In The Heart Of The Canyon

In the heart of the canyon.

by Elisabeth Hyde.

PROLOGUE

Down in the heart of the canyon, in the bone-baking heat, they put their lives on hold.Most of the travelers had never experienced anything quite like it. Peter Kramer, whose year mapping the jungles of Central America included a monthlong stay in an unair-conditioned hospital with a fever of 104, found it impossible to suck down more than short little gasps of hot air. Evelyn Burns, professor of biology at Harvard University, spent the first day lecturing everyone about the tolerability of dry heat (105 in Arizona being nothing compared to 90 in Boston), then vomited five minutes into the first windstorm. Dr. and Mrs. Lloyd Frankel, river veterans, lay on their sleeping mats in stunned oblivion to the velvety orange wasps that scurried in blind circles on the hot sand between them. And Amy Van Doren, who unbeknownst to her mother had weighed in at 237 pounds on the hotel spa scale the night before the trip, rigorously shook the bottle of hot sauce over everything on her plate, for she knew that chile peppers made you sweat, which in turn would not only cool her off but enable her to lose a few pounds.JT, the head guide, had seen it all before. This being his 125th trip down the Colorado River, he"d witnessed time and again the universal zombielike walk of his guests at the end of the day when they staggered up the beach in search of a campsite. He called it the Death Walk and always reminded his fellow guides not to expect much volunteer help in the first few days of any July trip, as guests acclimated to the suffocating conditions of the Grand Canyon. It was simply a matter of physiology: the human body wasn"t designed to go from a comfortable air-conditioned existence to the prehistoric inferno of canyon life in a day. When his heat-stomped campers marveled at his energy, he kept at what he was doing and raised an eyebrow and said, "You"ll adjust." he kept at what he was doing and raised an eyebrow and said, "You"ll adjust."JT was a man of few words.At night it was so hot you slept without a blanket, or even a sheet, for well past midnight the winds continued to fan the heat off the sun-baked canyon walls. In early morning, as people shook out their clothes for scorpions, the air could feel temperate, and they might be fine in just a bathing suit; but as soon as the sun"s rays came barreling over the canyon walls, out came the long-sleeved cotton shirts, which got repeatedly dunked in the river, wrung out, and worn, soaked to chill, until sundown.During the midday furnace, when even the guides crawled into whatever shade they could find and collectively dreamt of that first brisk morning in October when you could see your breath, JT himself would confront the heat head-on. Alone in his raft, he would kneel against the side tubes with his arms draped over the edge, staring in a kind of rapt hypnosis at the sheer walls across the river. Something in the flat midday light, he"d found, caused them to eventually start floating upstream, a mirage of the mind until he blinked, and then they would snap back into place until the next daze sent them floating upstream again. It was a game he played, a game he"d never reveal to anyone lest they think him soft, or spiritual, or just plain wacky.But in fact he was all three. JT Maroney"s heart was in those walls, and had been since his first trip thirty-five years ago when someone handed him a life jacket and a paddle and said, "Are you coming or not?" It was in the polished maroon cliffs of Marble Canyon, the dusty tan layers of Coconino sandstone; it was embedded forever in the shimmering black walls of the Inner Gorge, Land of the Giants. It was in the scorpions and the velvet wasps and the stinging red ants that sent you running for a vial of ammonia; it was in the feathery tamarisk trees and the canyon wrens" falling notes and the grumpy black-winged California condor he spotted without fail as they pa.s.sed under Navajo Bridge the first day of every trip. It was in the tug of water around his ankle as he splashed about, rigging his boat; it was in the sunlit droplets that danced above the roar of big water.Each trip changed him a little. This trip would change him a lot. It would change everyone, in ways no one could have antic.i.p.ated.But on the Fourth of July, at the beginning of JT"s 125th trip, it wasn"t about change. It was about drinking beer and eating pie and dreaming up new ways to fly the Stars and Stripes over the grandest river in the West.

1.

Lee"s Ferry.

Mile 0.

Up at Lees Ferry, the night before the trip, JT sat on the side tube of his eighteen-foot neoprene raft, popped open a beer, and tried to remember exactly how many times he"d flipped his raft in Hermit.

