Looking back on Cataract

I’m sitting at the keyboard after emerging from Cataract Canyon on a recent 5-day GOALS river program that I can only hope had as profound an impact on the students who participated as it did on me personally.

Many sunsets and literally thousands of river miles ago, Cataract Canyon of the Colorado River was the setting for my very first multi-day river trip.  I knew nothing about what to bring or how to pack, had never spent a minute of time on the oars, and was awe-struck by the unique Canyonlands environment – the sheer size of the canyon walls, the power of the big volume desert river, etc.  Between then and now, I’ve learned a thing or two about how to prepare for desert multi-days and earned more than my share of blisters delivered by oar grips, but that same sense of wonder and sense of awe exists deep within my soul- emerging as I lay back on my boat and look up at the passing formations etched in stone over the course of hundreds of millions of years.
This GOALS program positioned me in a leadership role that was slightly different than the one I find myself in when leading the students whom I teach into the canyon.  This time around, my traveling partners were high school students from Medford, Oregon.  The kids were under the direction of a full-time teacher with a great deal of experience and resulting expertise in designing and facilitating outdoor education programs  – and I was simply along to introduce Alan and his crew of kids to the ideologies of a GOALS wilderness river program and aid in the delivery of our unique GOALS curriculum.  As a result, I found that I was much more able to reflect upon my own growth – both in the here and now AND since the last time I ran Cataract Canyon – rather than my typical focus on helping the students I know so well obtain and recognize growth of their own.

There were several times during this expedition that I was reminded of the ways that canyons have helped to mold me into the person that I am today.  River canyons have truly altered my very soul – they’ve forged a bond into the very inter-workings of who I am down deep in a manner that’s not dissimilar to the way that rivers have carved their way through the very canyons that I love exploring.  Throughout this Cataract program, I gained a clear sense of two powerful gifts that wilderness canyons have bestowed upon me, the most pertinent at this point of my life being:

1.  A sense of connectedness to the land.
It’s no secret that I love to be outdoors.  I like the sense of curiosity that exploring new areas – the urge to turn over leaves and rocks to encounter what might live underneath; to climb atop a peak or paddle around the next bend simply to discover what’s on the other side.  Doing so stimulates me both physically and mentally and turns on the “young boy” inside and returns me to a simple time during my youth when my to-do-list included only these types of tasks.
Canyon environments, however, take this sense of exploration to an entirely different level – a level of mental and physical IMMERSION.
From a mental standpoint, there’s no need to seek out the leaves or tiny stones – it isn’t required that you find a bend to peer around.  The very nature of river canyon exploration presents unending opportunities for one’s mind to remain in a constant state of “wonder.”  I wonder about the past, present, and future about canyons – often in the same moment.  Questioning the canyon’s past, it’s almost incomprehensible to wrap my mind around the events that have occurred to shape the canyon over hundreds of millions of years.  The various layers are apparent to our eyes as changes in color and varying depths in the bands of rock, but their creation continues to boggle me.  In terms of the “present”, I’m always interested in the reasons that boulders the size of cars – even homes – have precariously placed themselves on ledges without continuing to roll off down and come down to the river level.  I’m curious about the sediment that flash floods have deposited into the river, creating the rapids that excite and challenge us as river runners.  I marvel in the seasonal deposition and removal of enormous quantities of sand that create the beaches on which we sleep – in some ways, their presence is predictable based on the river’s currents and hydrology, and yet by the same token their appearance is so greatly affected by the magnitude of just how much snow melts and drains from the mountains hundreds of miles from the beach itself.  Regarding the future, river canyons present us with a never-ending game of “what might be around the next bend.”  Sometimes we’re offered clues – in the form of a slowly growing roar of whitewater or a description in a guidebook, but even in such instances the sense of wonder isn’t satisfied until my own eyes fall upon the new landscape.  In fact, that distant roar or guidebook write-up only serve the heighten that natural sense of anticipation.

Physically, though, the sense of connectedness is most apparent.  I sense that my body wants to connect with the canyon in a physical manner.  I want to swim in the river, to lay on the rocks, and to sleep on the beaches as the gentle lap of waves hitting the shore rocks me off to sleep.  I often awaken during the night, laying in the sand, and feel an urge to just lay silently and stare up at the incredibly desert star display.  I think that this connection stems from something more than just a sense of comfort that has grown over time in this environment.  Rather, I believe that the re-charge I feel when I spend some time in desert canyons is a direct result of acknowledging that they have been shaped by natural elements like wind and water – and have been made stronger over time by exposing and eliminating their weak points.  The same can be said for the power that exists in each of us who take the time to explore ourselves while exploring the canyon landscape.

