THE 1 MPH HIKING CLUB

Have you ever been somewhere outdoors so captivating that you forgot, however briefly, about everything else? When you were truly in the moment? Wilderness can do that to you.

This year, I spent a lot of time in the wilderness forests of Oregon, with my friend, Neil, who has a personal connection to these places.

We call ourselves The 1 mph Hiking Club, though our pace can barely be called hiking. More like sauntering, allowing time for swapping questions, taking photos, telling stories, and being surprised.

“I don't like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains - not 'hike!' Do you know the origin of that word saunter? It's a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going they would reply, 'A la sainte terre,' 'To the Holy Land.' And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them.” – John Muir

A flock of gray jays bombs me and Neil, raucous as a band of bored teenagers. A brilliant flame on the forest floor, appropriately called Orange Peel Fungus, catches our eye. There, fresh elk tracks!

But it’s the big trees that entrance us. Like the ents of Tolkien’s Middle-earth, these elders of the wilderness forest speak to us of a world unmarked by civilization. We marvel at their beauty, their tenacity to survive centuries of change to their homes. What have they seen? What secrets do they know?

Mature forests that escaped logging and fire are dominated by these behemoths, here in the mountains of western Oregon, where we live. Over and over, Neil and I stop to touch trees that are, as he describes, “a whole nother class of ancient.” As each new giant stops us, we gawk upward, make wild guesses of its height, its age, rub its bark, try to grasp its silent essence, shake our heads, and move on. Some trees are so huge that we quickly run out of adjectives, reverting, simply, to pointing: “That’s a big tree.”

The more big trees, the more our questions, and the slower our pace. When did fire last burn here? From our guide books, we learn that the oldest trees – wider than we are tall – are probably “only” 700 years old, since most every forest in Oregon burned at least once since then. Neil and I speculate, argue about forest secrets, like why various kinds of trees are common here, but not there. Is it from differences in elevation, moisture, past fires? 

And why did a cougar poop on this particular spot on the trail? That monotonous hooting high in the hemlocks – is it a Northern Saw-whet Owl or Northern Pygmy-Owl? Always, we’re left struggling to understand how things got to be the way they are. The closer we peer into the wilderness, and for each question we answer, the more questions we have. And the more surprises.

One morning, a dozen miles inland from the ocean, the forest was cloaked in fog. Sunbeams cut through the thick canopy of branches, reaching 200 feet over us. Each of the trees’ countless, needle-covered boughs was tipped with a drop of water. Then, at just the right angle, a single drop high above caught the sun like a crystal, and burned as a rainbow-colored diamond.

“You’re hallucinating,” Neil scoffed, when I tried to describe the apparition. I wanted to show him, but apparently, it required a unique set of angles – eyeball to droplet to sun. You had to have your head in exactly the right place to experience the miracle. Move a few inches one way or the other, and the fiery visage vanished. Fortunately, a ways down the trail, we both hit that magical geometry again, and an otherwise indistinguishable drop of dew on a hemlock boughlet high in the forest, caught a sunbeam from 93 million miles away, and froze us in our tracks. When you find yourself in exactly the right place at exactly the right time, is that merely luck?

These wild, virgin paradises are now protected from logging, in no small measure, because of Neil. He was the attorney who took on the U.S. government, 35 years ago, filing lawsuits to save the last uncut, old-growth forests in Oregon. Long story, short, his success helped lead to passage of the 1984 Wilderness Acts. Those federal laws set aside or expanded 31 wilderness areas in Oregon (175 new wilderness areas, nationally).

Neil wrote a moving, intensely personal account of that history, which might make you cry. It did me. (Wilderness, Luck & Love: A Memoir and a Tribute – https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1077&context=mjeal)

He and I count ourselves fortunate to have crossed paths again. We worked together as environmentalists back East in the ‘90s. Last summer, I discovered he had retired and moved to Eugene, near my home. Now, we hike together.

Which brings me to Neil’s bucket list, and The 1 mph Hiking Club. Neil wants to hike in all 31 of the Oregon wildernesses that he helped preserve. That is a grand goal.

I’m just tagging along on the easier hikes, happy for the chance to see, up close, supremely beautiful places. So far, we’ve made it together to six on his list (Drift Creek, Waldo Lake, Diamond Peak, Boulder Creek, Cummins Creek, and Menagerie Wilderness Areas), plus another three wildernesses lacking that official designation (Gate Creek, Gwynn Creek, and China Loop Trails).

Typically, we’ll hike seven or eight miles, round-trip, which at our 1 mph pace, means we can be far from the car when shadows deepen and the sun drops behind the mountains. That’s when we pick up our speed, our gliding footfalls muffled by damp conifer needles that blanket the trail. It’s the spooky time of day, when we hope to see a mountain lion.  So far, no luck.

Each wilderness is different. Low-elevation coastal rain forests drip with lichens and moss. The biggest Douglas-firs take your breath away. Their bark is deeply furrowed with age, the ground littered with their cones. Its Latin name, which I learned in college nearly a half-century ago, still rolls off my tongue like a melody: Pseudotsuga menziesii. The biggest are the tallest trees in the world, once reaching over 400 feet, taller even than the biggest redwoods. One in Washington lived for 1,385 years.

East of the Coast Range, the Cascade Mountain wildernesses that we visited are higher in elevation and not quite as soggy. In Boulder Creek Wilderness, there is an expansive area called Pine Bench. It’s a grove of centuries-old Ponderosa Pines, which grow ramrod straight, their bark covered with golden-orange flakes of bark that look like pieces from a jigsaw puzzle. Frequent fires have kept understory cleared, sculpting a landscape from Hansel and Gretel. 

