July 2010

Last night I was sitting around the dinner table drinking a beer with Brian, one of the swampers (a swamper being a guy who helps out on the trip and just does whatever is needed, from setting up the groove box to washing the dishes in the chickie pails). We’d both been watching Arlo as he moved around the camp like a nervous expecting father.

“Have you ever really looked at Arlo?” Brian said. “He has Tina Turner’s legs and Prince’s face.”

Well, I didn’t even know how to respond to that so I said nothing, just sipped my beer. But I think I know what he meant. Arlo is an odd bird. No one quite knows what to make of him. He’s always smiling, always laughing, yet he’s got this dark side to him. One night we were sitting around, swapping stories, and Arlo told me how his dad was an old river runner so I started asking him questions about him. One minute Arlo would make him sound like the greatest dad in the world and the next minute it sounded like he hated him. It was hard to tell where their relationship stood at the moment.

Arlo said, “One day, I was being a real ass to him and he just looked at me in disgust and said, ‘Days like this, I wish I’d worn a condom.’”

Arlo’s dry bag is filled with books, mostly about the geology of the river and stuff on John Wesley Powell but also some cowboy poetry books. His favorite seems to be a book called Raging River, Lonely Trail: Tales Told by the Campfire’s Glow by Vaugh Short, an old swamper out Arizona known as “the poet laureate of the Grand Canyon.”

After dinner, Arlo likes to have a beer or two and eventually he’ll read something from Short’s book, usually in a very melancholy fashion. Last night he read us “Boatman’s Prayer”:

Dear Lord here on this river bank

Before we launch today

Please listen for a moment

To what a boatman has to say

Now I don’t claim to be a saint

And my souls not lily white

Sometimes I yield to temptation

Sometimes I drink too much at night

Down here I’m not an angel

Don’t even want to talk about the town

With all its woes and pitfalls

And the things that get you down

So I’m really in no position

To ask for much from you

But if you could see the way

Please try and hear me through

Life down here’s a pleasure

And there’s beauty everywhere

So I’m really not complaining

In my humble little prayer

The thing I’m trying to get across

In my stublin’ bumblin’ way

Is a boatman he’s not really bad

No matter what they say

But a boatman’s life’s not easy

Although I’m not trying to alibi

There’s no turning back up river

There’s no use to even try

Whatever lies before you

You’ve got to see it through

You can’t stop half way

And back off and start anew

Its just things aren’t as easy

As they look to those outside

It’s more than jumping in a boat

And going for a ride

Now I’m not too worried

About what’s down the way

‘Cause I’ve done this many times before

When I didn’t even pray

Oh! I don’t take it lightly!

I’ve always got to know

There’s an old lion a roarin’

In the river down below

But we’ll make it through the rapids

There’ll be no problem there

That’s really not the reason

For me to say this prayer

The reason I’m a talkin’

and it’s not easy for me to say

Just please don’t view us boatmen

In the ordinary way

I love this world you made us

And I love the rivers too

I like the things that are simple

And I like the work I do

But could you sort of look the other way

And a few small things forgive?

For it’s a little different

This kind of life I live

I have no neighbors watching

To see what I do each day

So it’s just a little easier

To stray off the narrow way

Now I have no church to go to

They just aren’t built down here

But I see your walls and canyons

And I feel you very near

Now I’m standing here a rattlin’

I’ve talked for quite a spell

I still can’t seem to get across

What I’m tryin’ to tell

It’s just please try to overlook

Some of the things I do

I may not be like your other children

But I feel very close to you

Amen

This would be how we do it. Photos by David Lansing.

So you know how we take a bath. We grab a bar of Dr. Bronner’s 18-in-1 hemp lavender Magic Soap and go stand in the river, soaping ourselves up. Some people go look for a spot far away from camp so they can have a little privacy while they’re sudsing their private parts; some people just go wherever the water is shallow and the current slow.

But, no doubt, you’ve been dying to ask: What do you do when you have to go to the bathroom? Ah. Well. That’s a bit trickier. One bit of river terminology I forgot to mention was the groove box. The groove box is a blue metal can—like an ammo box, which is probably what it once was—that sits in front of the oarman or oarwoman in a position where they can put their feet on it when they need a little extra rowing power from their legs. The groove box is also our toilet.

When we make camp, someone from the crew (and this is a really shitty job) sets up what looks like a little changing tent at least a hundred yards away from camp. In the tent goes the groove box with a sort of toilet seat on top. You do your business, pour in some chemicals, and replace the lid for the next visitor. Then, about a hundred feet away from the tent, two buckets are placed, with water in one and a little hand pump, where you go and wash your hands. All very sanitary.

