Chapter 11

April 29, 2001

"I thought this morning I’d take something from Edward Abbey," Scooter said as people were pretty well loaded on the rafts to get under way. She pulled out the Words for the Wild book again, and began to read. "‘The canyon country does not always inspire love. To many it appears barren, hostile, repellant – a fearsome land of rock and heat, sand dunes and quicksand, cactus, thornbush, scorpion, rattlesnake, and agoraphobic distances. To those who see our land in that manner, the best reply is, yes, you are right, it is a dangerous and terrible place. Enter at your own risk. Carry water. Avoid the noonday sun. Try to ignore the vultures. Pray frequently. For more and more of us, who now live here, however, the great plateau and its canyon wilderness is a treasure best enjoyed through the body and spirit in situ as the archeologists say. It is a regional, national and international treasure too valuable to be sacrificed for temporary gain, too rare to be withheld from our children. For us, the wilderness and human emptiness of this land is not a source of fear but the greatest of its attractions. We would guard and defend and save it as a place for all who wish to rediscover the nearly lost pleasures of adventure, adventure not only in the physical sense, but also mental, spiritual, moral, aesthetic and intellectual adventure. A place for the free.’"

She closed the book, stood silently for a moment. "Bottom line," she said finally, "is that the adventure is what all of us are here for, and much of it doesn’t have to do with running rapids. I’d be a liar if I didn’t say that sometimes I’d be just as glad if we didn’t have them, because there’s still plenty of room for adventure here, and maybe, in one way or another, that’s why we’re all here." She let out a sigh. "With that, people, let’s be about it."

One by one, the six rafts pushed away from the bank. Scooter had told them earlier that this would be a short day and that they weren’t going to push it – she only planned on running to Nankoweap, eleven miles downstream, but that it was a good place to spend a lazy afternoon, with some good hikes.

It was a good morning to just drift and watch the passing scenery, which was spectacular, as always. The canyon walls were still pretty vertical and colorful with earth tones. Everybody was just getting settled in reasonably well an hour or so out when they came to the biggest rapids they’d see this day – President Harding, at Mile Forty-four. "President Harding isn’t much of a rapids," Scooter told them, "but then, Harding wasn’t much of a president, either. Really, when you get right down to it, the Colorado isn’t much of a river, either." By eastern standards, it was really pretty small – only about a hundred yards wide much of the time, sometimes a little wider; there are many rivers in the east that flow with much more volume without comment. But, for the arid west, it’s a big river – and the views were rarely bigger anywhere.

Nicole had again been rowing – Scooter had noticed that she was a good raft handler in fast water; she had the touch, and as long as she enjoyed doing it, being at the sticks took her mind off the fear of the rough water. Scooter just stayed perched on the side tube without comment while Nicole ran President Harding.

From several rafts behind, Crystal noticed that Nicole was at the sticks of the lead raft – and noticed that she was doing well at it. The really big stuff, in Upper Granite Gorge, was still a couple days away, but Nicole was coming along, and maybe she’d be able to handle it. She wouldn’t have wanted to bet on it back up at Badger.

So far, this trip had gone pretty well, Crystal thought. Usually, she rowed most of the trip, but with her mother and Noah both rowing a lot, she’d hardly been on the sticks at all. She hadn’t been able to just sit back and drink in the scenery like this since her first trip down the Canyon with Louise, Al’s late wife, at the sticks a couple years before, and she’d still wound up rowing a lot of that one.

Having Nanci along was a big surprise – all the way around, but it seemed to be working out well; she seemed a little more subdued than she remembered, and when there was work to be done, she did it without complaint. She was even carrying her share of the load and more with setting up and taking down the groover with Trey, and that wasn’t always the most fun job on the trip. Well, perhaps her recent history, mixed with the awe of this place, was starting to work its magic, she thought. "So how you liking the trip?" she asked her sister.

"Pretty good," Nanci smiled back at her from the top of the gear pile. She was wearing that ugly brown swimsuit again, with a pair of shorts. "This sure isn’t much like that other raft trip you took me on."