Vistas open from meadows and fire-cleared areas of these trails, to the volcanic peaks of the high Cascades: Mt. Jefferson, Mt. Washington, Three-Fingered Jack, Diamond Peak, the Sisters – the highest topping 12,000 feet, most capped by glacial ice. How much time until they erupt again?

“It’s humbling, being in an area like this that has endured so long,” says Neil. “We’re a blink of the eye.”

Like those Middle Ages saunterers, we are pilgrims in Holy Lands, where wilderness quiets our minds, sharpens our attention, puts us in the moment, and connects us with the Universe. We marvel, in reverence, at our blessings.

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SWAMPING THE GRAND CANYON

Swamper Wayne & Boatman Adam - Mile 124

I slid face-first off the raft and ker-splashed into the frigid Colorado River. My plunge surprised me as much as the thirteen watching passengers. We were in the bottom of the Grand Canyon, where it’s not a great idea to go for an unplanned swim. Too late, Boatman Adam had yelled, “Grab his feet!”

As a volunteer “swamper” (crew), I found myself in over my head – in more ways than one. We were barely half-way through our eight-day trip. An old-hand boatman had told me three rules for swampers: “Don’t get hurt,” “Wash your hands,” and “Drink water.” Unspoken was a fourth: “Don’t fall in.”

I fell in while trying to retrieve a lost water bottle floating along the cliffs. Just two days earlier, with brilliant form, I’d snagged an errant red bag that had fallen off our boat, while lying on my belly on the front of the giant, gray-and-aqua-colored raft as it chased downstream, my outstretched arm directing Adam at the Honda outboard, then leaning down to the water at the last second to swoop up the bag. Voila! Just like I’d watched Swamper Shaun do on our rafting trip a year earlier (that time, me riding as a passenger). I was pretty proud of myself, and the onlookers clapped. But as Proverbs says, “Pride goeth before a dunking.” Or something like that.

Fortunately, I’d executed my dive in relatively calm water and out of the river’s vicious currents and rapids. After assuring all the downturned faces on the raft, “No damage done,” I swam to the water bottle, handed it up, and started to crawl back on board. Then came a chorus of, “ChapStick! There’s a ChapStick floating behind you.” Oh, shit, it had come out of my pants pocket, which meant an ignominious swim back to capture my fucking lip balm. As if my predicament wasn’t mortifying enough already.

Finally, I dragged myself back onto the raft, to discover that our second raft, with another thirteen passengers, Boatman Trevin, and Swamper Shaun, also had watched my performance. All gave me a well-earned round of applause. I slunk back to my seat next to Adam in the motor well, where he brushed off my apologies. “I’ll say this,” I added. “That’s a damned good pfd (life jacket).”

Later, I learned that one of the passengers had christened my dive a “Half-Wayner.”

CANYON SWAMPER

Your biggest job as a swamper on a raft filled with more than a dozen paying clients/passengers, is to learn really fast what the hell you’re supposed to be doing. I know that every job has its own arcane details – truck driver, Walmart cashier, bank manager – but you get eased into those jobs. Swamping has a steep learning curve. Like, go, now!

The only thing I insisted on being shown by Boatman Adam ahead of time was how to tie bowline knots. He did, and I practiced in the warehouse, where the rafts are loaded over two days, with supplies and ice, before getting trailered to the river to meet the passengers. One of the coolest things about the swamper job, as I’d watched other (far, far younger) swampers do on prior raft trips, was hopping out first at stops to tie up the raft. You jump off onto sand or rocks or scramble up cliffs to find a secure hold for the bowline. It’s not something you want to screw up in front of an audience of rafters waiting to pee. Plus, your knot actually has to hold, for obvious reasons.

Then there’s this complicated looping of the bowline when you depart, keeping it compact and ready for the next stop. It is a lovely routine, sliding the rope through your fingers, giving the coils an awkward twist with your left hand, and finishing it all with some wraps and winds and pulls and a clip to the bow strap, and you hop aboard as the current sweeps you and the raft away.

There’s a right way and a whole lot of wrong ways to do a thousand things, and as many questions:

            -How to tighten your pfd.

            -What’s a pfd? (personal flotation device)

            -How much bleach to put in the hand-wash bucket. And in the fourth in-line, dish-wash bucket.

            -Precisely how to load and strap down, then unload, once a day, 50 bags, 13 folding chairs, 13 ammo cans, bags of cots, a full cook kitchen with tables, etc.

            -Do you wash this greasy pot first in the river? Where’s the scrubby?

            -How to store eight days of ice, food, soft drinks, and a whole lot of booze.

            -Where do I sleep?

            -How do you steer this thing?

            -Should I wash my hands again before chipping ice for drinks? (yes)

            -How to filter river water into 20-liter cans, then heft them around to refill water containers on a bouncing raft, and in camp.

 

While learning the routine, you’re fetching drinks from three drag bags (juice, soda, booze), for passengers throughout the day, refilling the bags morning and night. Watching out for the safety of the passengers, ensuring their pfd’s are buckled. And answering questions. “Wayne!” More questions. “Wayne!” Endless questions. “Wayne!” I loved it.

And fortunately for me, my dear friend, Adam, was a boatman of infinite patience with my amateur swamping. Shaun, swamper on our other raft, checked my knots when I asked, and helped me figure out which end was up(stream). 

Swamping is exhausting, but here’s the thing. The boatmen have longer lists, way bigger responsibilities, do the cooking, and safely drive the boats through some of the gnarliest rapids anywhere. Even after having been on four previous trips, I was surprised to see, close-up, how hard the boatmen work. Then turn around and do it again, sometimes more than a dozen trips in a season.

CANYON THRILLS

As Adam lined up for our first really big rapid, I couldn’t convince anyone to sit up front. “I guess I have to set an example. Okay for me to go up front?” I asked Adam? He grinned.

