All Good Things, letter 10: Paddling The Grand Canyon
All Good Things is a collection of letters I wrote to my dear friend Caleb Bouchard between Summer 2020 and Spring 2022. It was published as a small chapbook by Analog Revolution Press in 2022. I’ve compiled the letters here, with additional photos, for you. So make yourself a nice cup of tea, and enjoy.
Dear Caleb,
There’s so much to cover. It's Thursday, February seventeenth. I'm sitting on an inflatable kayak beside a fire pan surrounded by paddlers in animal onesies. I've made camp five-hundred feet below the Nankoweap granaries in Grand Canyon National Park. Sunlight climbs steadily up the three-thousand foot walls surrounding the Nankoweap delta as the February wind chills us again. Today is day five of twenty four paddling down the Colorado River. We are at river mile fifty-three of two-hundred seventy between Lee's Ferry and Lake Mead.
I had no idea what this trip would be like with fifteen other people-- four of whom I've met before-- so I'm going to explain what our day to day is like. We are almost always rigging. The sixteen of us are spread across six rafts --four eighteen foot rafts and two sixteen foot rafts. Each raft has a 6'x6' welded tube frame with diamond plate steel in the bottom, on which a 2'x6' cooler doubles as a bench. We use oars set in oar stays, as opposed to paddles. Think french riviera, or the canals of venice, except with rapids that will swallow you whole and spit you out a quarter mile down stream.
One raft is the kitchen boat and has our six-burner stove, an eight foot folding table, three dutch ovens, three nesting pots, the propane blaster, bowls, cooking utensils, and ammo cans of plates, utensils, spices, lanterns, and other culinary accoutrement. Four other rafts are loaded with food, organized by day.
Then there’s the Groover boat-- the boat I'm on. The Groover boat has a cooler like the others, but it's also loaded with a dozen rocker boxes-- large military surplus ammo cans for .30 caliber rounds. Each day when we land at camp, we pull out one of these and shit in it until it is full. Each year, about 29,000 people raft the length of Grand Canyon National Park-- 0.05% of the annual visitors to GCNP. The Grand Canyon is in a very arid environment. Human waste takes a very, very long time to break down in an environment that doesn't receive much rain and has minimal other bio-activity to break down what our bodies haven't. Twenty-nine thousand people digging twenty nine thousand cat holes in the sandy, rocky, riparian ecosystem surrounding the Colorado river every day of their one to three week trip is a recipe for disaster. So we shit into military surplus ammo cans until they're full, sprinkle them with dry bleach, and go about our merry way grateful for the opportunity to revel in one of the most sacred sites on earth.
I'm a bit of an outsider on this trip. Thirteen of the sixteen of us are professional raft guides, they all work for the same company based out of Leavenworth, Washington. My friend Jake, who won this permit in the infamous lottery system, was gracious enough to invite me-- a more or less paddling neophyte-- and I am forever grateful I was in a good enough mood to pick up the phone when he called me in October to offer me a spot.
Another outlier in our group is Dane-- the only member of our group who wasn't born in the nineties: try nineteen sixty-one. Dane is the Groover King, meaning he loads and unloads the shit cans for us and he doesn't have to take turns cooking. It's just the two of us on the S.S. Smooth Move, aka the Shitty Ditty. Dane also has forty years of river guiding experience and has rafted the Colorado an incredible eight times before this trip. Obviously, his experience is much appreciated, and means that I get to sit back and enjoy the ride as much as I want to.
We're usually loaded up and on the water sometime between 10:30 and 11:30 AM, and we tend to pull into camp between 3:00 and 5:00pm depending on how many slot canyons and archeological sites –granaries, cliff dwellings, potsherd-strewn ruins– we decide to explore on a given day.
I spend many of my river-hours sitting back to back with Wild Dane, reading essays and poetry by Gary Snyder and Barry Lopez on humanity's relationship to the earth, to land, and to each other. I lounge decadently, confident in Dane's choosing the driest run available on any given rapid. Occasionally I'll be bothered to move to the bow of our raft to grab the hang-line, and pounce on the crest of a class eight rapid, or any lateral waves that cross our path. I literally jump with all my body weight onto the front of the ship to help us punch-through the tops of waves that may otherwise stall us out and slow our downstream momentum, leading to potential capsizing. But mostly I'm a river vagabond, watching the redrock glide by at four miles an hour and waiting for the next band of sunlight to cross me. I gaze helplessly at the infinite walls containing us. Bastions of rosen sandstone give way to black, waxen Vishnu schist of two million years ago and bands of ochred Zoroaster granite. The canyon opens into delta valleys, with warm banks and slow eddies, then swallows you in a gorge with white caps crashing mindlessly into jagged cliffs. Ever changing, ever constant, the Colorado will run dry before a drop of it reaches the ocean.