"No, it’s pretty different," Crystal agreed. "I sometimes wonder how Noah and I managed to do that as long as we did."

"It did get to be an almighty hassle," Noah agreed from the oars. "Always at a rush; almost always a mob scene; always new people. On a trip like this, well, you get to know people a lot better, get a chance to sit back and contemplate it."

"I just can’t believe that you and Mom get to do this all the time," Nanci grinned. "Doesn’t it get sort of dull after a while?"

"No," Crystal said. "There’s always something new, something you’ve never seen before. The worst part is always riding the crew bus up from Diamond Creek, having to turn your back on the place."

"I don’t run as much as Crystal," Karin said. "But it’s always hard to leave, and I’m always counting the days until I can get on the river again. I’m actually a little surprised at that. I mean, I enjoyed my first trip down here, before Crystal was born, and I always wanted to do it again. But back there in Glen Ellyn, I’d never have imagined that I’d be doing several trips a year and always be eager for the next one the minute the last one is over with."

"Mom, don’t you miss those days back in Glen Ellyn?" Nanci asked.

"Well, yes, sometimes," Karin admitted. "Let’s face it, Nanci. It was a different world. It was a good life for a long time, but after it started to go sour, I hung onto it a lot longer than I should have, mostly because I couldn’t see any good way out of it. I mean, your father and I had some good years, but it went flat. But, it’s hard to make the decision to change, and it has to get pretty bad."

"Yeah, I guess I know how that works," Nanci agreed. "I guess I knew for a year or two before I left Chicago that I didn’t like the way I was living, but I couldn’t see much of a way out. I mean, this trip still seems like a dream, and I don’t know what happens when it’s over with, but at least I get a chance to step back and think about it."

"I don’t know what happens either," Karin said. "About all I can say is let’s just enjoy the Canyon and the being together for now. When we get down to Diamond Creek, we can think about it and see where we’re going."

In fact, Karin and Al and Crystal had already had several brief discussions of the problem. Nanci seemed to be working out well on this trip; although only a couple days in, it was still too early to tell how it was going to work in the long run. If she continued to do as well as she’d done so far, it seemed likely that she’d be offered a job as a swamper through the summer and fall. Karin had thought to herself that maybe over the winter Nanci might well work out in the office. While Karin was the office manager, at least in theory, in practice she and Michelle shared the job, trading off trips. There were problems with that – mostly a lack of continuity – and in reality, they were a little light on office staff, anyway. But Karin hadn’t even raised the possibility with Al yet; she wanted to be a lot more sure of her wayward daughter before she was left to handle the office on her own. Maybe with some oversight, between Michelle and Karin it might work. But, she wasn’t ready to make that decision, yet, although it clearly might be an option in the future. A lot seemed to ride on how well the rest of the trip went.

"I guess," Nanci said. "I still can’t quite imagine that you made this big a change in your life.’

"I have to say that a lot of it just happened," Karin grinned. "Which is how a lot of things happen. Three years ago, when I was sitting in the accounting department at Heller-Aller, there’s just no way I could have imagined that I’d be a part-time boatman in the Grand Canyon today." She sighed. "Luck got in the way there, quite a bit."

"I still can’t believe it," Nanci said. "I mean, I can imagine people like Crystal and Scooter and Al running these rafts, but I can’t imagine me ever doing it."

"It’s not that hard," Karin grinned. "Noah, why don’t you let Nanci at the sticks for a few minutes? This is easy water, she can’t get into trouble."

"Mom, are you sure?" Nanci said, a question on her face.

"It takes some learning," Crystal told her. "Especially since you’re starting from scratch. But, once you’ve built up the muscle and developed the eye that goes along with it, it’s really not that hard."

"Well, all right, if you say so," Nanci said, a bit dubiously, getting up to replace Noah at the oars.