There’s nothing like it, except maybe surfing, which I’ve never done. The 37-foot raft nose-dives down the back side of a modest wave, into a massive hole, then folds back on itself as it climbs the curl of a gigantic standing wave that crashes over the front of the raft, threatening to sweep you away in its power. You sit on the raft’s floor and hold on for dear life to straps and ropes, with both hands, as a good share of the Colorado River crashes on your head. Perhaps there’s a second wave waiting, then a series of smaller splashes, as you take stock, completely drenched in the triple-digit desert sunshine, your adrenaline high and laughter slowly subsiding.

Grand Canyon rapids are legendary, such as House Rock, Sockdolager (one-two punch), Granite, Hermit, Crystal, and Lava Falls Rapid with its infamous Ledge Hole, to be avoided at all costs. The boatmen make it look so easy, but my view from the back of the boat showed me first-hand the complexities of threading the right line through hundreds of rapids, avoiding rocks almost all the time. Flying by, sometimes you see, lurking just below the surface, boulders carved into jagged saw blades. Or, backed by dark, unforgiving whirlpools.

It’s not enough to know one way to navigate through each of these rapids. Water levels significantly change daily, due to changing water releases upstream from Lake Powell and the Glen Canyon Dam’s power generating plant. Rainstorms, and resulting flash floods in side canyons, also affect water levels (and sometimes flush boulders into a rapid and change it). So, for every rapid in the 277-mile trip, a boatman has to know how to run each in low water, high water, and everything in between. And whether anything has changed since last time. It’s awesome!

Eventually, our passengers ventured to the best seats up front on the raft, and whooped it up. I shared with them advice I’d gotten on another trip: “If you feel like you’re underwater, just don’t let go.”

CANYON ALCHEMY

It was a magical start to our trip. Even Adam, with 130 trips down the Canyon, had never experienced it, though he knew it happened once every year. We were in the right place at the right time. So affected were we by our happenstance, that days later, sharing the memory with merely a mention, was enough to well up tears.

After the first night of group camping on the river, a hike up North Canyon is typical. It’s a good walk into one of Grand Canyon’s famous side canyons, mostly in morning shade, up some rocks and not-too-steep cliffs for about 50 minutes. The trail is bordered by hallucinogenic jimsonweed; canyon cliffs glow red in the early sunshine. At the end of the trail is a series of slick, rock water slides, dropping into a chest-deep pool. Because of the drought, however, no water was flowing down the rocks, and the pool at the base was muddy and unappealing. (I jumped in anyways.)

None of that mattered, since at that point we all were still mesmerized by what we’d just experienced. As we had approached the end of the narrowing canyon, we’d heard hints of music drifting down. Adam hushed our group, and we crept closer in silence. We heard a bit of chatter, as if an introduction was being made, then the music of strings. Ethereal melodies emanating from the depths of the Grand Canyon.

Still out of sight of the musicians, our group stopped, each of us sprawled on rocks or sand, as the notes of a live, string quartet filled the canyon with Beethoven and other composers unknown to me. The profound beauty of the moment was beyond description, and many of us wept openly in our great fortune.

(The musicians and their instruments were accompanying a special, annual raft trip, wherein they played at various Canyon locations for their passengers.)

CANYON CONNECTIONS

Sharing the music of North Canyon brought an emotional cohesion to our group of strangers. How could it have not?

Connections are made in the Grand Canyon. Connections to the Earth. Connections to history. Connections to other passengers. Connections to our true selves.

Something about the encompassing whole of the Grand Canyon rafting experience reveals people’s essence. Whether we want it to or not. Meeting that person in the Canyon can be life changing.

I discovered that our rafting group was a good one, not an asshole in the bunch, with all seeming to possess a basic goodness. In eight days of travel and camping together, I heard only two complaints: (1) The full moon was too bright to see the Milky Way, and (2) The beer drag bag was too small.

Our passengers included a group of badass women from a hiking club in Lake Havasu City. It was a place I’d lived years ago, so we made an easy connection. The women, most in their 50s and 60s, were single or had left husbands at home.

“That doesn’t worry you?” I asked one.

“He’s had three wives. He’s 71. He ain’t got time for another one.”

I remembered the feeling of empowerment that my wife had felt on an earlier raft trip, when a spectacular hike up a thin, slot canyon pushed her beyond her comfort zone. But she did it, and never forgot the lesson. And then there was something another boatman had told me while on another hike, which I thought had verged on overly dangerous: “It’s good for passengers to push themselves, to do something they never thought possible.”

 

That’s why I was a cheerleader for some of the women doing things they might not have done, otherwise. Hiking to unbelievably beautiful places, jumping off cliffs, taking chances. As reward for my chivalrous behavior, in one week I got more hugs from strange women than in my entire life.

CANYON HISTORY

In Redwall Cavern, an icon of any Grand Canyon rafting trip, I touched history, and it moved me. It was an artifact no more impressive than a one-inch X, whacked into the top of the boulder with a cold chisel.

We’d heard about the mark from another boatman, back at the raft company’s bunkhouse in Kanab. Adam knew just the place she was describing, and he found it. We put our fingers on the spot that Robert Brewster Stanton in 1890 set his tripod to take a photograph of where the railroad he wanted to build would blast a tunnel through the cliffs above Redwall Cavern. Stanton chiseled that X.

One evening after dinner, I told the story of Stanton’s failed scheme to our passengers – gathered with their folding chairs, like a classroom on the beach – of how we almost built a railroad right through the Grand Canyon, but for the fortuitous drowning of its visionary, Frank Mason Brown. We had earlier seen the dark whirlpools where Brown met his watery fate, and the bend in the river where his body last was seen floating away. (My ebook, Hubris, A Railroad Through the Grand Canyon, and the Death of Frank Mason Brown: A Parable for Our Time, can be downloaded, free, from iBooks and BarnesandNoble.com, or read online at: wayneaschmidt.blogspot.com/2017/02/hubris-railroad-through-grand-canyon.html.)

