“I am Haunted by Water” *

 I am defined by water, exalted by it. I can’t imagine

life without it.  I come from water and return to it whenever I can, daily, seasonally, yearly, constantly.  I was born on an Island, surrounded by water.  A Long Island near The City island.  My grandfather and father were in Public Water Works.  My first job was painting fire hydrants for my dad.  Public Water Works.  My favorite job was being a lifeguard.  My first sport was swimming.  My first friend was a high diver.  My first love was a swimmer, warm, smooth and wet. My first broken arm required 9 casts since I kept jumping in the water with it on.  Lucky my uncle was my orthopedic.  My first major was Fluid Mechanics.  My first occupation was hydrology and hydraulics - surface water - repairing dams and rivers in the desert.  My retirement is spent partially on the central west coast where the water is clean, blue and cold and I can watch it every day even if I don’t go in much anymore.  Water encompasses and embodies me.  It is who I am.  You have to be something. 

My first recollection was of my dad taking me out in the ocean on his shoulders at Jones Beach and then launching me on a wave to ride towards the shore.  I must have been  6 or 8 and fearless.  The feeling of the ocean pitching me forward quickly, all the way to the beach was incomprehensible. It felt alive, powerful and a little menacing.  Dad showed me how to catch waves myself, looking for sets with size and shape and catching an early one before there was too much water on the beach.  It opened up a new independent world to me, similar to learning to cross the street or tie my own shoes.  With his supervision, I moved out into deeper water to catch better waves, without losing my toehold of the seafloor that kept me from washing out to sea with the mysterious Under Toad.  Emboldened, I dropped into a big one but I was late and inside and It flipped me up the curl and crashed me down to the floor and sat on my chest for what felt like eternity.  Sputtering to the surface eventually and crying for my mother, I raced to the shore but found my dad there laughing and smiling incongruously.  WTF I said with my limited lexicon as he shook a mound of sand out of my little red surf shorts.  He asked me how I liked the ‘washing machine’ and I knew instantly what he meant.  He said next time drop my head and hands and go out the back door.  I asked him if there was anything else I needed to know and he just said yes.  I wasn’t sure what that meant but would figure it out after a PBJ sandwich, a Coke and the half-hour mandatory rest that seemed to be the law of the beach. 

Conversely, I was swimming with my stepdaughter in big surf one day and she got caught in a riptide.  She wasn’t a strong swimmer, and I didn’t want her to be alone, so I followed her out.  She was besides herself due to the lack of control and distance building from the shore.  I calmed her down as we tread water and asked her calmly what she thought we should do.  She wanted to swim to an adjacent jetty and climb out.  We looked at the jetty and saw big waves cashing violently on it so that was out of the question.  I told her it was a rip current that would eventually dissipate and let us go in deeper water, but we couldn’t fight it. 

The lifeguards looked oblivious so I told her to swim parallel to the beach with me until we could find an inbound current.  We did this for a while with me asking her periodically if she was all right, and she would say yes, until she didn’t and said she was struggling and going down in the turbulent waves.  I told her swimming is 90% relaxing and calm breathing and I had her float on her back with her hands on my shoulders while I swam slowly.  She laid her head back and breathed rhythmically, trying to relax and recover.  Finally, we felt a current flowing towards the beach, and we turned and rode the waves in.  As we walked from the water a lifeguard ran over and asked if we were ok. I said YES and she said NO but we walked back to our blanket for some tuna sandwiches, a beer and the mandatory half hour nap.  After a while I asked her if she wanted to get back on the horse and go for a swim.  She said NO, never again. 