"All right," Crystal said. "All we want to do for now is to just stay sideways in the fast water and let it drift us along." Slowly, Crystal began to coach her sister in running the raft. To the best of her knowledge, Nanci had never been at the controls of any boat before, so it was a slow process. For the next half hour, Nanci learned a little about how to move the boat, to pivot it. There were mistakes, and she was pretty clumsy with it at first, but after a while, she began to get the basics – and Crystal let her build up her confidence a little by letting her run the raft through a couple of patches of riffles.

"It’s pretty hard," Nanci said finally, "but I think I’m starting to get it a little."

"You’ve been doing fine for a first timer," Crystal said. Why don’t you let Mom at the sticks for a while, but later, we’ll let you do it some more. Kind of fun, isn’t it?"

"Yeah, it is," Nanci grinned as she got up. "I can’t help but think what Dad would think to see us like this."

Crystal grinned. "He’d think we were all out of our minds. All of us. And, the way he thinks, we would be."

Nankoweap, at Mile 52, was the first place since the Lee’s Ferry area that the Canyon really widened out to a broad valley perhaps half a mile wide and a mile long. River left was still a nearly vertical cliff rising around five hundred feet, but on river right there was a broad outwash plain where debris had washed down Nankoweap Creek.

Even taking it easy, they’d made good time down to Nankoweap, arriving at midday. There are several good, large campsites at Nankoweap, and stopping for the day before lunch, they pretty well had their choice of places to camp. Scooter had Noah pull out river right in an eddy immediately below Nankoweap Rapids, where Nankoweap Creek came down from the north. They unloaded, had lunch, and settled down for a quiet afternoon.

Over lunch, Scooter told the group that Nankoweap was one of the places that there had been a fairly large concentration of Anasazi Indians living eight hundred years ago. Far above the river, up a broad talus slope, there were four hollowed out and walled-up "granaries" where the ancient Indians stored their grain. "The view from up there is one of the best ones we get on the river," Scooter told the group. "It’s a long climb, but relatively easy until you get to the last bit up at the granaries. You have to get to them across a narrow ledge, and it scares a lot of people. Even if you don’t go across the ledge, the view is pretty good. After we get back down, if anyone wants a longer hike, we’ll explore up Nankoweap Creek a bit."

A big majority of the party went on the hike, although a few decided not to risk the exposure of the ledge. The view was, as advertised, pretty awesome; the view downstream was especially nice, and a lot of photos were taken. In a few minutes, after everybody had caught their breath from the steep climb, they started back down slowly. Crystal caught up with Noah before he left, and quietly said, "Unless you really want to hike up the side canyon, why don’t we stay behind?"

In a few minutes, only the two of them were left, sitting on convenient rocks, looking out at the river and the camp far below. "Nice view," Noah said, feeling just a little awkward.

"Yeah," Crystal sighed. "I don’t always make the hike up here, but do most times. Like everything else, it’s different every time."

"You said the other day you wanted to find some time for the two of us to get together alone," Noah commented.

"Yeah, I didn’t plan it this way," Crystal told him. "It just seemed like a good idea. It can be hard to get a little one-on-one time on trips like this, and there are so many people I’m close to that it’s even harder than I thought it would be. So, how are you liking this trip so far?"

"Just fine," he replied. "I guess you know I was a little reluctant to make this trip, but now, I’m glad I came. I envy you your life, Crystal. Things have worked out pretty well for you."

"Most of the time, I think they have," she said a little pensively. "It’s strange how things worked out. Noah, the other day, I told you how I had to leave home the day I graduated from college, because Pete wanted to blame me for Nanci."

"Yeah," he nodded. "That had to be painful."

"You have no idea," she said. "I got in the car and burned rubber getting out of there, but before I got out of the subdivision, I just pulled to the side of the road and cried. I must have sat there crying for almost an hour, just because things had gone to shit for me so bad." She let out a sigh. "I suppose I could have gone back, but there wasn’t any reason to think it would have been any better if I did. I had sort of been expecting it to happen, but I hadn’t admitted to the reality of it happening, so I hadn’t really thought my options out too well."

"People rarely do when they’re upset," he replied consolingly.