Another fatality of Brown’s venture was the drowning of crew member, Peter Hansbrough. We camped on the beach below a spot edging the cliffs where his skeleton (identified by his boots, still attached) was buried. Marked in black on the wall above his grave: “PMH 1889” Not that he cares now, but Hansbrough got a great view, looking over the Colorado River to Point Hansbrough (named by Stanton), a spectacular headland of sheer cliffs that forces the river in a great oxbow around its base.

From Stanton’s journal: “Jan.17, 1890. 7:30 am. After breakfast this morning we took the remains of P.M. Hansbrough and buried them in a mesquite grove under the marble cliff on the left side of Canon... I offered a short prayer, not for poor Peter but a petition that we might be spared his fate, but if called upon to meet the same death, that we might each be prepared to go. We covered his grave with marble slabs, and Gibson cut on the cliff beside it ‘PMH 1889.’ Standing over the grave is a marble wall 700 ft high.”

CANYON TRUTHS

In Blacktail Canyon, I pondered a geologic mystery. This side canyon doesn’t appear all that special, until you learn that it’s a spot where your hand can span one billion years of Earth history.

You press a hand against the rocks at eye level, where two dissimilar, horizontal layers meet. Your palm is touching ancient roots of a once-mighty mountain range, worn down over inconceivable eons, to a relatively flat landscape of archaic rock – Vishnu Schist and Zoroaster Granite. Starting about a half-billion years ago, this weathered landscape sank below sea level, and the ocean advanced across it from the (now) west. Over millions of years, first came beach sand being deposited, then as the ocean advanced landward and the seawater got deeper, muds swept from the continent off to the (now) east, and covered the sea floor. Finally, as the ocean became even deeper, limestone formed on the bottom of the sea from the remains of trillions of tiny shells. Finally, the whole mélange was elevated thousands of feet above sea level, as the Earth's continents jostled about.

That steady progression of ocean deposits in the Grand Canyon, due to seas submerging the edge of the continent over a 20-million-year span, is world famous. At the bottom is Tapeats Sandstone (shallow-water beach sand turned into sandstone), sitting "unconformably" atop the much older rocks. Then, on top of the sandstone, Bright Angel Shale (ocean-bottom mud turned into shale), then Muav Limestone above the shale.

Your palm rests on 1.7 billion-year-old igneous and metamorphic rock, while your fingers touch the half-billion-year-old sandstone. Everything in between – a quarter of Earth’s history – has been eroded and washed away. Volcanoes, mountain chains, plains, ocean deposits, and islands all are gone, transformed into new pieces of the Earth.

As for my geologic mystery, it had to do with lenses of broken rocks in the otherwise uniform sandstone. Sometimes they were right atop the unconformity. I tried to picture how they got there. Certainly, rivers flowing off the continent could have carried a hodge-podge of rocks and pebbles, just like you see today where fast-flowing rivers reach the ocean. The problem with that, however, is that none of the rocks in these ancient lenses were rounded, like you’d expect from river-tumbled cobbles. Instead, they were sharp and angular, like having just been broken from cliffs of granite.

In camp, we consulted a tattered Grand Canyon geology text I’d brought along. Reading aloud to Shaun and Trevin (who knew more geology than the rest of us put together), as they cooked supper, I learned that when the sea invaded the land, 525 million years ago, the landscape wasn’t entirely flat. Hills of the ancient granite hadn’t been completely eroded. Those hills became islands, and were battered by tides and storms. Broken rocks washed into the sea, and settled on the otherwise sandy bottom.

So that was it. Science had an answer to my mystery. Ancient islands of even more-ancient rock got battered by the rising seas and storms and sluffed off chunks of rocks that got buried in lenses in the sands of the rising ocean.

One of those rocks was a one-inch fragment of purple-shaded quartz that I plucked from the very earliest layers of the Tapeats Sandstone. It’s had an inconceivably-long history, most recently being exposed to the light of day by the sculpting open of Blacktail Canyon, at some time in the last six million years.

My little rock will, like the Grand Canyon itself, outlast us all. Six million years from now, that rock will still exist somewhere. What about a billion years from now? Will it simply be buried somewhere in dirt? Or will its resting place have been subsumed by earthquakes and shifting continental plates, to return it to its molten birthplace, miles deep in the Earth? A lot can happen – has happened – in a billion years.

Though we can’t know the future of the Grand Canyon, its past is laid out for anyone to read. Truth is revealed; the story of the staggering length of geologic time is told in the Canyon’s bare walls. Much of two billion years of Earth history is on full display – oceans have come and oceans have gone, the Canyon’s ancient landscape has ridden on shifting and colliding continents, a sequence of fossils records life’s early evolution.

Despite 150 years of scientific study of the Grand Canyon, however, its truths are not universally accepted. For example, a Sahara-like desert covered the Grand Canyon region 275 million years ago. Tracks from critters scurrying on the sere dunes have been frozen in the rock (Coconino Sandstone). “The tracks all move in the same direction, proving they were fleeing Noah’s flood,” is the conclusion of Young Earthers, those loony Biblical literalists who believe the earth is only 6,000 years old, that Noah’s flood created the Grand Canyon, and that all the so-called science about geologic time is a bunch of hooey.

As long as I’m on the subject of Noah, science now understands that birds are descended from dinosaurs. That’s not hard to fathom when you watch a great blue heron, flying down the river and squawking like a pterodactyl. There are more than 10,000 species of birds in the world. I understand that Noah took only baby dinosaurs on the ark, but what about all those different kinds of birds?