 

After freshman year of high school, I reported to our summer swim Club on the Great South Bay for our first practice in our new, fast, saltwater pool.  After practice I walked past the women’s locker room on the canal and out swung my old fiend Gina Sweeny in a bright yellow homemade polka dot bikini.  I didn’t recognize her out of her one-piece racing suit and she swung her hips that could sink ships and brand knew tips, way up firm and high, like most young women know how to do, instinctually, like holding a baby on their hip.  I had been in a carpool with Gina for years and knew she was crazy and funny, the best swimmer in the Club and exactly 10 months younger than me, when that was import and in swimming and life.  Swimmers are not like racehorses, all born on Jan 1.  This woman Regina was all new to me and I was coming of the age where I would appreciate it. Va va va boom.  Wasting no time, for if you snooze you lose, I asked her to go for a swim, and we spent the rest of the day playing water ballet and swimming thru each other’s legs blowing bubbles and laughing innocently.  We would spend the next four years together swimming and sailing and going back behind the boats to smooch.  I moved away from Gina to landlocked Indiana and worse yet, Utah.  All the kids still swim and sing:

 

Gina Sweeny had a ten-foot weenie,

And she showed it to the guy next door.

He thought it was a snake,

And wrapped it with a rake,

Now it’s only five foot four.

 

I also had a great friend, appropriately named Willie Hooper, who was a great swimmer and diver, football, basketball and baseball player.  Not William or Bill or Will but Willie.  He was also funny as snot.  We would bounce on the high diving boards all day long, doing clown dives and serious dives in our banana hammock Speedos, but not knowing the difference between the two.  One day we decided to skip swim practice and smoke surreptitiously in the white rocking chairs on the screen porch, incognito.  It was a blast watching the others work until big coach Reese snuck up behind us and banged our heads together and made us swim a double practice that day. 

When Willie wore a Dungaree Jacket with his Varsity A letter from Amityville High School on it, my dad asked him what the A was for Willie looked down at the letter, perplexed for the moment, and then smiled and said, ‘A is for Outstanding’.  Not the sharpest tool in the shed but he was an outstanding guy with a big heart.

Despite him smoking 2 packs a day at age 12, my only goal was to beat him in the breast-stroke and in our last race we tied for third.  When we both sauntered up to the podium the coach was confused about what to do with the one ribbon.  Willie took it and ripped it in half and gave me the top part with a grin. He lost the Club Swimmer of the Year that summer by one half a point, but he didn’t care because Gina won it instead and we both loved Gina.  She accepted the trophy that winter in a homemade yellow polka-dot dress with Willie, in a sporty white turtleneck, at her side.  ‘I don’t recognize you with your clothes on’,’ we liked to say in the winter.

One day I came home from a two-week wrestling camp and found him in the Clubhouse smooching with Gina.  I asked him what was going on and he said he was making out with my girlfriend.  I said OK but did they want to go swimming when they were done.  We all got up and swam for the rest of the day and summer like nothing had ever happened. 

Years later the three of us were drinking by candlelight at the Club on the night of the NYC blackout.  We went home to his house, across from the Amityville Horror house so we could ring their bell and run like old times, and Willie could show us his new motorcycle.   We all hopped on it to make believe we were riding.  Of course, we lost our balance and fell to the floor of the garage, becoming harmlessly pinned under the bike and laughing hysterically.  Willie’s dad came out to ask what we thought we were doing and Willie chortled that we were just going for a ride.  We were locked in the garage for the rest of the night, but we didn’t really mind.  Willie burned out young, at 42, from lung cancer but we still swim and sing:

 

Every party has a pooper,

That’s why we invited you,

party pooper, Willie Hooper.

 

*Norman McLean

Follow the Water 1

Picture this; swollen streams cascading out of the east face of a recently glaciated range, rolling down into lush wetlands, verdant grasslands as high as the belly of a Buffalo.  Imagine meadows incised with numerous meandering streams lined with Willows and clustered with Cottonwoods.  Envision floods over-flowing banks and beaver dams, spilling into a wide and undefined floodplain, saturating the natural sponge of wetland organics and alluvial deposits, recharging near surface and deep aquifers that slowly bleed their stored volumes to keep streams flowing all year round.  This was the Wasatch back, Park City, Parley’s Park, the Snyderville Meadow, a mere 10,000 year ago, a hydrologic system in balance.