"Yeah," she said. "There have been times I’ve been sorry that I made the decision that I did. Really, I only had two choices. I could go up to Spearfish Lake, to Randy, or I could go to Myleigh at Cornell. I’d just said goodbye to Randy a few hours before up at Northern, and I knew damn well that I could go back to him, and we’d probably have wound up getting married, maybe not right then, but soon. At the time, it didn’t seem like the right choice. I had a lot of wanderlust. I still wanted to get out and do things. I already had my plans to do the AT well along, and I thought that going to him would probably have ruled the hike out."

"But, you didn’t," he said, trying to be a good listener and help her talk through what was on her mind. It was clear to him that what she was talking about wasn’t the problem; it was in the distant past, but still affected her.

She let out another long sigh. "Randy and I had talked about it, several times. I told you that we’d thought about living together my last semester. We’d talked about getting married, too, not seriously, just exploring the idea, if you know what I mean. The hell of it was that I knew that if I got married to him, I’d pretty well have to make a life up there with him, and that meant, well, no AT, none of the other stuff I wanted to do. Randy’s pretty serious about his job and his family, and it wouldn’t have been right to saddle him with my troubles and my wanderlust. He got a pretty bad dose of having to put up with Nicole’s own wanderlust, and I just added to it. But, that’s all water down the river now. I didn’t go to him, and went to Myleigh, instead. One thing led to another, and it all wound up here. I guess it all worked out for the best in the end."

"Let me guess," he said. "You look at Randy and Nicole, and you think, ‘Wow, that could have been me.’"

"That’s about the size of it," she said. "Don’t get me wrong, I wish them the best, and think it’s worked out pretty well for them. She’s a lot closer to the woman he needs than I could have ever been. But, damn it, they’re a lot closer to what people are supposed to be doing with their lives than I am, and I can’t help but think that maybe I made a mistake."

"I shouldn’t be offering a judgment," he said. "But I think that things worked out pretty well for you."

"Yeah, they did," she agreed. "Noah, there’s so much that’s happened with me since I last saw you it isn’t funny. After I had to leave home, I went to Myleigh, and she and I decided to go surfing down at Buddha and Giselle’s. Myleigh didn’t have a car at that time, and no money to speak of, and I planned to stay in Florida, to train for the trail. She got the bright idea of asking Randy to come down, so she could ride back with him. I honestly think she had in mind setting the two of us up, but she never said anything. Well, lo and behold, Randy had already asked Nicole to go down there with him. They were boyfriend and girlfriend back in high school, and he pretty well wanted to get back together with her, I think mostly to get Myleigh and me out of his heart. I wasn’t making a lot of sense at the time, but Myleigh asked the both of them to come down. She really couldn’t have said much else, I guess. Anyway, they did come down to Buddha and Giselle’s, and we all hung around, just good buddies."

"It must have been a little awkward," he commented.

"Amazingly enough, it wasn’t," she said. "Like I said, we just stayed good buddies, and never let anything get romantic. Myleigh and I had a lot of practice at that with Randy. Anyway, Nicole and I got to talking about hiking, and one thing led to another. She wound up doing three weeks on the AT with me the next spring. While Nicole and I were hiking we spent a lot of time talking about Randy, and I wound up telling her that I’d stay out of her way. I think I realized that she would be better for him. Believe me, the next year to year and a half, there were several times I came close to breaking my word. Randy offered to marry me if I needed to, but I didn’t want him doing it out of pity, so I just sort of let it slide. I sort of based myself out of his house for the next two years, but I was never around very much. I was sort of heading back to Spearfish Lake to see if maybe I could get something going again with Randy, when I discovered this place. By the time I got back to Spearfish Lake, I discovered he and Nicole had gotten too tight, and I knew I shouldn’t try to bust them up."

"That had to have been hard," he said mildly.