That a good portion of Americans believe such Bronze Age myths, explains a whole lot about why we’ve got Trump. Anyone who buys the Creationists’ story will believe anything. Remember Wayne’s Rule No. 1 (useful for explaining irrational human behavior and beliefs): “People are fucking morons.”

CANYON FRIENDS

Elves Chasm is a magical place, a side canyon aptly named. Across a pool of water and behind a waterfall, you enter an open cave dripping with water, moss, and maidenhair ferns. You half expect a hobbit to scurry away. Climbing over slippery boulders brings you up and out on a rock platform where the waterfall drops. You gather your nerve (the first time, that can take a while) and jump into the pool below – maybe a twelve-foot drop. Your feet barely touch bottom, and you pop up to the cheers of the audience, feeling as if you just accomplished something important.

Adam brought his mask and snorkel and went diving in the pool for bounty. He came up with a bracelet made of thin, black elastic cord, braided nicely. I put it on my wrist and told him, “This means we’re going steady.”

It’s the damnedest thing. Adam is 45. I’m 27 years older. Do the math. Our friendship is not normal. But it seems to work. Adam says the Canyon is the place he’s always felt most “himself.” Same for me. I think that’s enough.

CANYON PERFECTION

“The passengers can’t possibly know what a rare, perfect day we just had,” Adam said to me, as he worked on making dinner, on the beach. “They probably think it’s like this on every trip – nobody there when we hike up Deer Creek, drifting in the current eating our sack lunches, not too hot, finding no one else at Havasu Creek, getting this spot to camp, one of the best.”

I hadn’t thought about the day in those terms, but he was right. “You’re right,” I said. “How could they know?”

“You go tell them.”

So I did. And we all reminisced about the scary, cliff-side trail to reach the oasis up in the Deer Creek slot canyon. About parking our rafts right in the mouth of the travertine-coated Havasu Creek, walking upstream in the tropical-sea-colored water to play and look for fossils. The starting point was a narrow opening in the water between cliffs, the current too fast and deep for most to wade or swim, so Adam used a rope and float to haul each passenger through, one-by-one.

As I’d done so many times throughout the week, I marveled out loud: “Who does this?!”

By nightfall of the perfect day, everyone had gone to bed, and I was alone on the beach. The full moon was blocked by immense cliffs across the river, but it lit up the tops of other cliffs farther back and downstream. A brilliant shooting star scorched across Scorpio’s heart. The raft where I slept, for a change was tied in a slack back-water, instead of run up on the sand. It rocked and shifted and sighed all night like a lullaby.

Day 6 had been perfect, but my body was not. My legs were sunburned, my fingernails destroyed, my hands covered with nicks and abrasions. I’d lost some of the spring in my step, with knees sending tiny warning signals that there better be an end to this nonsense pretty damned soon.

CANYON SURVIVAL

It was our last stop, right after our rafts hit the flat water of Lake Mead. It’s where the brawling Colorado River dies in a flaccid reservoir. It’s where the rafts’ 26 passengers, after a hurried last round of hugs, transfer mid-river to a big jet boat, that swoops them across the river’s muddy shallows in forty minutes to their waiting bus at the boat landing, ready to carry them from Eden, back to the jarring anti-Eden of Las Vegas.

Our own trip on the now-vacated rafts, however, would take more than four hours. But first, the rafts’ two, immense side-tubes had to be unstrapped, deflated, rolled up, and hefted onto the deck. For that final feat of strength, Adam diplomatically motioned Shaun to help him, allowing me to preserve what little was left of my back.

Ready to push off, Adam put the outboard in reverse. I dug my heels in the sand, my whole body pushing into the beached behemoth’s bow. After some side-to-side revving of the engine, we slid riverward. At that point, it dawned on me that my usual straps on the side tubes for hopping onto the chest-high raft, now were gone. There I hung off the bow, dragged along, feet trailing in the water, without enough strength left to pull myself up with the raft’s ropes. When Adam realized my plight, he rushed forward, grabbed me under my armpits, and hoisted my sorry carcass onto the deck.

“You guys used me up,” I explained, meekly. I had survived swamping the Grand Canyon, but barely. I had loved every minute, but once was enough.

CANYON EPILOG

After winching the rafts up on trailers and tying them down, we settled in for the seven-hour ride back to Grand Canyon Expedition’s warehouse in Kanab. Adam sat up front in the big pickup with the driver; me in back. We crossed miles of bumpy, dusty road, the landscape accented by Joshua trees, seemingly praying for rain.

I took my iPhone out of airplane mode and waited for a signal. We had been completely cut off for eight days. I checked the news only enough to determine that Trump hadn't blown anything up, then opened email.

A strange one from our insurance agent back in Oregon caught my attention. Subject: “ID CARD FOR MERCEDES.” It read: “We are processing the change to take off the Altima and add the Mercedes. Here is a temporary ID Card for you. Have fun in your new car! Chris”

Adam heard my laughing and turned. I fairly spouted: “My wife just bought a fucking Mercedes! Eva traded her Nissan for a fucking Mercedes while I was gone!”

Replies: “No shit.” “Cool.”

“That makes me very happy,” I concluded.

As if I needed more reason to be happy. Though a hard, half-day job of unloading the rafts awaited in Kanab, I’d done it. Made it through my swamper adventure with Adam, in one piece. A worn-out piece, to be sure, but at least intact. And I did it a week before my 72^nd birthday.

I’d just spent eight days with a great friend in our favorite place on earth, sharing my passion with a bunch of strangers who turned out to be really good people. My fifth rafting trip through the Grand Canyon, with a sixth already chartered for next year (Adam as boatman, me as passenger). And on top of all that, I was going home to my amazing wife and a new fucking Mercedes. I’ve never even ridden in a Mercedes before.