Then came Parley Pratt with his toll booth, Sam Snyder with his lumber mill, H. C. Kimball with his junction, the US Army, the miners and eventually the farmers.  The trees were cut for mines, homes and heat, the mines drained ground and surface water, and the meadows were grazed and farmed.  The streams were diverted to better irrigate the meadows, Water Rights were claimed and shared, divided and decreed.  From Thayne’s Canyon and McLeod Creek, to White Pine, Willow Creek and Spring Creek, the upper reaches of East Canyon were developed.  Water was distributed according to need, for beneficial use, first come first served.  Disputes about flooding and drought were handled after Church, in the bars or at the ditches and head gates with swinging fists and shovels.  Everyone took their share of the surplus and the scarcity.  The meadow still flooded, the streams still flowed.

 

Flash to the present; the boomers have taken over, Trophy homes cluster the meadows and Mc Mansions dot the hillside.  Shallow and deep wells mine ancient waters to slake the unquenchable thirst, like a commodity.  Water disputes are not handled with reason and respect but are dragged vindictively through the courts - wasting time, money, energy and water.  Ski resorts and Sundance, subsistence agriculture and snowmaking, empty golf courses and vacant lawns, growing demand and shrinking supply, change the hydrologic regime from beneficial use to best-bang-for-the-buck.

 

A massive sewer pipe surreptitiously moves waste water away and provides a giant gravel under drain for its entire length.  Pavement and pumps, under drains and pipes protect the subdivisions in the wetlands.  Ski resorts and snowmaking, mountain grazing and global warming change the hydrologic cycle to water, energy, food, people, money.  It rains in January, it snows in July, snowmelt starts in March or ends in August.  Streams are put in pipes, ditches are abandoned and natural channels are made into plazas and parking lots.  Spring floods are a nuisance, to whisk quickly away downstream or just divert nefariously towards neighbors. 

 

Summer drought is solved, not with conservation and cooperation but with a checkbook.  Water flows towards money, yet entitled farmers use thousands of dollars’ worth of water to grow hundreds of dollars of crops, just to protect their rights and speculate on this new commodity, this old dichotomy.  Disputes are not handled with reason and respect but are dragged vindictively through the courts - wasting time, money, energy and water. It is said, however, that it is better to live at the headwaters of a system with a shovel than at the bottom end with all the water rights in the world. The water has been subdued, the meadow no longer fills in the spring, and the streams no longer flow in the summer, and the Great Salt Lake at the bottom of the system is dangerously drying up.  Is this evolution towards a better world for all or is it lifestyle entropy trending towards a more random and chaotic state of self-absorption.  Choose to be kind, be cool, evolve.

Live and Let Live

The sun broke brightly over the Wasatch Mountains on a brisk early winter morning. Late to rise that dark time of year, I had the sun beat by a few hours and was on my way down south already for my final dam inspection of the year. A recalcitrant dam owner had refused to inspect his own leaking outlet pipe, and I would be damned if I let this carry this over into the new year. It could be a leaking gate, or worse yet, water seeping into an outlet pipe though the dam, acting like an uncontrolled, unfiltered embankment drain.  We had a dam almost fall, above Salt Lake City, with that problem.

My office was slow around the holidays, and I wanted to get out-and-about one more time before the weather got really bad and we got into full winter lockdown mode.  That would mean just the boring public, politics, personnel, computer hydro-modeling of drainage basins and rivers, portfolio inventory, risk assessments and analysis. There are few days better spent indoors, but this was not one of them. I’m a field engineer, dam it.  So, I headed east towards the cresting sun, from I-15 around mid-state up to the Manti La Sal Forest and then the Wasatch Plateau.  Years before we had found the remains of a woolly-mammoth remnants up in this country while excavating a dam foundation, but today there were just elk and deer moving around skittishly from the first snow of the year.  As I drove through the dark forest of the North facing road, cresting the first summit, I was in the blazing direct sunlight and Albedo reflected off the clean new snow. I pulled up to the gate at the end of the road and the truck thermometer said lucky 7°.