6:00 It is February, it freezes at night. We clear water from the foot-pump siphons on our hand washing stations before bed. We force our heads through the strangleholds of rubber gaskets that seal our drysuits around our necks. We shiver. We drink. We piss down stream, directly into the water-- exactly like we're required. From March to November it is illegal to gather driftwood for fires, all firewood must be packed in. We burn our driftwood in a 2x3 steel fire pan on a fire mat so we don't scorch the beaches. In February, only one raft party a day embarks from Lee's Ferry (river mile 0). In the spring and summer, that number is many, many more. We have seen zero other paddlers. One hiker with a packraft, but he was really just ferrying across sometimes. In February we can swim in the robin egg blue waters of the Little Colorado River, though this still struck me as sacrilege. We are alone, it is February, it freezes at night.
The river has current, of course, but it also has eddies, which are essentially back-currents that occur on the sides of the river, most commonly after a rapid, ripple, or other feature. You want to keep the boat in the current, otherwise you get sucked into an eddy and spin around in an endless loop and never get down stream.
"Follow the bubbles." Dane says.
The best rower is the one who needs the least rows to keep up, making elegant use of the river's current. One can row forwards to keep one's eyes downstream, or you can turn the raft around and pull on the oars to make your progress. Pulling is more powerful, but then you're headed blind downstream. 0.50
The Grand Canyon has over six hundred side canyons anywhere from five to one hundred miles long each. Each of these side canyons is created by a creek, either spring-fed or flood-fed (or likely, both) and flows into, never out of the Grand Canyon. During floods --thousands or dozens of years ago-- these side canyons deposit the rocks and boulders which create the rapids which attract paddlers like us. That is to say, if you miss a pullout into a side-canyon, you will likely be thrust into a rapid and separated from the other five rafts that make up our group.
As we pulled into one of these side canyons for lunch yesterday,there sat eight happy rafters smoking cigarettes, pissing in the river, and bartering Werther’s Originals for cannabis from one of our party members (don't tell ranger Jackson). They had just finished their exploration of the side canyon, and I stayed behind to chat with them while the rest of our group filed in to wade waist deep through the water of the canyon’s entrance. As it turns out, they're from 'Chattooga World,’ the area around the Chattuga River which runs down the Georgia-South Carolina border. It was refreshing to meet some southerners out here in the Grand.
As the trip goes on I find myself withdrawing from the group more frequently and for longer periods. One of life's infinite miscommunications will find purchase in my mind and dig in like a stake. This group is so, so full of love, compassion, and mutual respect. Again, our group is thirteen raft guides who have worked together for years, plus one of their partners, and another’s best friend. it's undeniable that I'm the oddest one out, yet I'm deeply appreciative to be here. The Grand Canyon cannot be seen so wholly by any means but the river. The river means rapids; I owe my time here entirely to their skill and hospitality in taking me along for the ride.
Still, we are here for different reasons. They are here to raft, they're here for big water and partying and the play of it all. I came here for the silence, for the space between the canyon walls. I came to lust at the impossibility of stone and the inevitability of life in this world of extremes. Campfires, costumes, and cocktails get in the way of that, and I struggle with the balance sometimes. The truth is travel introduces you to warm and wonderful friends with separation written into your meeting. 1.25
The other reason for my withdrawal from the group is preparation. Idle time like this is precious, and I have the immense weight of the Hayduke trail lumbering over me this entire trip. I'm preparing for the effort to come, the very real dangers of thirst and heatstroke, falls and breaks, flood and drowning, becoming unfindable. That preparation coincides with a rising consciousness of myself, my own habits, patterns, and dispositions. It's no secret I'm an undercutting dirtbag trying to scrape out every ounce of adrenaline and serenity I can from this precious life, while giving as little of myself as possible to industrialism and the prison of late stage capitalism. I'm unorganized, I'm often late, I hate making phone calls, and I'll never hold down a real career. So I go into the wild and wander around thinking ooh, ahh at everything wondering why we pay taxes and let people starve. So I've been acclimating to the desert. Thinking about past thruhikes-- the blood, sweat, and fear of it all. Processing the most difficult moments to harden myself for them again. I've stopped taking my adderall prescription, I've stopped drinking caffeine, I’m abstaining from alcohol. I feel like I'm going to war.
