tags:
Grand Canyon National Park, Grand Canyon, AZ, United States |
wilderness |travelling |rafting debauchery |growth |grand canyon rafting
I awoke at 3:00ish in the morning, searching frantically for my headlamp. There was a red light flashing in the distance and I knew what that meant: we had overslept and Hoover dam via Pierce Ferry rapid was close and we only had a few minutes to react before we were dead. We had decided to end our 280-mile, 16-day Grand Canyon river trip by rafting up, or attaching all of our boats together, and floating the remaining 30 miles of flat water into the night, which was great except for the fact that the Canyon’s most dangerous rapid-Pierce Ferry rapid-was just past the take out. So if, say, you were sleeping and missed the take out, you would either A.) have to eddy out after being woken up by the sound of the Colorado River ripping its guts out on silt built up by a large dam or B.) die. There have been successful runs of Pierce Ferry rapid, but I don’t think any of them were in the middle of the night and with 3 rafts attached together.
Watching the storm move down the Canyon.
Watching a storm move down the canyon. Jen Callahan photo.
We had been partying quite a bit that day (sorry mom and dad) and all of my inhibitions had melted away like sand eroding from a beach. The entire trip had not been easy. While it was, so far, the most rewarding and awakening adventure of my life--the difficulty of putting a bunch of people together from different backgrounds in a harsh desert environment with gigantic rapids led to tensions. And I became a total jerk to everybody our last night on the river. I let it all out. “Remember that time you didn’t do the dishes?” “How can anybody really trust GPS?” I was, for a lack of a better term, ridiculous. I was on one, or so people tell me. Luckily, my boyfriend didn’t leave me and almost everyone from that trip still talks to me.
So when that light startled me awake at 3:00 in the morning, I knew that I had to be the one to save us from Pierce Ferry Rapid. Fortunately for me, the light in the distance was the light from the smoke alarm in our hotel room in Flagstaff, and I was only dreaming that we were back on the Colorado. We had safely made it to Pierce Ferry boat ramp the night before.
Another dimension with Andrew and JT at the confluence of Havasu Creek and the Colorado River. Humpback Chub, an endangered fish species, were swimming all around us. Jen Callahan photo.
That’s the thing about Grand Canyon river trips: they get under your skin and mess with your head. The shuttle driver who picked us up at Pierce Ferry told us tales of river guides getting up in the middle of the night to pee in their laundry basket--thinking it was the Colorado river--much to their girlfriend’s horror. One of our buddies from the trip told us that on his last Grand Canyon trip, his friend had done the same thing in the corner of their hotel room. You can chalk it all up to being conditioned to a certain way of living after 16, 20, sometimes 30 or 40 days in “The Ditch” but I think it is so much more than that. The Grand Canyon forever redefines what is “normal”.
The Grand Canyon regularly reminds you of the teeny tiny scale that our lives exist on in contrast to the rest of the universe. I mean, you are floating by rock layers that were metamorphosed before life on earth existed. The beauty of the canyon is haunting and if there is any unwashed laundry or unfinished business in your soul, it makes itself apparent. To be honest, I went into the trip hoping for a sort of rebirth. For many the Grand Canyon via Colorado River is a way to test one’s whitewater and wilderness survival metal. For others, including some Hopi and Pueblo peoples, it is a spiritual journey. The Grand Canyon is often referred to as a Sipapu, or the indentation in the ground of a kiva that represents the hole in the earth that ancestors to the Puebloan and Hopi peoples were birthed from (or so my white, non-puebloan and non-hopi cohorts say).
Passing through a "sipapu". Jen Callahan photo.
Much like birth, travelling through the Grand Canyon is both beautiful and intense. The surreal experience of floating in a rubber raft above clear-green waters to the Red Wall Cavern and listening to the echos of music and whispers is reminiscent of being in a church. The horror of camping above Crystal Rapid and listening to that white water hole grinding away at the earth all night knowing that you will have to face it first thing in the morning after breakfast. The friendly but haunting feeling of an ancient cliff dwelling’s windows staring down at you like dark eyes. The hilarity of watching full grown men wear tights and tutus and women wear pirate costumes and award random people with a birthday party. After all, it’s everyone’s birthday in the Grand Sipapu. Placing hands and feet on opposing sides of a sinuous slot canyon to shimmy your way up a waterfall to what could be described as no less than a garden of Eden in the desert: hanging maidens hair fern, coyote tobacco, and columbine clinging to rich sandstone pockets and receiving a gentle trickle of crystal clear spring water. Floating around a river bend to see two Bighorn Sheep bucks staring each other down from opposing sides of the river, probably making promises to kick each other’s a** once this damn river drops out. An argument that I like to think is eons old.
Basking in cool clear water after a slot canyon scramble in MatKat. Jen Callahan photo.
As incredible as the scenery of the Grand Canyon’s bottom is, so is what it does to the people that make it down there. Like strange planets revolving around each other, we would leapfrog with several other trips from beach to beach. Fortunately, after one of the most brave oarswomen in our group had a pretty amazing capsize in Hermit rapid, we happened to float by a commercial river trip. Like stoic wolves napping in the shade, they looked curiously upon the circus that was us trying to right a 1,000-pound oar boat. “Sometimes you watch the show, sometimes you are the show.” one of them would say.They calmly jumped into action and we quickly realized that we had given their guests beer earlier in the trip. 17-ish people on the flip lines later, we got the boat right side up again. In an amazingly fateful day later down the canyon, we would run Lava Falls with almost all of the parties we had met along the way. Every single boat had a successful run and we were glad to have safety running for us in the eddy below. From the grizzled Sport Jay boater known as Slaughter to the tanned and blonde wolf-men and wolf-women guides from the commercial trip, the faces of the people of the Grand Canyon will stick with me forever as they were most certainly characters in a weird coming-of-age tale.
Was there a rebirth for our tale? I would like to think so. I realized many ugly things about myself and the human race while at the same time being exposed to beautiful and evident truths about humans, animals, this planet, and the universe we all share. We would laugh with the canyon wrens and ravens at ourselves, knowing just how silly we looked on our yellow boats while also pridefully screaming at the top of our lungs for having survived yet another big white water run. We would call each other out for being lame but also hug each other for grabbing the beer.
At the end of our trip, almost everything we owned would be tattered in some way. Our pants would be ripped and near to falling off--reflecting the state of our egos.
Gratitude at Deer Creek waterfall. Jen Callahan photo.