I got out of the warm truck, and it felt colder than it actually was. Truck shock I called it. I put my layers on quickly and stretched mohair climbing skins on the bottom of my Telemark cross-country skis. With too much to carry in my backpack with my inspection skateboard et al, I left my thick Irish wool sweater in the truck, just in case. Too cold to dilly dally, I got moving right away, climbing in the fresh snow capped with potato - chip sized ice crystals, called Surface Hoar, from the cold clear night before.  There was enough to sink into softly without hitting the bottom and enough purchase from the compressed shear strength of the snow, to push forward and up. Coming around a wide curve and out of the forest and up to the lake level, I spied the long reservoir ¼ full by volume and ½ full by height, from the wet summer, and frozen over slightly from the cold calm night before.  I was alone on an important, dangerous, mission impossible that I willingly chose to accept and I had my sunglasses and lucky neck gaiter on. But the sun was out so what could go wrong?  I felt like Tom Cruise.

The last time I was out for an outlet inspection we had a herd of owners and several young guys from my office with a new camera - tank device to take pictures without us going up the 24-inch CMP outlet. There was also a gaggle of affirmative action women from the US Forest Service, keeping an eye on us, to see how it is done. Of course, the camera broke and got stuck way up in the outlet pipe and the big young Millennials refused to go up and get it. I was a Baby Boomer mentor and supervisor and dressed nicely so I showed the women to the dam crest and took my clothes off, down to my tighty-whities, to go up the outlet on hands and knees to retrieve the camera - tank. The pipe was rotten CMP that sliced my knees as I crawled up. I was aggravated to begin with for having to do this chore without my skateboard, and I was hurting from cutting my knees so much on the outlet pipe. I may have whispered an expletive or two as I went along, getting louder the deeper I crawled. When I triumphantly emerged from the pipe with the camera - tank, the owner and regulators were laughing at the downstream toe and even the ladies up top on the crest were howling and it was not just my skivvy’s or bloody knees. Outlets function as a megaphone, apparently, and they heard every New York swear word I uttered.  Live and learn.

Circumnavigating around the large frozen lake, I soon noticed a big new Beaver Dam on the shore and an isolated lodge in the shallow part of the lake, but no sign of Mr. Beaver. I erroneously thought that he must be hunkered down for the winter, or the water was too cold. The water was 25° warmer than the air outside and their lodges must be warm and safe and dry. These innocuous animals had historically helped form the geomorphology of the western United States, stabilizing streams, creating cleansing lakes and wetlands, thereby recharging the near field groundwater and dependent flora and fauna of the floodplain. This created stable, sustainable streams, along with the predators that chased the large dominant ungulate, uber species away from the riparian zones, ensuring the stream health by preventing detrimental, erosive overgrazing. Things were best in moderation and balance.

Then came the 1820s when beaver skin hats were all the rage in New York, Washington, Boston, London and Paris. The mountain man came out and trapped and killed almost all of the Beaver within 30 years, destabilizing the regions riparian ecosystem and geomorphologic balance. Rivers started eroding and cutting down, perching the floodplain dangerously high above the water table, drying and desiccating the natural plant species that were eventually replaced by sage and herbaceous grasses and invasive species. Like the bison yet to come, we wiped out an entire species in the western United States in 30 years. So goes moderation and balance versus human nature, fear and greed.

But that was water over the dam, so to speak, and today is another day of challenges with our natural resources, water and climate. Water has turned into a commodity bought and sold by the highest bidder, and Beaver and Bison are just a metaphor for our own use of natural resources. They are just minimized or forgotten Externalities in our benefit cost calculations and risk assessments. The Environment and Climate will be ignored until it becomes untenable or catastrophic. The players have changed, but the gene pool stays the same. Only more so.

Another inspection of a new outlet pipe ranked much the same in my history of bad judgement. I was with a potential girlfriend for an inspection of a smooth 24 - inch concrete outlet pipe that was flowing water, smooth and clear. I stripped down to my boxer shorts and easily pushed my skateboard all the way up the pipe on my stomach and took pictures. On the way down, I rolled over on my back and let it rip. As I accelerated, the clicking sounds of the pipe joints compressed with speed as the Doppler effect of an incoming train. When I got to the bottom, I shot out of the perched pipe and skimmed across the plunge pool smoothly and sank at the far end. The good Mormon owners were momentarily amused, but they then walked the damn toe in search of rattlesnakes to chop up with their shovels.