Deep in the Inner Gorge, ninety-five miles downstream, the runoff boulders from Hermit Creek collided with the Colorado River to create one of the longest hydraulic roller coasters in the canyon, wave after wave of foaming madness that could buckle a raft in seconds. The fifth wave, in particular, had a tendency to curl back upon itself, something that could easily flip a boat. JT"s goal was always to punch straight on through, aiming for just enough of a wild ride to give his pa.s.sengers a thrill without actually flipping. Trouble was, sometimes the ride got ahead of itself, and JT hit that fifth wave with maybe too much weight in the back, and suddenly there they were, rising up, hovering in midair with water roaring all around and JT heaving his weight into the oars even as he felt them go back and over: down into the churning froth, getting maytagged and then popping up into the light, always disoriented until he spotted the white underside of his raft, which was usually right there beside him. And so it was, more than just a few times in his life as a guide, and although there were always a few who subsequently wanted off, now off, now, what made it all worthwhile was seeing the expressions on the others" faces as he hauled them up onto the upturned belly of his raft-expressions of shock, adrenaline, joy, fear, joy, excitement, and did he mention joy? Because that"s what it was, usually: the sheer exultation of surviving a swim in one of the most powerful rivers on earth.

JT tallied up the times he"d flipped. Five in all, if his memory served him well.

Draining his beer, he tossed the empty can onto a tarp on the beach and reached into the mesh drag bag for another. The sun was still high in the sky, the water a deep turtle green, achy cold if you left your foot in for more than a few seconds. Across the river, tan hills sloped up from the waters edge, speckled with pinon and sage and juniper; downstream, salmon pink cliffs marked the beginning of Marble Canyon.

JT was the lead boatman for this trip, the official Trip Leader, and as such he was the one who made all the important day-to-day decisions: where to stop for lunch, which hikes to take, whether they"d schedule a layover day. If there was a problem pa.s.senger, JT was responsible for reigning him in; if someone got hurt, JT decided whether to evacuate. JT figured he was good for two trips per season as lead boatman; you got paid a little more, but you never really slept.

Up on the beach, Dixie and Abo, his fellow guides, worked together stuffing tents one by one into a large rubberized bag. JT was tired and hungry and wished briefly that they were cooking him a good dinner instead. After a long morning spent loading up the truck back at the warehouse in Flagstaff, they"d driven the three hours to Lee"s Ferry, where they worked the entire afternoon rigging their boats in the hot desert sun. The beach at Lee"s Ferry was the only put-in point on the river, so it was crowded with people and boats: two fat motorized rafts, a dozen or so durable eighteen-footers, and a flotilla of colorful kayaks. The beach was littered with so much gear-dinged-up ammunition boxes, waterproof bags, paddles, oars, life jackets, water jugs-that it resembled a paddlers" flea market. Yet despite the mayhem, everybody seemed to know what was what and whose was whose, and JT knew that by ten o"clock tomorrow, all this gear would be stowed in its rightful place on the boats.

High in the sky, a turkey vulture slowly circled, its white-tipped wings spread wide. The people on the motor rig had set up lawn chairs and opened umbrellas for shade, but n.o.body was sitting down; there was too much work to be done, although they did it with a beer in hand. Up on the beach, Abo, his paddle captain, was now mending a book with duct tape, while Dixie, who would be rowing their third boat, was starting to a.s.semble their picnic dinner. She wore a yellow bathing suit top and a blue sarong knotted low on her hips; wet braids curled at her shoulders.

"How come there are only five sandwiches?" she asked.

"Four for me, one for you and JT to split," said Abo.

"Well, someone"s going hungry," said Dixie, "and it isn"t going to be me."

JT smiled to himself. He was glad to have these two for his crew. Abo, who could always be counted on to loosen up a group, was thirty-five, tall and bony-legged, with bleachy-tipped brown hair and clear blue eyes. n.o.body knew his real name. He was a farm boy from the Midwest who"d come out to study geology at the University of Arizona, then took a river trip and never went back to school. During the winter, he built houses and scavenged work up at the ski area. Reputedly, he had a son by a woman in California, a movie producer whom Abo had met on an earlier trip. He was a good guide, in JT"s view; not only did he make people laugh, but as an amateur geologist he knew the pastry layers of the canyon better than anyone.