* * *
The canyon wrens are going off. Every second or third day an utterly Jurassic Great Blue Heron is flushed from its perch on the riverside by our oar strokes in the current. They hang in the air and float off to infinity again. The canyon confronts us, mere guests, with our own brevity.
Time distorts further. You forget about buildings. The existence of street lights, asphalt, and cities fade from memory.
I've packed more than twice as many books as anyone else on this trip-- and I'm working through them. Nine in total, most are quite short, some are even poetry. Turtle Island, The Back Country, The Real Work, and Earth House Hold by Gary Snyder have been my staples along with About This Life and a collection of short works by Barry Lopez. I also brought A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, Tools for Conviviality by Ivan Ilich, and The Secret Knowledge of Water by Craig Childs. The Craig Childs book was recommended to me by a Chicago bellhop when I was a freshman in highschool, visiting the city for a gymnastics competition. I've essentially been reading them all at once, rereading essays and chapters and marring them all with a sage green colored pencil I need to return to Jack.
I'm committing to writing every day on the Hayduke. It's a special enough trail that it deserves my attention. Half the reason to go out is to go in, so it only makes sense to record it. I've forgotten so many good, wild, and sacred thoughts, I owe it to myself not to let them slip away so easily.
When discussing the differences between backpacking on a hiking trail, and traveling off trail, crosscountry for days at a time, I liken predefined trails to a lifeline, an extension of civilization. When following a trail, you are doing just that, following. Navigation has been off-loaded to the trail builders, likely generations ago, who surveyed the landscape to determine gradients and switchback points to ensure safe and efficient passage. Entering a landscape with no road, trail, or footpath before you severs that lifeline. There are no breadcrumbs or blazes laid out to follow, you are on your own to interpret the landscape and determine an appropriate route through it. If you're by yourself, even better.
If your route-finding responds to your environment much, patterns will emerge. You will find yourself avoiding boulders, crossing streams at slow, wide, shallow points, following the lengths of valleys, and traversing mountains at similar grades as the deer, elk, sheep, and (hopefully not) cattle. At higher topographies, you will look ahead, studying treelines to avoid bushwhacking, minimizing the amount of hard-won elevation you must give up as you drop down to seek out the next pass. You will soon find that not all paths through a terrain are equal, and that fauna have likely determined the best routes centuries ago, if you're headed anywhere worthwhile. You will develop a relationship to the land you enter. How well you travel through it is an expression of the depth of that relationship. 1.45
Rafting with a group this size feels so otherworldly, I feel so out of place. Both myself in the context of the group, and our group in the context of this canyon. This trip is unnatural. We are reliant on approximately $100,000 of rafting gear. All of our meals have been fresh and delicious. We brought over 1,000 aluminum cans, mostly beer, and have been drinking nearly every night. We have costumes, themed parties, campfires, desserts, bluetooth speakers, and are entirely too comfortable in a place so hostile. We're even floating on an artificial current created by the most sacrilegious dam ever built. This just shouldn't be possible. We aren't only tethered to civilization by our gear, we've moved in with it. Ignoring the very necessities, the cold hard truth, the very essence of the environment we have imposed ourselves on. This river should be little more than a dribble this time of year, hardly enough to bathe in, not to mention take a fleet of six rafts the size of minivans down. Visitation here should be brief and reverent, paid for with blood, sweat, and risk of life. Passage given only to those who know the landscape well enough to navigate it safely. The Havasu tribe --the only people who live in the canyon, not above it-- don't enter the lower reaches of canyons, those places are of the dead. Falls, thirst, entrapment, and floods deem these reaches off-limits, and it is very plainly so. We pick and choose our side hikes into these sacred canyons without more thought than "stay together," ensuring nothing sacred will shake us.