My new gal pal, who had a delightful penchant for skinny dipping, said she wanted to give it a try and stripped down to her underwear and crawled on the sled. She quietly slid all the way up the pipe as the owners returned. At the top she rolled over and let it rip. The rhythm of the joints increased exponentially, indicating she was going really fast. Boom - pop, boom – pop, boom - pop. She started wailing rhythmically with delight. The Quorum of LDS owners sat wide eyed in expectation, and when she shot half naked across the plunge pool screaming, their heads almost exploded. These are the times when legends are born.

But the devil - may - care about dam safety history this day since I was isolated in my little bubble, skiing in fresh snow, in new country, and getting paid for it, my best job ever. As I rounded the corner I heard the ice crackle and out only 20 or 30 meters I spotted a Beaver nose breaching through the ice like a great humpback whale in the ocean, to take a look, a breath, or just for the fun of it. ‘Right on, little fellow’, I thought.  I continued, eventually reaching the dam outlet, a 24-inch welded steel pipe with a classic USACOE plunge pool, energy dissipator, flowing about one CFS or 500 GPM. I took off my skis and pulled my skateboard from my backpack and climbed down gingerly to stay dry getting into the outlet. Forget about all those Mountain Man movies, I know that staying dry on these kinds of days was critical, a matter of life and death.

Despite my false overconfidence, I began to worry a little and a cloud came over my happy little scene. This was before OSHA rules and regulations, when you could do what you want, but maybe going alone in the dead of winter was a mistake. Once inside the pipe I realized that I was in a slimy, frictionless tube with water about four to six inches deep flowing rapidly below me. I had trouble gaining purchase with my plastic ski boots and leather gloves. Making progress up the pipe was slow and arduous with two steps up and one step back. The deeper I got, the mustier it smelt of cold water, fish and mystery outlet gas. ‘In and out’, I thought, ‘In and out.’ I interminably inched my way up hundreds of feet until I came to an anomaly, the crux as climbers would say. The pipe began to slope down slightly towards the outlet gate, making it easier to approach, but causing water to pool slightly. When I arrived at the outlet there was a dead fish, and a stick caught in the gate causing water to spray in every direction. I pulled them both and separately caused them to shear off in half in my hands.  The vent manifold was clogged with a red goop algae that forms in cold springs and drains. I took off my glove and carefully poked each 1/2-inch manifold hole to remove the goop. Satisfied with my work, I took a few pictures and started to plan my lunch and escape from the gloomy manifold mausoleum.

That's when I realized that it was much harder going backwards over the hump in the pipe that tilted towards the outlet gate. I could get no purchase standing on my fingers and toes with my feet on the ceiling or on the floor, on the flow line or spring line of the pipe. ‘Don't panic’, I thought as my claustrophobia started to kick in. Lying on my stomach, I looked over my shoulders and I could still see a slight crescent of daylight way down the crooked pipe. I tried to rotate my back and crunch my knees on the pipe to get some traction, but to no avail. I tried to turn around to face downstream, but I was no circus contortionists and wound up falling off my skateboard and jamming it sideways in the pipe and plunging me into the little pool in the bottom of the pipe. I was amazed that my little blockade of the flow would cause the water to back up quickly and quickly flood the pipe even deeper. I dropped my flashlight and the pipe went dark.  I hate it when that happens.

I thought ‘now I'm going to drown, not freeze to death of hypothermia in this cylindrical sarcophagus’. ‘At best, I'm going to spend several cold hours or days here because nobody knows where I am or where to look for me’. ‘I might spend the rest of the winter, or my life in here, I thought despondently.’ After a few frightful minutes of panic where I lamented missing Christmas and New Years, friends and family, my dog and the ski season and the next episode of NYPD Blue, I settled down, out of necessity, into the pragmatic problem-solving I was trained to be. They don’t teach that in engineering school, but they taught me this; “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time”. I concentrated all my effort, weight and power to spread out my pressure load on the walls of the pipe for more friction area and less unit shear force and I moved myself imperceptibly in the right direction. Resting slightly, I slipped back into the pool. One step up, two steps back.