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Prior Blog: Oldest Grand Canyon Swamper?

OLDEST GRAND CANYON SWAMPER?

It’s the title I’m shooting for: Oldest Grand Canyon Swamper. I’m meeting Boatman Adam in Kanab, Utah, leaving in the morning to drive there to load up a giant, motorized raft before heading to the Grand Canyon for an eight-day trip down the Colorado River. I’ll be his swamper – basically, volunteer gopher for a commercial rafting expedition.  

The work involves lots of hauling and packing, tying up and pushing off the raft, cooking and cleanup, catering to guests, and too-little sleep. I’ve watched swampers at work – having done the trip (as a paying passenger) four times – and the swampers all were young.  

I’m old. (I turn 72 in a few weeks.) What the hell am I doing? 

My previous trips with Grand Canyon Expeditions were how I became friends with Adam. He gets how much I love the Canyon. Plus, he seems to think I’m good company, so invited me to swamp with him, despite my creeping decrepitude and protestations that I wasn’t sure my back could handle hauling the communal toilet back and forth to the raft. (Nothing gets left behind.) We’ll see how that goes. 

There’s also a second raft, with a boatman and swamper, so I hope they can tolerate my inexperience and, shall we say, maturity. To say nothing of the 28 passengers. Again, we’ll see. 

Boatman Adam at work

I am, like so many others over the past 150 years, captivated by the Grand Canyon, agreeing that it’s the “most sublime spectacle on earth.” No picture or memory can do justice to the experience of being there. The chance to visit again its whitewater, side canyons, and waterfalls is an honor. Even if I have to work for the privilege. 

As is the chance to experience first-hand, if only for a few days, the Grand Canyon river-guiding culture – a remarkable collection of river lovers bound by a multi-generation history and passion for the Canyon. 

When I get back home, I’ll tell here the story of my adventure. Regarding that title I’m shooting for, however, I doubt I’ll be in the running. I’m not really all that old. Am I?

HOME

It’s one of the greatest pleasures in life -- arriving home after a long trip. Your own bed, favorite chair, pets, flowers, and best of all, the people you love most -- in my case, Eva. How I missed that smile!

Two travels bookend my life. The last time I was gone from home for four weeks, it was the Summer of Love, 1967, and I was 21, hitchhiking, and seeing the West for the first time. Michigan to Seattle to Big Sur and back. My future was a confused muddle, and I was trying to figure out what in the hell to do with myself.

Now I’m 71, and this time, I traveled the opposite direction. Oregon to Florida to Michigan, and back -- 22 states and 8,300 miles. Unlike that hitchhiking trek, however, every one of my 28 days on the road was a joy. Visiting dozens of friends from every corner of the last half-century of my life, it was unavoidable to take stock of what I actually did do with myself.

Those visits were filled with laughter, as friends recounted nearly-forgotten events we had shared. As we filled in missing years of successes and failures, I was struck by how much we’re all alike. It seems that every family has its tragedies; we find our happiness in spite of them. It's hard to regret the bad times, because they got us from there to here, and here is where we are responsible for finding happiness. 

I am so grateful to old friends who opened their homes and lives to me. Universally generous, they shared their favorite stories, listened to mine, and took me to their favorite places -- backyards and parks and rivers and restaurants and museums.

I wasn’t able to see everyone I hoped to (Kathy), to stop every place I wanted to (Noah’s Ark), to stay as long as I’d wished (sisters), or to spot every bird along the way (total, a modest 163 species). Nevertheless, as with life, I’m pretty happy about how my trip turned out.

A highlight was making friends in Florida. And returning to the Diego Rivera murals in Detroit. A lowlight was losing friends in Texas. As with life, win some, lose some.

I can’t imagine ever again taking such a road trip. It was kind of like Elton John’s “Last Tour.” I’ll be sticking closer to home from now on (my travels still extending to the Grand Canyon, of course).

I can’t sing, but I can write, and I’m glad a few people have enjoyed my tales from the road. Thank you.

Last story from the road: HOW WILL IT ALL TURN OUT?

                

HOW WILL IT ALL TURN OUT?

It's the question I asked everyone I met on my road trip across America: How will it all turn out? You know, the Trump thing.

The range of predictions surprised me. From, Trump is a man of "heinous" character, to "it's all a bunch of noise."

I found cynicism: "Muller will find collusion, but nobody's going to care." And head-up-butt wishful thinking: "Nothing he's done is Constitutionally wrong."

Lots of fear: "He'll start a war and ride out four years." And, "He could lose the 2020 election, but refuse to concede."

My friends with the most dogmatic opinions were those who were the most informed ("I can almost 100% guarantee you, he won't make it through all four years."), and, to a shocking extent, those who were least informed "What's the pee-pee tape?"). Everyone else expressed sensible uncertainty about the fate of Trump, et al., and all the unpredictable political events in our immediate future.

Will the Democrats control the House after this fall's elections? Answers were "yes," "no," and "they have a 52% chance." Few thought Trump will actually be impeached, even some of my most liberal friends.

Will Trump last four years? Get re-elected? I heard every conceivable answer.

I asked the big question about how it's all going to turn out because, like everyone else held captive by the drama, I wish I knew. And there's no way to tell. Anything is possible. Any one of us, or none of us, could guess correctly.

* * *

Having broached the question, it's only fair that I put out there my own prediction. As a wise friend reminds me, everyone's entitled to their own stupid opinion.

Character is destiny. This truth comes, not from a fortune cookie, but from a Greek philosopher 2,500 years ago. Trump's character is thoroughly and absolutely foul. He's a psychopathic narcissist, and the most corrupt politician ever. There will be no good ending for Trump, and history will not be kind.