Dixie, whose real name was just that, Dixie Ann Gillis, was twenty-seven. She was relatively new with the company, and he"d only done one other trip with her, but he"d been impressed when he watched her rescue a private boater from the Rock Garden below Crystal Rapid. She had strong opinions about a lot of things, and JT liked that about her. If you caught him with his guard down, JT might admit that he was half in love with Dixie, but she had a boyfriend down in Tucson whose picture she kept taped to the inside of her personal ammo box, and JT wasn"t one to mess with somebody else"s good thing. Besides, after 124 trips, JT knew how things worked in the canyon, knew you could fall in love at the drop of a hat, literally, before you even got through Marble Canyon. It was a guide"s life to fall in love, he knew; he"d done his share, but if there was one thing he understood these days, it was to stand back and not get caught up in things, trip after trip after trip.

JT unlatched the ammo box by his feet and took out the pa.s.senger list and scanned the names and notes. They were supposed to have fourteen pa.s.sengers on the trip, but at the last minute one couple had canceled, which meant he was going to have to juggle the seating arrangements to balance out the boats. There were two vegetarians, three "no dairy," one "high craving for red meat." Most had no rafting experience, which didn"t surprise him; but one couldn"t swim, which did. There were two kids, which pleased him; kids usually brought a goofy spirit absent in adults, who too easily fell victim to excessive reverence for natural wonders. He made a mental note to a.s.sign the boys a job-can-smasher, maybe-so they could feel useful and independent from their parents.

He continued scanning. There was a couple from Wyoming, named Mitch.e.l.l and Lena; Lena, he noted, was allergic to peanuts, furry animals, gra.s.ses, and pollen. Well, hopefully she was bringing along a box of Benadryl and an EpiPen or two. There was a mother and daughter, Susan and Amy. The one who couldn"t swim was a young man from Ohio named Peter, age twenty-seven, traveling solo.

Noting Peter"s age, JT glanced up at Dixie, who was reknotting her sarong. Don"t even think of it Don"t even think of it, he heard himself telling Peter. Don"t even try Don"t even try.

That evening, as the sky grew dark, boaters from all the groups gathered together and pa.s.sed around a bottle of whiskey, sharing old stories, inventing new ones. Around nine thirty, JT, who"d pa.s.sed on the second round, returned to his raft. He brushed his teeth, then unrolled his sleeping bag across the long, flat meat cooler that spanned the center of his boat. Even though it was dark, the day"s heat continued to radiate off the canyon walls. JT strapped on his headlamp and sat down and carefully and methodically dried off his feet. He rubbed them well with bee balm, then pulled on a pair of clean socks to keep his skin from cracking. Finally he stretched out on top of his sleeping bag. He settled back and locked his hands behind his head and gazed up at the spattered current of stars above. A warm breeze fanned his skin, and he picked out constellations: the Big Dipper, Ca.s.siopeia, the busy little Pleiades.

Up on the beach, a burst of laughter erupted from the revelers, but by now his eyes had begun to twitch and blur. He fought to keep them open, to watch just a little bit more of the star show, but within minutes he was fast asleep.

July 3

I"m writing in the bathroom of our hotel room because Mom is out there with everything laid out on the two double beds, FREAKING OUT that she might forget something. Tonight we had our orientation meeting. Mom and I were late and we walked into the room and everybody stared at me. Must have been my FAT CLUB T-shirt. Please please please don"t make me go on this trip. There is n.o.body my age and all I"ll do is eat. And it"s going to be hotter than s.h.i.t and I"ll probably sink the boats.

Maybe if I throw myself out the window, she won"t make me go.

We"re supposed to get up at, 5:30 tomorrow morning and the bus leaves at 6:30. I do not know what I am going to do with my mother hanging over my shoulder for two weeks. Why did she have to bring me along? I could have stayed home alone. Oh no Amy, I want some time with you, you"re going off to college in another year. Oh no Amy, I wouldn"t feel right. Oh no Amy, a serial killer might be able to figure out the twenty-two locks on our front door.

