San Juan River Rambling

"I'm feeling a little uncomfortable." Caylon says, and for good reason.

There's a man naked but for a skirt of sticks, moving around the

campfire a few feet away, hooting and grunting, alternating between
pointing to the sky and to the ground, gesturing, trying to
communicate something that is being lost amid histerical giggles. I'm
laughing so hard the muscles in my stomach are getting a little sore.
His body is covered in charcoal and he has a headdress made out of
grass. His johnson peeks out between the sticks. I glance at the
nice Mormon couple sitting next me and bet they've never seen anything
like this before.

I think back to the start of the trip where Teresa says it's tradition
for the new people on the river to come up with a song or skit or poem
or something by the last night and perform it for the rest of group.
Wow, he ran with that idea and put my San Juan rookie song to shame.
The witchdoctor walks away from the fire, gesturing to follow him.
Other people get out of their chairs and follow. "What the hell, I
gotta see how this ends." I say as I heave my margarita soaked self
out of my chair and stumble off into the darkness. By the time I get
to where everyone else is I find out he has disapeared into the brush
and we all wander back to the campfire.

Not too long later he comes back to the campfire, dressed normally.
We applaud and he says "What's going on? I was back there sitting on
the can." He sits in his chair as if nothing happened. I think to
myself, that's the best river performance art I have ever seen. The
costume, the sheer ballsy (he he) performance, everything. Just wow.
I'm sure I wasn't the only one who at one point wondered if he had
crossed the line between creativity and just plain insanity, but
that's what the river will do to you and it all turned out fine and we
have a great story to take away from it.

That day on the river had been a cold float, the river was running at
4,000 CFS - a great flow, really ripping which was good because of all
the wind. We floated 17 miles or so from River House to Ledge Rapid,
stopping a couple of times to warm up and shuffle people between
boats. At one point Kristin, the cute red headed dreadlocked hippy
chick's lips were turning blue and she was shivering so I talked her
into tying up her IK to my boat and floating a few miles without
sitting in the water. It was the right thing to do as I watched her
struggle on the ragged edge of stage 1 hypothermia. The next stop we
got her in the dory after making Kristin sammiches with various group
members, trying to warm her up.

We had originally planned on camping at Chinle Wash the second night
because we had the permits to camp and hike on Navajo lands, but the
first camp was so nice and sheltered in the Russian Olives that we did
a layover. It was windy and a little cold, and Chinle was a pretty
exposed. I took that afternoon and went hiking back upstream to the
Butler panel, looking at the rock art along the wall on the way. I
scared up a red tailed hawk from the cottonwoods I was walking near
and watched it fly upriver. On the way back, I got back up onto the
bench above the River House ruin and poked around the various alcoves.
One of them had a nice deep pool of water, surrounded by ferns and in
these thickets of ferns wild orchids were growing.

All in all it was a fine trip despite the wind and cold temperatures.
I've seen the worst wind that canyon can dish up and as I was
struggling against it on the river I'd shout out "Is that all you got?
Bring it on motherfucker!" This made other people nervous, me
taunting the wind like that. I'm not very superstitious though and it
felt good to shout back at the elements like that. When we took out
on the fourth day I wistfully stared downstream and wished I could
keep going. Right now I'd be camping at Grand Gulch or Oljito wash if
I had. Maybe next year.