Absolutes can be dangerous. The worst character ever? You might ask in response, as did one friend, "Yeah, well what about Hitler?" To that, I say, if that's the bar, you got me.

Next up for defense by the Trumpettes, always, is Hillary. "Well, yeah, but what about Benghazi," etc., ad nauseam. They proclaim that no matter what Trump may have done, or is doing now, he's still way better than that lying, stood-by-her-man, evil woman. We'll soon see how that works out.

No matter how bad things look, they are always worse. That's my second political principle. Trump never really wanted to be President. He just wanted to build his brand, get richer, and feed his insatiable ego. He never counted on savage, investigative beasts clawing through his sordid garbage. What we know now will be just the start of revelations about the Trump/Kushner shenanigans with Russian criminals and their booty.

Trump and his court of jesters are in way over their heads. The talent and brilliance of those determined to learn the whole truth -- journalists, Muller and crew, honest bureaucrats -- will persevere. For all his instinctive gifts as hustler and con man, Trump's not very bright. Nor are his kids, and certainly not his coterie of buffoons, whom he considers "the best people." Journalists have risen to the challenge, and they are rock stars of the day.

People are fucking morons. This is actually "Wayne Rule No. 1," but I stuck it in here at the end, since it's sure to offend. Nevertheless, it's a failsafe rule for explaining any inexplicable behavior, such as "how can 40% of voters still support the greatest con man that America has ever seen?"

The upshot. I think the Muller team, as well as the Senate investigating committee, have grounds for impeachment right now. Trump's efforts to keep his own hands clean of his Russian money-laundering scams, campaign collusions, and personal foibles (e.g, Stormy Daniels), will prove amateurish. He's going down.

The Democrats will take the House in the mid-terms, but probably not the Senate. That will leave an impeachment process uncertain, since the House impeaches, but the Senate convicts. In any event, I think the House will initiate impeachment before the 2020 election.

At that point, the walls of reality will be closing in on Trump. With Jared facing jail time, his own scandalous misdeeds further revealed, and public support dropping back into the 30's, what will he do?

For one thing, he will find some way to fire Muller. It may be a suicidal act, but there will come a point when he has nothing to lose. It will be too late. When he realizes that, then what?

The rosy scenario is that he will resign. Declare his MAGA mission complete and go home. I can't see that happening. When has he ever backed down? Okay, maybe once, when he let that porn star spank his flabby ass with the magazine with his own face on it.  WWJD? Let's give him a mulligan on that one, like the Christians are doing.

The nightmare scenario is that he starts a war to rally public support behind him. That could work. I could absolutely see him capable of doing that. It would not surprise me. Pick a country. Syria? How about Mexico?

The most-likely scenario is that he continues along in his bubble, until it bursts when he loses the 2020 election in a landslide. He will declare himself the victim of fake news and illegal votes, find some way to blame Obama, and retreat to whatever ignominious future awaits him alone. Melania will be on the first jet out of town. Trump will be endlessly featured on National Enquirer covers, as she declares that her prenup was negated by his affairs and cover-ups.

Attorney Michael Cohen will write a tell-all from jail, in order to pay his own legal costs. Fox News viewership, and NRA membership, will sky-rocket as they declare the imminent end-of-the world, with a Democrat woman as President. Fox will reveal she is related to Hillary, with intimate ties to the Deep State. Evangelical leaders will declare her to be the new she-devil and the Anti-Christ.

Anyhow, that's what I'm predicting.

* * *

As for how this road trip of mine turns out, it ends where it began -- at home, which is now less than three hours away. I'll wrap up this little travelogue, "Travels with Wayne," later, with one more story.

Yesterday: PARADISE

http://wayneaschmidt.blogspot.com/2018/04/paradise.html

PARADISE

It was a white-knuckle drive across the high plains of Wyoming this morning. Fog, snow blowing sideways, drifts, low-teen temps, near white-outs when passing trucks, actual white-outs behind snow plows.

Crossing the Red Desert, I couldn't see much due to the weather. It's a little-known and poorly-protected expanse of grasslands, sagebrush, remote canyons, archeological sites, and antelope. I got up close and personal with the Red Desert on a visit fifteen years ago with leaders of the environmental group where I worked. The threats are in plain sight -- a terrain already pocked with drill rigs, pipelines, service roads, and oil storage facilities.

Wyoming has this backwards attitude that they don't want any more land protected by the government. Period. So I doubt much has been done to guard the Red Desert. Parts of it should be a National Monument.

Despite the lousy weather, I watched through swirling snow the great, dark silhouette of a golden eagle, wings outstretched, flap low over the hills. It was one of several I would see this day.

I had looked for one yesterday during my tour around Fort Collins. Becky took me to the prettiest places, especially the canyon of the Cache la Poudre River, where I watched a fly fisher land and release a small brown trout. It would prove quite a contrast to weather a day later.

Becky and her husband, John, moved to Colorado from Ann Arbor two years ago. They seem transformed with happiness in their new lives. It's quite a wondrous thing. Their enthusiasm for their new geography is understandable -- spectacular mountain scenery and none of the dreariness of Michigan winter. Plus, a nice town, from what I saw.

Everywhere I've gone, people have proudly shown me their own paradises. A wooded subdivision in central Florida, the backyard of an East Lansing home, the lake-studded glacial hills of southeast Michigan. Even downtown Houston, of all things. And Fort Collins. Paradise is where you find it.

I found a break in the nasty Wyoming weather about the time I hit Green River, so I pulled off to have lunch on Expedition Island. This is the spot that many famous expeditions have launched to float the Green River down to the Colorado River and on through the Grand Canyon. Most famous was the Powell Expedition of 1869, which was the first-ever such trip.