"Yeah," Crystal nodded. "I mean, Randy had always kind of been there as a backstop, and I think if I’d put it to him he’d have kept his word. But it would have been the wrong thing to do." She sighed. "So then, I was really without a home. I spent the next four months living in an old pickup camper at Josh and Tiffany’s, helping them train their dogs, then came back out here. I figured it would last for a year or two, and then I’d go do something else. Then, Mom showed up, and I discovered Al was my dad, then we found Jon and Tanisha, all in the course of about a month. Then, I started to realize that this had become my home. And really, it’s fine with me. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do. Really, it’s a pretty good deal. Scooter and I hiked for about a month on the AT, and when Al needed some experienced hands, well, I called her up and asked her to come out. I called you then, too."

"I remember," Noah said. "It was tempting, Crystal. Very tempting. But I was still pretty new at Glen Hill Road, and it wouldn’t have been a good idea for me to just take off."

"I know," she said. "When I heard you were there, I almost didn’t call you, because I figured that was what you’d say. Anyway, Scooter did come out, and we’ve become about as good friends as I was with Myleigh. Better, maybe – Scooter and I are pretty much alike, we tend to see things the same way, which isn’t the way most people might see them. We’ve run together all summer the last two years, and then we’ve taken off in the winter and just did something about our wanderlust. Surfing, skiing, like that. Last year, we rented a twenty-eight-footer and spent three weeks sailing in the Bahamas." She let out yet another sigh. "It’s going to be strange to not be running with her this summer. Like I said, we are good buddies, and last year we switched off being trip leader. It’s kind of a hassle, and doing it that way eased the stress. I don’t know what Dad has worked out, but I’ll wind up with running with one of two guys as assistant trip leader. They’re OK, but it’s not like they’re my friends, and there’s no way I can change off with them like I did with her. It’s gonna be a long summer."

"It’ll go fast," he offered. "It’s only four months, after all."

"I suppose," she told him. "You remember when we were talking earlier, and I said the hardest part of every trip is getting on the crew bus and driving away from the river? It’s agony when it’s the last trip of the season. The last two years, Scooter and I have mostly spent the winter counting the days till we can get back. It’s been fun, we’ve had a great time, but it’s not very serious, if you know what I mean."

"You’re saying that if you’re having fun, it can’t be serious?" he frowned. "You know better than that."

"That’s not what I mean," she shook her head. "Look, I chose to leave Randy because I wanted to live my own life, be free to do what I wanted to. I’m starting to realize that it may not work out that way here."

"How do you mean?" he asked.

"I gotta talk about Randy again," she told him. "I mean, I always knew his folks were comfortable, but not exactly what I thought of as well off. Well, when Nicole and I were out hiking, she set me straight on that. Randy’s dad and granddad pretty well own a couple of big businesses in Spearfish Lake. The construction company is the smaller of the two. She guesses they’re worth maybe fifty million bucks."

"Yeah, I’d say that’s well off," Noah grinned.

"The problem is, that the money is all tied up in the businesses," Crystal said. "They could maybe sell them for that much, but they have to live on the incomes. Anyway, the point is that he’s pretty well tied to Spearfish Lake because of the value of the two companies. When I realized that, I knew I’d never get him out of there, and the only way I could have him was to be there with him. That’s why Nicole wound up marrying him; she’s willing to be there with him. The hell of it is, Noah, that I didn’t realize until I got on that Park Service trip this spring that I’d pretty well fallen into the same trap."

"Crystal, I don’t follow you," he said with a frown.

"I didn’t think about it myself until this spring," she said. "Noah, do you have any idea what an outfit like Canyon Tours is worth?"

"Hard to say," he said. "I don’t think in terms like that. Not a real big business, I’d think."

She shrugged. "I don’t think like that, either. But the scuttlebutt on the trip was that one of the smallest companies changed hands last winter, for a million five."

"That’s bigger than I would have thought," he said.

"The problem is that the Park Service only allows so many concessionaires," she said. "They aren’t giving out any more, and each concessionaire is limited by the number of passengers and launches we get. That means that the concession license itself is worth more than all the rafts and gear and vehicles and real estate. Anyway, after that trip, I had a talk with Dad about it, and he told me he’s turned down an offer of four million. We’re not the biggest company, but we are one of the bigger ones. It’s not in the same category as Clark Construction and Clark Plywood, up in Spearfish Lake, but it’s nothing to laugh off, either."

