Some Fun River Client Quotes From Last Season (and some fun links for those who make it to the end, or people who skip good stuff!)
First off, a poem from a fellow guide, Morris up in Idaho: about the coolest guy on earth.
Whitewater Dory
It is right at the top of the green tongue,
exactly there and no where else,
that is where the arc is swung,
exactly matching the gunnels curve,
the chine steamed and bent,
the same as the outer rings
in water dimpled by opposing oars.
And just like that, because of that,
we are in, completely flying,
completely scared square to the force,
the consequence of where we are
and what we do rides out in the pool below.
And so we are completely in
not knowing the pool below,
or why women love us.
...
Now for some shorties:
“Karma means I can rest easy at night, knowing all the people I pissed off had it coming.”
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"I love estrogen. I just don't make my own any more."
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"Jeffe,
Been meaning to drop you a short line about your rendition of Land of the
Navajo. I utubed it by the Grateful Dead, and I had rather hear yours by a
factor of about 200%. Rarely does a song capture me like your version,
especially with the howling at the end!
My mind and spirit are still in Idaho on the Middle Fork, but my body is in
south Georgia. May have to go back to Idaho and try to get them together
again."
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What one of the clients said after my lovely wife Carrie hiked out at Phantom (to get back to work for OARS): "We're not gonna get a ripoff reject low quality version of Carrie when she hikes out are we? We'd rather have nobody."
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What one of my Kiwi pards calls men's underwear (and Speedos):
"Banana Hammock". In Australia, they call them "Budgee Smugglers" (a Budgee is a small parrot).
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From an interview in the Boatman's Quarterly Review of J.B. (John Blaustein). He's about to re-publish his fantastic The Hidden Canyon!:
J.B.: “The relationship I’ve had with the landscape, it wouldn’t be the same without the guides. It would be different, and it doesn’t appeal to me. This guy Regan is probably the oldest friend I have now. We can go ten months without talking. We went ten years without even seeing each other, it didn’t make a bit of difference. It’s as much a part of it as the land and the water. They’re the oldest relationships I have. I’ve known ‘em all a lot longer than either of my wives. (uproarious laughter) Known ‘em longer than I’ve known my kids, that’s for sure.
It’s the Grand Canyopn, and its raucous, it’s wild, it’s rough–it’s soft it’s threatening. My last trip… we were in a storm of epic proportions. I thought, “If this is how it’s gonna end, this is what it’s gonna look like. And the next day, you’re basking in the sun, floating in the lazy current, looking at these delicate golden walls in the sunlight. Where else do you have that?”
R.D.: “I like the intensity of it. It’s always intense. I mean, even the serenity is intense… You know, even the clam, flat, peaceful stretches are intense. Just being in the bottom of the Grand Canyon is intense–compared to being anywhere else.”
J.B.: “Yeah. Regan’s exactly right–it’s intense. And the sense of scale and proportion you get, realizing you’re this teeny little speck in a teeny little boat at the bottom of this chasm–it’s humbling, makes you think.”
Stolen from the Boatman’s Quarterly Review, the journal of the Grand Canyon River Guides Association. John Blaustein interview (J.B., with Regan Dale accompanying: R.D.). Spring 2013, Volume 26, number 1.
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This last one is the only long one, not from a client but from one of my bestest river guide pards on earth, even though, in the vein of so many river guides and sailors, I haven't seen him for years. These are his musings upon turning 50 and no longer river-guiding:
"Turning 50 casts a searchlight . . . that wanders the sky not finding, not finding, not finding . . . for the answer to the question of what one will do upon growing up.
There is of course a yesterday one could extend toward a tomorrow--something which you, Jeffe, have crafted into art despite ALL THE SHIT. And then there's
the sensing and wondering of what might feel most satisfying. And lastly, the compromises of what is possible, practical and probable.
That searchlight uncovers some things, if not the thing. I always envisioned living in an off the grid home of my own making, and the searchlight revealed that I really don't like the feel of a hammer in my hand--that I like a life without the clutter of table-saws and saw-dusts. Simple apartment-living puts my mind at ease . . . and this occurs at the same time that I hold desperately to the notion that I could be one of those guys to build his own home off the grid! And that leaves a person between worlds. This is a time of between worlds.
I had a 4X beaver Stetson--black, with a stampede strap. I idolized cowboy life. Finally, I came to see cowboys as lonely, and living in varieties of squalor, and I did not want to be alone, or sleep in trailers, anymore. I gave that hat away.
So I know a person can leave a world of his own creating and create anew . . . and I'm coming to know that this is a process...
So I migrate between worlds, between creations of myself.
Last week the Lynnie-bel took us to the coast. We paddled this little coastal stream--just reflected green and quiet. And it felt a lot like love. The quiet calls to me more and more.
At 50 one wonders, beyond conceding those things allowed by youth alone, if passages are a real thing--and a redefining of who one is and what brings joy is perhaps appropriately considered.
Sometimes I think of a person's life as one of those rubber balls they call a 'kush'. It's a rubber ball at its center which has a thousand little rubber strands a few inches long that have grown out from that center. So you've got an undeniable self in there--that rubber ball--and all these strands are the possible manifestations of how your life will go. In my analogy, those strands are in the millions or infinite. And they've all been played out--they're all formed. And when we have moments of unbelievable coincidence or deja-vu or dreams, it's just happened that the strand we're on has overlapped at a particular point with another strand. In that instant we know the strand of our life by experience and we look--as if through a glass-bottomed boat--at another of our lives.
And when these crazy balls of our current and possible selves start colliding with those of others--and the myriad courses of possibility meet and separate and entwine again--it gets pretty crazy . . . and maybe beautiful.
The valuable tool for a happy life may be the one that allows us to effortlessly leave a given strand for another in the moment to moment--to enact the destiny the present demands . . . rather than creating a present to meet a destiny.
In that light, the compliment 'very becoming' takes a special meaning.
The lynnie-bel reads quietly in the big chair beside--beautifully. And I have crossed strands onto a life that feels very precious, very endowed for the moment. And I should leave you there . . . having arrived again home.
With love,
the wunder."
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And now for those who made it this far, some fun links. Stay tuned for more good links next time!:
An interview with Kevin Fedarko about Protecting Sacred Spaces and his most excellent must-read for all Grand Canyon lovers: The Emerald Mile:
https://medium.com/@americanrivers/protecting-sacred-spaces-5a3c08384dde
The Grand Canyon in-depth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hoGpYyn4Bs
And finally, in honor of the guy who saved the Grand Canyon from being dammed, and who started the dories (two of the most important things in my life), and who just passed away, Martin Litton:
http://www.npr.org/2014/12/03/368282862/martin-litton-remembered-as-fervent-conservationist