I think I"ve got food poisoning.

DAY ONE.

River Miles 016.

Lee"s Ferry to House Rock

2.

Day One.

Lee"s Ferry.

Mile 0.

The next morning JT woke up floating, as he did on every river trip. Fourth of July Launch day. The air was temperate, the sky a dark peac.o.c.k blue. JT estimated it was about five o"clock. At some point during the night, he"d drawn up his sheet. Quietly now, he sat up and pulled on a T-shirt, climbed over his gear, and hopped out onto the beach. He lit the stove and started a pot of water boiling, and when it was ready he dumped a baggie of ground coffee directly into the water and gave it a stir. How good it smelled, this bare-bones coffee in the canyon!

By now Abo and Dixie were sitting up, yawning, fumbling for clothes. When the grounds had settled, JT filled three plastic mugs and brought them down to the water"s edge.

"Happy Fourth," he murmured.

Abo took his cup without a word and closed his eyes and blew on it.

"Thank you thank you thank thank you," said Dixie as he handed it to her. Her voice was soft, full of a sweetness and uncharacteristic fragility he tried to disdain but couldn"t. "How"d you sleep, JT?" you," said Dixie as he handed it to her. Her voice was soft, full of a sweetness and uncharacteristic fragility he tried to disdain but couldn"t. "How"d you sleep, JT?"

"Slept great."

They sat very still and very quietly, taking in the shadowy blue-gray water, the silhouetted walls. A canyon wren called its plaintive cry, a long series of descending notes. A slight breeze lifted the hairs on his arms.

"I am so so glad," Abo finally said, his voice deep and gravelly with sleep, "that I do not have to be nice to anyone right away."

"How much of that whiskey did you have last night?" JT asked.

"What whiskey?"

JT left them and went to chat with the kayakers, who were straggling up the beach from their small camp just downstream. They were all related, it seemed: tall lanky brothers, along with their spouses and several children. JT asked them where they planned on camping that night; the key during these crowded summer months was for the different parties to stagger themselves that first night, so they wouldn"t be on top of one another the whole trip.

"Haven"t thought that far ahead," said one of the brothers. Though he couldn"t have been more than forty, he had a full white beard. His name was Bud, and JT learned that they were all from Vancouver, where the temperature rarely rose above eighty degrees. Here, it was already close to a hundred. They were to be forgiven, he told himself, for not being the most organized group.

"Holler on the river if you need anything," JT told them.

By seven o"clock, the sun was already up over the low hills to the east, and the motor people were scampering about on the fat tubes of their rig, tightening their gear, and some of the day fishermen had arrived and were messing with their tackle by the side of the river. By eight o"clock, JT and Abo and Dixie had finished breakfast, and for the next several hours, they tightened straps and crammed hatches and rearranged gear so that all boats would be more or less equally loaded. They clipped bail buckets into their boats. The sun grew hot, and their shoulders burned, so they covered up with long-sleeved shirts. They guzzled water from old orange juice jugs.

At ten thirty, JT was lashing an American flag to his rowing seat-it was, after all, the Fourth of July-when he looked up to see an old gray bus rocking its way down the hillside. A cloud of dust roiled up from behind. Dixie squinted.

"Time to rock and roll," she said. "How"re you coming, Abo?"

Abo, whose sleeping pad held a chaotic jumble of clothing, books, giant squirt guns, and camera equipment, stood in the well of his boat, brushing his teeth in the hot sun. He spat into the water. "I"m almost ready," he said. "Hey, can either of you fit some of this stuff in your boat?"

"h.e.l.l no, babe," Dixie replied. "You ready, JT?"

JT stood high on his boat and p.i.s.sed a sparkling arc out into the river and wiggled himself back into his shorts.

"I"m ready," he said, hopping off the boat onto the sand. "Lets run this river."

3.

Day One.

Lee"s Ferry.