But I learned a method and could make progress. I had hope. Slowly but surely, I made my way up the vertical curve of the pipe, feeling it flatten almost gradually as I went, heightening my spirits and my effort as I went. Just when I felt I had gotten good at this, I rolled over the top and started rolling towards the outlet opening. Exhausted and relieved, I rode rolled freely, picking up speed that I half-heartedly tried to scrub. With my hands and feet, knees and elbows. When I finally burst into the open and dropped into the plunge pool, throwing caution to the wind.  In the name of expedience, since it was cloudy but still wicked cold out, I had to keep moving and get out of there. I strapped my skis on and beat-feet towards a warm car. As I circled the lake, my friend Mr. Beaver was still breaching the ice surface of the lake, like nothing had happened, and his personal happiness and species resilience had never impressed me more. I stopped to salute him.  Good on you man.  Live and let live. 

 I was beginning to get goofy from the cold and hypothermia, which I knew would be followed by surrendering, giving up or not giving a crap if I made it home. So, I redoubled my efforts, plowing through deeper, untracked snow for the effort and body heat.  My extremities began to shut down with frozen fingers and toes, but my core was still warm, protecting the vital organs. When I finally reached the truck, I started it hopefully and blasted the heater, putting on my warm and dry, just in case Irish Sweater, safe-and-sound and much more-the-wiser. Things that don't kill you make you smarter and stronger. Except for stupidity and frozen outlet pipes in the winter. They will kill you. As I devoured my late lunch and warmed up slowly on the drive home, retching from the adrenaline, fear and relief, I promised myself; never alone, never in winter, never again. Live and learn.  

Matthew Lindon, PE

Hydrologist

THE ACCIDENTAL ECO-TOURIST

My stomach rose into my throat as the Bell helicopter dropped over the lower rim of the inner canyon, into the most intimate depths of the Grand Canyon.  As the river, our tiny boat and crew came into view, I heard the words of its first explorer, John Wesley Powell, who described the Grand Canyon as “the great unknown” when he entered it on August 12, 1869 from the relative gentle beauty, soft rock and smooth water of Glen and Marble Canyons.  The cool ribbon of green flowed quietly, agelessly through the inferno of the hard, ancient lava rock that would be my home for the next three days. 

I had always thought that when I finally floated the Grand it would be an epic three week private trip in a slow dory with a bunch of granola munching enviro-dudes and hippie-chicks.  It would take that long, I figured, to really get the feel of the canyon, to get the sand under your skin, to get naked and dance like crazed Anasazi around driftwood fires.  I changed my mind when my Long Island friends Wild Bill, Jai Johnny, Les is More, Phil the Thrill and Jumpin Julie Westerman invited me on a spur-of the moment, three day, totally indulgent, family reunion glamping trip down the lower canyon, complete with planes, helicopters, jet boats and J-rigs.  How bad could it be?  

I had been on dozens of private river trips around the world and it would be good to consider and contrast the alternatives.  My wife and I took a trip down the Grand for our Honeymoon and it was 120 degrees.  It didn't get below 100 at night.  It was the 'don't touch me honeymoon'. At night we would soak our towels in he river and drape them over us aw we slept on our bags.  We did this every few hours.  It was too hot for bugs.  This time they said I could come for free if I told stories about water, the river. the politics and personalities of the Grand Canyon.  I was still wrapped tightly in a sling from a recent shoulder repair but I figured if John Wesley could hang on with one arm, so could I.  Besides, I’ll try anything three times.  Bad idea, I had to have the surgery again then years later but it was worth it,  

            We had spent several decadent days in plush accommodations in Vegas, hanging pool side, sipping umbrella drinks, playing craps and betting on men who bite.  Las Vegas, where you can be anyone you want, is the sad metaphor for America.  Conspicuous consumption, more testosterone than taste and more dollars than sense.  Where else could you find the Statue of Liberty next to a great pyramid, across the street from a medieval castle, complete with fountains, rivers, golf courses, lawns and laser lights - all sprouting comfortably from Americas most inhospitable desserts.  When we flew from town to the outer canyon edge, early in the morning brilliant heat, the city was humming, the fountains were flowing and the lights were still on.