On the third day of our last raft trip on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, we bobbed in the surreal-turquoise-colored water of the tributary Little Colorado River. One of our friends sighed, and declared, "Except for the fact that we're surrounded by atheists, you might'a thought we'd died and went to heaven." Paradise.

I dipped the toe of my sneaker into the Green River. The backdrop of sandstone mesas and cliffs, and the namesake color of the river, would have been the same in Powell's day.

On this last night of my four-week road trip (I'll be home tomorrow night), I'm camped alongside another river, the Snake River in Idaho, in a deserted BLM campground. White pelicans are spending the night on rocks across the river.

Day-before-yesterday: EAST-WEST

http://wayneaschmidt.blogspot.com/2018/04/east-west.html

EAST-WEST

When I started smashing into tumbleweeds, some tall as my car's hood, I knew I was back in the West. It's a different place than the East.

I crossed a big chunk of the continent today -- half of Iowa, all of Nebraska, a little piece of Wyoming, and down into Colorado -- and the best thing was seeing this ferruginous hawk, burnished copper and black in late-winter sunshine, sitting on a fence-post alongside the freeway.

I-80 follows the Platte River, current home of sandhill cranes, white pelicans, and lots of other waterfowl. As I passed, I silently thanked some of the folks I used to know who helped keep the river's ecosystem relatively intact. That's where I saw the ferruginous hawk. It was the 146^th bird species I've seen on this trip. My first was a house wren singing in my backyard in Oregon, the morning I left, 25 days ago. The 100^th was a gray catbird, mewing in Florida underbrush on the Atlantic Coast.

I started today in Iowa City, and drove like an arrow shot due west, nearly 800 miles. In Iowa, last year's corn stubble covered the landscape, ready for a spring shave and planting. Across Nebraska, vast herds of jet-black cattle grazed manicured grasslands, echoing a time when countless bison feasted on native grasses.

Late yesterday, cruising west through Illinois and eastern Iowa, I was surprised by the beauty of a landscape I remembered as nothing but flat, green cornfields. This time the bare, late-winter croplands were shrouded in fog and rain. Soft, rolling hills were lost in the horizon as low clouds crowded the sky. Distant farmsteads pixilated in the mist. Bare trees stood as outlined-sentinels, in copses, and woodlots.

Iowa City is where I spent the evening with Audrey, a close friend from another life. We shared memories and stories of our families. She told me that people in Iowa are kind. She's there by way of Johns Hopkins, California, etc. We all seem to have complicated lives. Holding up the mirror of the past, we marveled at how our lives turned out, and the weirdness of crossing paths again after 38 years.

It's what this road trip has been all about -- renewing friendships and sharing memories of past adventures, foibles, and accomplishments. But after nearly four weeks, I feel like a sponge that can't hold much more.

Yet not quite full, which brings me to Fort Collins, Colorado, to spend a day with Becky and John. Recent migrants from Michigan, they seem to love their new home in the West. As I watch the sun sink behind snow-capped mountains, I can see why.

  

Yesterday: MY REARVIEW MIRROR

http://wayneaschmidt.blogspot.com/2018/04/my-rearview-mirror.html

MY REARVIEW MIRROR

After five days in Michigan, my car is pointed west. Headed home to Oregon, with a couple more stops along the way.

I've been impressed with the ardor my friends along the way have expressed for their home towns and home states. It's good to love the place where you stand. However, demanding that your friends share your jingoism -- not so good. One went so far as to tell me I wouldn't be welcome back because I said and wrote unkind things about his state.

Michigan, my home for nearly four decades, is now in my rearview mirror. The hospitality of my hosts was big-hearted -- as throughout my travels. No one I met in Michigan seemed offended by my frequent complaints about the state's terrible roads. Everywhere -- freeways, local streets, parking lots -- are tire-busting potholes. It gives the place a tired, run-down feeling.

A state's potholes, dreary weather, and gray landscape do not, thank goodness, define its people. Old friends I met are spending their work lives making Michigan a better place -- environmentally, culturally, economically. They are meeting people where they are, enriching their lives with art, music, and dance.

Some are bringing hope to real people who have to live in the squalor of Detroit's shambles. They're helping real children growing up in Flint -- still unable to drink or bath with their tap water, and still living day-to-day with bottled water for everything. And, by the way, paying two times higher water bills than most places, despite being surrounded by the Great Lakes, which hold one-fifth of all the surface fresh water on earth.

I wrapped up my Michigan visit with a four-mile hike with Tim through the still-bare woods of southern Michigan, a land sculpted just ten thousand years ago by mile-high glaciers. We watched dinosaur-like sandhill cranes fly overhead, and debated whether the hills were glacial eskers or moraines. I learned how my friends recently had saved one special hill off in the distance, the highest point in the county and an island of biodiversity, from being ruined by gravel mining. I learned that the hill is a "kame," formed where a melting hole in the ancient glacier poured down meltwater, dirt, and rocks to create this special kind of hummock.

A friend of Tim's joined our hike -- an expert on the area's ecology, and the person about to become volunteer-president of the conservation nonprofit where Tim and I had worked long ago. The group has fallen on hard times, like most of their ilk, and demonstrating but modest political influence or media visibility. I shared with him my pessimism that environmental and conservation groups, including his own, can ever regain the clout they wielded in the decades following the first Earth Day in 1970.

"I hope you can prove me wrong," I said, and wished him well. Like so many others I met on this trip, he's trying his best to make his world a better place.

That's all behind me now, and I'm happy to be right where I am -- headed back to the West Coast, back to my own home state. As I had to repeatedly point out to virtually everyone I met in MICH-i-gun (not mich-i-GAN), it's OR-a-gun, not or-eh-GON.

Day-before-yesterday: POSITIVITY

http://wayneaschmidt.blogspot.com/2018/04/positivity.html