One by one, the guests staggered off the bus into the hot morning sun. Their clothes were clean, their hats straight, their skin pale and freshly shaved and smelling of sunscreen. Eager not only to be of use but also to make a good first impression on the guides, they swarmed the rear door of the bus, jostling to unload more than their fair share of gear. As best he could, JT matched people with the names on his list: Ruth and Lloyd Frankel, the old couple who"d been down the river more times than he could count; Peter Kramer from Cincinnati, who was doing much of the heavy lifting; the Compson parents, calling their two sons back from the river to help with the bags. The tall man with the flappy nomad hat must be the retiree from Wyoming, which would make the tiny woman with an identical hat his wife. There was the teenage girl, Amy-whoa, she was big-and the trim blond woman talking to her must be her mother.

There would be time for introductions later.

When the bus was empty and all the bags lay strewn about the beach, JT directed them to a heap of orange life jackets, and the three guides went around and checked their fittings, tugging on straps and yanking up shoulders to ensure things were sufficiently tight.

"I can"t breathe," said the tiny woman.

"Good," said JT with a chuckle.

Then he called everybody over into the shade of some tamarisk trees for his orientation talk. He introduced himself with the fact that this was his 125th trip down the river. "Kind of a milestone, I guess you"d say," he said, glancing at the different faces. "But I"m as psyched now as I was on the first trip. I don"t think it"s possible for me to ever get tired of this place."

As he spoke, a fat yellow b.u.mblebee lazily buzzed its way into the circle, then hovered in front of JT"s face. JT grinned at the bee, and it scooted off.

"And its way more than running the rapids," he said. "Its about hiking up into side canyons; its about condors and mile-high cliffs and wild watercress and-well, you"ll see what I mean."

He went on to remind them that over the next two weeks, they"d be getting to know each other pretty well. "I like to think of it this way," he said, hoping to instill good feelings at the outset. "There"s no such thing as a stranger, just people we haven"t met."

At this, the Compson mother nudged the two boys, who scowled and edged away. JT suspected he might have just reiterated some earlier parental lecture about being open-minded and making new friends; probably the boys had taken one look at all the adults and a.s.sumed they were in for two weeks of heavy scolding.

Well. Wait until those boys saw how adults could behave, two days into a river trip.

He squatted down and unfolded a well-worn topographical map on the sand. The group moved in closer. Using a stick, JT pointed to the upper-right-hand corner of the map.

"So: We"re here at Lee"s Ferry," he told them, "and we"ve got two hundred and twenty-five miles between here and the takeout at Diamond Creek. Some days we"ll go ten miles, some days thirty; it"ll all depend on the day. The only thing I ask is that you be flexible. Plans change, depending on a lot of things."

"I hope we"re going to stop at Havasu," said the man from Wyoming. "Mitch.e.l.l Boyer-Brandt," he added, extending his hand.

"Is Havasu the place with the turquoise water?" the mother asked.

"And vines and ferns and waterfalls," Mitch.e.l.l said. "I"ve been waiting to go there since I was ten years old."

JT did not want to get sidetracked. "Havasu"s beautiful," he agreed, "although with fifty people on the trail, it can lose a bit of its charm. But I"ll do my best to stop there." Carefully he folded up the map. "Now: I see you all have a life jacket. Number one safety rule is you have to wear it all the time all the time when you"re on the river. No exceptions. When you get off the boat, clip it to something on the boat or a bush, whatever, so it doesn"t blow away. Know what we call a pa.s.senger without a life jacket?" when you"re on the river. No exceptions. When you get off the boat, clip it to something on the boat or a bush, whatever, so it doesn"t blow away. Know what we call a pa.s.senger without a life jacket?"

There were nervous chuckles all around.

"A hiker," JT said with another grin. "Rule number two: Know where we keep the first aid box and take care of any nicks and sc.r.a.pes. Wash them well. Put on some ointment. Use a Band-Aid. One little cut can quickly get infected, which definitely can ruin a trip."

"Are there rapids today?" one of the boys asked.

JT looked at the boy, who was squinting up at him. Then he looked at the boys brother. Both light-haired, freshly buzzed. JT wondered if he would be able to tell them apart.

"What"s your name?"

"Sam!"

"Put it here, Sam," said JT, and they slapped palms. "There are most definitely rapids today, and I want to give a little demonstration so everyone knows what to do in case you end up in the water."