"I get it," Noah said, enlightenment dawning on him. "You’re Al’s only kid."

"Right," Crystal said. "Al didn’t flat come out and say it, but most likely in time this outfit winds up in my hands. The scary part is that I’m probably going to have to be managing it a lot sooner than that. In fact, what Al did say is that he wanted me to start getting in some office time this winter, rather than just going out and helling around. Dad’s fifty-four, and I know he wants to start slowing down a little, especially with Mom and him together again. I may be able to get away with running wild in the winter for another few years yet, but then I’m going to have to be putting in the majority of my time in the office."

"You’re telling me you’re scared of having to grow up," he smiled.

"Yeah, I guess, if you want to put it that way," she sighed. "I love it out here more than you can imagine, but this spring I’ve kept thinking I’m going to have to get serious sooner or later. I’ve given some thought to taking the fall off, letting Scooter lead the trips, and go back to school myself to take some business courses. Maybe I will, maybe I’ll put it off for another year, or maybe do it online or as a correspondence course or something. I don’t know how much I could learn that I couldn’t learn from Dad and Mom, anyway."

"You wouldn’t have to do it all at once," he offered.

"I suppose, but that’s what keeps me thinking about Randy. He likes to get out and travel, do backcountry stuff, and he doesn’t get to do it anything like he wants to. He and Nicole and I had a long talk about that back over Christmas. See, at the construction company, his winters are pretty slow, if he’s not off almost entirely. He could take off for a month or two then, but he’s busy as hell in the summer. Nicole is a teacher, she gets three months off in the summer, and she takes off and runs a Girl Scout camp part of the summer since he’s never home then anyway. They don’t often get the chance to go anywhere together, and she had to take this trip on unpaid leave. Damn, last winter, I thought about asking Randy to join Scooter and Michelle and me on the sailboat for a while, just so he’d have a chance to get away, but for him to take off with his old girlfriend and two other women . . . "

"It wouldn’t have looked very innocent, even if she knew what was going on," Noah grinned.

"Right," Crystal grinned. That’s part of the reason I wanted him and Nicole to come on this trip, to sort of make that up to him. But, the thing of it is, I can see myself getting into the same trap, where I can’t go do stuff even in the off season, because of family stuff."

"The death of a free spirit," Noah nodded. "I can see how it would be difficult to contemplate."

"I know," Crystal said. "Like I told you back upriver, it’s nothing that has to be solved right away, but I can see the problem coming, and I figure I’d better at least think about it. But, that’s not all the problem."

"Something else?"

"Yeah," she said with resignation. "Again, having Randy and Nicole in front of me just rubs it in. Like I said, I could have had Randy if I’d wanted him bad enough, if I’d been willing to go to the effort to have him. He and Nicole have got this big new lake shore house, really beautiful, good jobs. Look, it’s not been any secret to you that Nicole has been nervous as hell about this trip, right?"

"Of course," he said. "I mean, nothing much has been said, but all you have to do is look at her to know it."

"She’s getting through it on guts," Crystal told him. "She doesn’t want to quit this trip for Randy’s sake, because she knows he has this problem with being able to get out. He doesn’t want to put her through the stress. The reason we stopped at Badger the first day was to give her the option to walk out. I’m a little surprised she didn’t, but she didn’t because she loves him. Scooter is planning on stopping at Tanner tomorrow to give her the option to walk out again, up the Tanner Trail, before we get to the big stuff. I’ll bet she’ll stick it out, for his sake, but if she decides to walk out, he’ll go with her." She shook her head. "Noah, I can’t think of a comparable situation, but I miss having someone who cares about me like that. Like both of them care about each other." She sighed, and he could detect a tear forming in her eye. "If it was him and me instead of him and Nicole . . . well, damn it, I miss being loved like that. I could have had it, and I blew it."

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