My friend, Joe, is an avid nordic skier. The kind of guy who gets out 100+ times a year on his skis. His definition of summer is “three bad months of skiing”. For me, it’s about paddling, and for me, an equivalent definition of winter might be “four bad months of paddling”. On a good year, the river time starts in March, with a jaunt south to, maybe, the Salt or Gila or Verde. On the other end of the season, I might well head off for a final float in mid-October, as I did this year when I joined friends on the Desolation and Gray Canyon section of the Green River, in Utah. March through October, with an occasional blip in mid-winter, say, to Big Bend, or Florida, or the lower stretches of the Colorado . . .
In between, there are many days on local stretches of water, places I’ve cruised down dozens and dozens of times. There is the annual Memorial Day shindig, rife with unexpected hilarity and community. There might be a northern expedition to a remote and big-hearted quadrant of empty country. There are top-to-bottom watershed explorations, nights on river banks, hikes up to the rims, whitewater rushes, calm dawns, weather to deal with, new currents and familiar ones, camps to make, rapids to assess, surprises, challenges, a few accidents, contemplation, and the repeated, welcome doses of ‘river time’ consciousness.
This October, on the Green, it was the usual thing. A group of us got together, a society of folks who were on the invite list, had the time and flexibility, fell prey to the seduction of another outing, and who gathered at the put-in from our various points of origin. In this case it was a group of five guys. Most of us knew each other, some better than others. All of us were seasoned in the outdoors. Everyone came self-contained and ready to load into boats.
Fall was coming on in the turning yellows of the cottonwood trees and the cooling nights. The river was quiet. The glut of summer boaters had ebbed to a few groups strung out along the corridor. We endured one 24-hour interlude of rain, during which we stayed put, hunkered under a kitchen tarp or in our tents. The river rose, turned brown with silt. We ran rapids, boats lining out one after another through the waves, past rocks and ledges, down dirty tongues of river. We stopped to scout a few more notable spots, talked at some length about strategy, went back to our boats and attempted to execute said strategy with varying degrees of accuracy. We took walks. We played cards. We told stories, made connections, disclosed secrets, shared visions, remembered past exploits and imagined some to come.
Like I said, the usual thing, and special for that. I have come to treasure the competent companionship on these exploits, the company of people who know what they are doing, who are unfazed by difficulty, who handle themselves with grace and style. These journeys, gaggles of people riding the back of current, are nuggets of experience, each unique and memorable, each quietly fulfilling. Sometimes it is me alone, a society of one. Often it is with Marypat, or with an old friend. Or it can be a group – four or six or twenty-five of us scattered down a glittering ribbon of water in colorful boats.
What is so satisfying is the unstated competence and experience that underlies the outings. People who know how to set up a tarp in a storm, who can start a fire with wet wood, who can tell the difference between a rapid you can read-and-run and one that requires a scout, who know how to pack up and go without fuss, who can bluff a bear that is probing the edge of camp, who can look at a map and make sense of it, for whom long interludes of silence riding the skin of water are not uncomfortable, who know what a beautiful paddle can do for you, who can admit to fuck-ups, and then make up for them.
I am blessed with a community of such companions, including my children, who possess the skills, have the experience and judgement, and the sensibility to be good partners on a journey. It is a treasure to savor over the four months of bad paddling, and to anticipate again when the thaw finally comes and the next dance begins.
