Glenn crawls out on his belly on the wet sand towards Sean while others run back to the boat for rope. Glenn reaches Sean and manages to extract him, and they crawl back to firmer ground again.  

For some the excitement to explore the canyon has dissipated and they wander back to the beach to wait on the others. Some head up the canyon following the thin stream of water over small waterfalls. Everyone is silent in their own thoughts.

Today is the last day. After lunch is a short drift downriver to the pullout point. There is talk about not missing this as there is a waterfall below before the river enters Lake Powell. It is also unclear how one would get back to a road and transportation further down.

Everyone boards their crafts and pushes out into the current and drift in the warm spring sunshine, to drink beer and talk. Soon (too soon?) there are signs warning of the pullout. Paddling over to the north shore everyone makes the now well-practiced landing, steps onto solid land a final time and hauls equipment and boats into the camping area.

Shore

It is a day early, so fast was the water’s flow; the arranged shuttle will not be here until sometime tomorrow. Short of food and drink, Glenn catches a ride with another rafting party shuttling back to Mexican Hat.

Settling-in for the long wait some relax, others walk and explore up the road or along the shore. It is two hours to Mexican Hat where Glenn will pick up his truck and then drive back and shuttle Doug and Gill back to Mexican Hat to get their trucks. These distances are great and made greater by the rocky terrain.

Weather

After Glenn leaves, out of sight, beyond the low ridge of capstone around the draw, thunderheads are building, billowing white with fat orange bellies from the sandstone reflecting onto them. The thirsty land staring up passively at all of this, waiting.

Dinnertime comes, and all are expecting Glenn. The camp next-door are generous and share their food and booze. Settled around a fire, Barb gets increasingly worried. Glenn's delay is unaccountable. Most who know him well are concerned but not worried. The roads are difficult, unpredictable and Glenn is smart and resourceful.

As darkness envelops the camp, flashes of lightning reveal tall dark thunderheads while thunder rolls down the canyons in deep bass volleys. Anxiety increases, the camp prepares for wet weather.

More alcohol and more worried talk. Barb is now distressed, almost despondent. Some men in the other camp hover around her seeing her drunkenness, anxiety, and vulnerability with a predatory gaze. Doug and John watch warily and warn them away with gestures and words, gathering closer to protect her.

The wind gathers force, the lightning closer and closer as the time between flash and thunder-crack shortens and evaporates to fractions of seconds. Thunderclaps now sharp and shocking. The air smells of wet desert and ozone. Then the onslaught.

Everyone rushes to tents, the wind howls and snaps at nylon and rain torrents down onto the tents, bending rods and poles under its force. Hail soon follows with its staccato sound reverberating off canoe and kayak bottoms, threatening the tents. Everyone hunkered down. As quickly as it comes it passes, the final large drops of rain popping on the tents like the last few kernels of popcorn in the pan.

Out on the vast expanse of naked sandstone an inch or more of rain has been deposited in a few minutes. Now this gathering rain rushes into the sinuous washes and joins with other rivulets and becomes a torrent. A sandy bottom crossed by some fresh tire tracks explodes into a foamy brown torrent of vegetation and driftwood, an angry froth erases the tire tracks and 3 or 4 feet of water rushes down the gully.

Absence

Much discussion about Glenn. Nothing to be done. No communication, no transport. Time to sleep, relieve oneself at the edge of the feathery tamarisks, stare into the dark star-littered sky, feel the moist fresh air and ponder the depths of the Milky Way as few people can see it. Is all that bright dust really more suns? More worlds?

Morning, the sun beams into camp earlier than usual as there is no deep canyon here. The air warms and begins to dry out everything. People stir, attempt to restart the fire, no dry wood, no luck. More talk of ‘where is Glenn’.

Scrounging for breakfast, some stale bread, gritty sand-peppered cheese, fruit.

Closer to noon than morning, Glenn’s Scout rolls into camp. Bleary-eyed but healthy, everyone gathers around and expresses their relief at seeing him again. As expected, he has as story to tell.

Rescue

It all went well on the way out riding with the other rafting party in the back of their pickup truck. He got to Mexican Hat, called the shuttle service, retrieved his keys, and headed back down the highway toward the Clay Hills pullout and the camp. Up the Moki Dugway he described the lightshow of the thunderstorms as he drove toward it.

Driving off the Clay Hills turnoff, the storm closed in, and the rain came pouring down. The road that had before crossed dry sandy washes on his way out were now crossed with flowing streams and torrents. Each one he judged and crossed in turn, the road getting muddier and more slippery every passing minute.

Finally, he came upon a torrent that was as high as the windows of his truck. Here he stopped and decided to head back to the highway. On the way back however, a stream he had crossed before was now a deep river.

No choice, he had to spend the night in his truck on high ground. The hail came and settled on the hood and windshield, icy rafts of tiny spheres drift past in the darkness, much colder now, no jacket, no sleeping bag. He shivered and slept as best he could.

Early in the morning, it was not a good night for sleep, he drove on toward the camp. The crossings now were scoured, gutted, and littered with boulders. He could not proceed and so tried to go back to the highway. With some difficulty he made it to the asphalt strip.

A county road-crew was out clearing the debris from the road. Glenn flagged them down and said there were several people trapped down by the river at Clay Hills. The crew followed Glenn there and they helped to clear all the crossings to the camp.

Return

Glenn left some food, then took his brother, Barb and Sean, and Gill back to Mexican Hat as Doug's and Gill’s trucks were needed to haul the boats and gear out. John and Dianna held down the fort for the rest of the day.

Hours later, everything packed up, the long drive to Flagstaff, and for Doug and Christophe further travel to San Diego.

The End

Epilogue

Doug and Glenn were to go on a couple more adventures after this. A canoe trip down the Colorado River on the California border over Thanksgiving. This, a less fraught adventure. A backpacking trip in the Mazatzals in central Arizona where Glenn suggested turning back early. He later revealed he was coughing up blood at the time. Symptoms of the return of cancer that would kill him in two short years. What marvelous, treasured journeys.

After Glenn’s death, Barb married Frank, a close friend of Doug and Glenn's. They lived a happy active life shared between Flagstaff and Frank’s patch of land not far from the San Juan river. They would fly between homes in Frank’s small plane. Years later Frank died in a plane crash with his good friend and fellow river-runner Tom.

We survivors leave behind a trail of great people who have enhanced our lives and whom we will always mourn. It is difficult to say much more -- love, happiness, loss, and mourning.