2.  The notion that if we paddle hard, brace from time to time, and accept that we just might flip…we can get through anything.
Cataract Canyon – just like most river in the western United States – reached flows this summer that were significantly larger than they are in a “typical” year.  Huge snow totals, warm spring temperatures, and an early monsoon rain season swelled rivers to levels that haven’t been observed in decades.
The rapids which comprise the heart of Cataract Canyon are known for a unique challenge created by the combination of very high volume, multiple features which are each capable of flipping rafts and creating terrifying swims, and tricky currents which cause boatmen to think on their toes when the river takes them off the line that they wanted to be on and hopefully move the few-thousand-pound-boat that they’re rowing away from the feature they’re now headed toward.  These features, whose infamous names alone (“Little Niagara”, “The Claw”, and “Satan’s Gut” for example) cause river runners to lose sleep as they head downstream, are stacked upon each other in a manner that few other stretches of rapids can boast.

This is a significant change from the creek I’m accustomed to guiding – a creek whose steep and technical nature presents its’ own unique set of challenges.  Leading up to the “Big Drops”, I was among those losing sleep to the incredibly daunting idea of an unpleasant swim through the previously mentioned features.  I’ve heard horror stories of the river taking swimmers deep enough to damage their ear drums, of boats being de-rigged and dismantled while getting chundered in the holes- even though the oarsmen felt that they were right on their line.  There were 3 boats on our trip and 4 qualified guides – more than once I considered offering my boat to the 4th guide to row through this section.  I doubted my abilities, and let fear get the best of me.
Throughout the hikes we did leading up to this section, I thought a great deal about values that I work hard to instill in the kids in our programs…ideals like pushing themselves to step out of their comfort zone and take healthy risks.  I’ve published quotes in their curriculum books like “Do one thing every day that scares you” or “Life begins at the edge of your comfort zone” – and giving up the oars through the heart of Cataract Canyon would therefore be hypocritical.
I had good lines through the “Mile-Long” rapids that lead into the “Big Drops” – the most challenging set of rapids in the canyon and arguable some of the most difficult in North America.  I felt like I was moving the boat well and looked forward to the challenge of guiding my crew under the marker rock, past the Ledge Wave, just under Little Niagra, right of the Claw, and avoiding Purgatory and the Frog Pond.  At that point, I knew I’d have just a moment to catch my breath and pull hard on the oars to thread the needle between Satan’s Get and the Brahma wave.  Then we scouted from the shore next to those features.
The fear which might typically have caused me to want to bow out of my rowing responsibilities instead further motivated me.  I didn’t want to flip- that’s for certain…but I also didn’t want to run a “decent” line – I wanted to run the Big Drops perfectly.  I sought the same satisfaction that comes from a high five at the bottom of this class V whitewater mayhem that my students find when they navigate their duckies through the first class III that they’ve ever experienced.  And I found it.
Just as is the case with our lives outside the canyon walls, rapids are calmer is some sections than they are in others.  There are dangers that are forseeable and some that aren’t.  The current moves at different speeds, and sometimes a well-laid plan doesn’t pan out just the way we expect, or hope, that it would.  But if we paddle hard, brace from time to time, and accept that we just might flip…we can get through anything – and that high five on the other side is worth the risk it took to get there.  We can’t let the fear of flipping or swimming from time to time prevent us the incredible sense of accomplishment that doing something we didn’t think we could delivers.

In the end, for me this trip represented a great deal of PERSONAL GROWTH.  Perhaps it was brought about by the group, and my reduced sense of responsibility for the individual kids compared to what I feel when I launch with students from my own school.  My responsibility on this trip was more to the group as a whole than it was to a set of individuals – and therefore the individual I focused on most was myself.  Perhaps it was the canyon, and the idea that Cataract pushed me and my abilities far more than most other canyons typically do.
Whatever the reason, these five days days in the canyon taught me more than any other river trip has about myself.

I can only hope that the kids pictured above, who are arriving back in Medford, OR this evening, are enjoying the same introspective sense of satisfaction.

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