1995 - “Too hot to handle”, her husband's job; Green River and Grand Canyon re-creating; Alaska re-visits
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The Green River flows through Canyonlands National Park in SE Utah, a region barely penetrated with trails, so remote that a major mountain range there only became discovered and named in 1958, the Henry Mountains. In those days the water flow was higher. Although canoes worked for their adult-only excursions (they took a few), for family they took large rafts with rowing frames on 80 to 100-mile floats with their entire family for 12 to 14 days.
Linda holding Jared and young Alia, Paul doing the rowing, carrying Jared up the banks to set up tents in the campsites, the family sitting out the heat of the day amid the shade of cottonwoods or occasionally tamarisk – just being together, they marveled about their family and how they were growing.
Some of the features and experiences follow.
The names of the places they found evoked wonder, and visiting them evoked awe – Mineral bottom, the Maze District (of Monkey Wrench Gang infamy), Gray Canyon, Labyrinthine Canyon, Stillwater Canyon. They found dinosaur footprints on the stream bedrock in Water Canyon. Cliff dwellings, hoodoos, slick rock, peregrine falcon and swallows nesting by the thousands, canyon wrens – they all had favorites on individual trips which blended into a composite tapestry, a fabric of remembered and shared experience.
They found mountain lion tracks. And on the Upper Green, despite a Ranger declaring only black bears inhabited that area, they saw what Tom and Paul were certain was a brown bear, a grizzly with her cub. For sure they used to live there, and maybe just maybe a few made it back.
Mountain goats grazed along the sheer precipice walls across from their camp in Shot and in Water Canyon. In the arid environment and parched air, they sought out springs that bubbled in alcoves. Hanging ferns like Babylonian gardens offered shade, spiritual and physical respite before venturing back out into the blazing heat, the honesty and purity of the desert.
As sun overheated the day’s air, the wind blew up from Lake Powell. Loaded with weeks of food and gear, if on the water in the afternoon, rowing madly would only make a mile in an hour. Often to their dismay but “what the hell,” they were blown upstream and backwards despite the strong current supposed to carry them forward.
The rafts ran aground when they misread currents, or it was just too shallow. Over the side they leaped, heaving against the sides of the inflated raft, sometimes budging an inch at a time, sometimes not, getting a little further, but eventually free-floating and moving on again.
It was part of the experience, as was ascending up to cliff dwellings where the sacred and the ancient quieted all thought.
As the canyon walls closed in above the confluence, searching for a lunch stop they spotted a small rock shelf with parallel pancake layers of rock. Good place to eat. As they climbed out, they saw the sandstone layers were filled with miniature cliff dwellings. Pebbles, sticks, and mud stuck together by travelers and sojourners before them. Alia and Linda added their own humble Kiva to be placed next to those of so many others.
On many trips before and after, they never found that spot again.
Their lifelong friends Tom and Diane came on many of those trips. The Green River flowed into the Colorado River in the heart of Canyonlands. One had to pull out just a mile after the confluence as the conjoined water concourses picked up speed heading to Cataract Canyon and world class white water, something way beyond their capability or interest, at least on their own self-arranged expeditions.
Nearing the end of one such trip, Diane and Linda surged ahead in a canoe at the confluence. Paul legitimately feared them continuing into some hairy white water, which would be the end of their mutual wilderness experiences, and perhaps their families! Oh, but Linda’s innate wisdom, her wilderness experience; they gleefully powered ahead as they did in so many aspects of life, waiting for the rest to catch up at Spanish bottom below the Dolls House, to be picked up by jet boats and taken back to Moab.