The real drama, of course, always plays out in the morning. Some of us, I won’t say who, have decided that the thing to do is get up before the crack of dawn and hit the groove box while the stars are still out and everyone else is sleeping. Others wait until Sarah Jane has served breakfast and then mosey away from the table, as if they’re getting a refill on their coffee, and don’t come back for 15 or 20 minutes. You have to be vigilant. The last thing anyone wants to do is come upon the groove box when it is occupied. Or when someone is just coming out of it. So you sit at the breakfast table, discussing the events of yesterday or last night, and you notice that just about everyone glances, every few minutes, in the direction of the groove box. To see if someone is going. Or returning. Trying never to look too desperate when someone quickly pops up from the table before you have a chance to get at it. It’s a real cat-and-mouse game.

Brian and the River Buddha. Photo by David Lansing.

Last night, I slept outside. The boisterous night sky kept me away. Stars rattled and clamored like small-time hoodlums, the nervous ones bunched together like champagne grapes; loners smirked in inky corners; gangs of constellations flashed their homeboy signs—Aries, Taurus, Leon. A startling rebel streaked across the inky sky, flaming, burning up in oblivion. Mars glowered hotly above it all. Luna, just a shadow of her former self, hid behind a crescent smile.

While I watched the nighttime show, I listened to Rainer snoring like thunder in his sleep. It was epic. I couldn’t imagine how anyone—particularly Brian, his partner, could sleep through it.

In the morning, Sarah Jane, our cook, who does not take shit from anyone, glared at the table of groggy campers as we sipped our camp coffee. She put her hands on her hip and, glaring at all of us, said, “All right…who was the pig that was snoring so loud last night I couldn’t sleep.”

Everyone stared sheepish into his coffee except Rainer who looked at her placidly and said, “Me. I’m the pig that snores. I am the River Buddha and I snore to let myself know I sleep.“

He put on his sunglasses and tilted his head back to face the morning sun. None of us spoke. Even Arlo, sitting at the head of the table, like dad, was silent. We were all waiting to see what Sarah Jane was going to do.

And what did she do? Nothing. Not a word. She put a plate of flapjacks on the table and walked away. But it wasn’t until she got all the way back to her camp kitchen that any of us dared to laugh.

The storm passes. Photo by David Lansing.

“We hit The Confluence tomorrow,” Arlo said as a blast of thunder rolled down the canyon like a tsunami. “Everything changes. Right now the river only drops about a foot per mile, but after The Confluence it goes to about eight feet per mile and by the time we hit Cataract, it’ll be 30 feet per mile. Are you boys ready?”

Arlo refilled our glasses with sangria. Maybe it was the lightning and thunder or maybe it was just the fact that we were only a day away from running a series of rapids with names like Satan’s Gut and Capsize, but I was feeling a little tense.

I nudged the River Buddha with my mug. “What do you think?” I asked.

The River Buddha assumed a lotus position, closed his eyes, and, after a moment or two, said, “I think I must bathe.”

I bathed too. In my sand-filled swim trunks, standing in waist-high water while soaping up with Dr. Bronner’s 18-in-1 hemp lavender Magic Soap. As thunder and lightning flashed and roared all around us. It all seemed so preposterous that, for some reason, I started singing. Talking Heads: “Take me to the river/Drop me in the water/Washing me down, washing me….”

The River Buddha, in his German accent, joined in. We’re laughing, singing, bathing in the rain with Magic Soap.

“This is good,” said the River Buddha and I didn’t know if he meant the electrical storm, our bathing, or the trip itself.

It didn’t matter.

By the time Sarah Jane had dinner ready—thick grilled steaks—the skies had cleared. The sunset was glorious, the food the most delicious I’ve ever enjoyed, and the conversation memorable. Tomorrow we hit The Confluence and the day after that, Cataract Canyon.

Storm approaching. Photo by David Lansing.

Late this afternoon the weather turned ominous. A stiff wind rolled upriver through the canyon, slowing our progress to a crawl. Fat drops of rain, like grapes, splat on the surface of the water. Some in the boat scrambled to dig up fluorescent plastic ponchos and damp, moldy smelling sweatshirts out of the day bags.

Nobody talked. We hunkered down, heads scrunched atop our shoulders like nesting ducks, while Arlo, all business, slipped on fingerless rowing gloves, braced his feet against the blue metal groove cans, and got his legs into it.

An hour or so later, we reached our campsite for the night, a small island about the length of a football field and only a hundred feet or so wide.

Lightning crackled above the canyon walls. Thunder rumbled through the ancient rock, vibrating in the earth beneath us. The crew ignored the storm and went about their business while most of the peeps hid in their tents. The River Buddha and I sat by the river’s edge counting the interlude between lightning and thunder, trying to figure out if the storm was moving towards us or away. Sometimes, before we could event count One, the thunder smashed into our bodies like a prizefighter’s jab to the chest.

There was so much static electricity in the air that when Arlo came over with a metal pot of citrus-infused wine and vodka, which Sarah Jane had blended up for cocktail hour, I got a shock just reaching for the metal ladle. Arlo laughed at my involuntary yelp.

“She’s warning us,” said the River Buddha.

“Who?”

“The river.”

Perhaps he is right.