After a shady lunch and a brief introduction to our guides, fellow passengers and general rafting edicate, we hit the river.  Fifteen people and 1100 tons of provisions packed on to a 40 foot J boat left little room for or reclining or napping.  Everyone nervously jostled for their comfort zone as we approached the first rapid.  Wild Bill, front and center on the pontoon, Auntie Mo with Pistol Pete in the “chicken coop” towards the back, and me somewhere in-between.  With the 40 horse power motor cavitating, we center punched the 5 foot standing waves of a No Name Rapid without hesitation, without scouting, without a care in the world.  We came out totally drenched, cooled by the frigid water, and washed clean of any concerns we had when we entered the canyon.  The small group of family and friends discovered the instant bond of shared experiences, adventures and of facing your fears together.  The quite, uncomfortable group instantly became boisterous, bumptious and eventually bacchanalian.  Animated conversations and detailed, play-by-play rapid survival stories unraveled and a spirited exuberance set the tone for the rest of the day.

The originally subdued guides, emotionally and physically spent from the first 6 days of their tour from Lees Ferry with another group, started to open up to the guests, recharged with the fresh perspectives of the new trip.  Travis was the fun loving but tortured wanderer, Jed - the stress free, low key yet loquacious nature-boy interpreter, and Julie - the volunteer swamper offering the mature, calming, mother nature, feminine influence.  They worked extremely hard and ran a tight ship for Western River Adventures yet the trip appeared seamless, effortless and timeless for the clients.  The tremendous amount of experience, preparation, logistics, physical and mental stamina was barely apparent during entire voyage.  The endless shuttle miles, the marathon shopping, sun-baked packing and unpacking, the years of experience to ensure that you had the right tool, the right Band-Aid, or enough ice, was all but invisible to us on our casual, first class river float.  First one up, last one down, a boatman’s chores are never done.

 

We stopped at a side canyon and hiked up to some petroglyphs, complete with stories of The Ancient Ones, peyote and aliens. Then we decided to make camp.  After a quick fire line to unpack the boat we were left on our own to pick our spots and do our own personal nesting.  People wandered aimlessly in the last rays of direct sun, nervously debating between privacy and the security of the group.  I took a nap by the river.  The resulting tight cluster of cots revealed the close group continuity and the small comfort zone that comes with the first night out.  We tried out the open air lavatory, took baths, made cocktails, sang songs, had dinner and reluctantly went to bed, some for the first time under the endless desert stars.  Looking up at the massive, multi level canyon walls,  offset by the firmament, I remembered that Powell had called the canyon, “a stairway from gloom to heaven”

In the morning I awoke early and hiked to a ledge overlooking the river and the camp.  From my perch the hydraulics of the river and the canyon became evident.  The side canyon had spewed a tremendous amount of rock and debris during countless flash flood events, creating a large alluvial fan that extended halfway into the river channel and made our perfect beach campsite.  The alluvial fan also created a small rapid by filling the channel with debris, creating a calming backwater effect upstream and a constricted, steepened channel downstream.  The river poured over the elevated rock control section like calm, deep water pours over a water fall.  At the constriction of the river the water depth got thinner and the velocity faster as the profile approached “critical” - as hydrologists call it.  The water flowed through the rapid waves very thin and very fast in a “super-critical” state and at the end of the rough steepened constricted section, the river flattened and returned to a slower and deeper, more energy efficient flow regime called subcritical flow.  This trans-critical sequence is called a “hydraulic jump” where the water surface exits the rapid actually higher than the middle of the rapid, allowing it to flow back upstream along the side of the rapid creating a shear flow zone and the  backwater eddy.  The water then returned to the rapid again as the lateral flow that is so tricky for kayakers and canoeists. The fast moving, hungry water of the rapid can carry more sediment as it backcuts into the deposition from the side canyon, but drops it quickly after it slows down in the eddy creating beaches and point bars.  This particular eddy swirled behind the shelter of the alluvial fan that served as our camp and created a beautiful bay of deep, relatively calm water.  Other famous big rapids on the river were formed this way: Lava Rapid by a lava flow into the river, Crystal Rapid and Separation Rapid by two large side washes entering the river at the same spot.  I returned to camp, after this personal revelation, but could find no one who shared my hydraulic fascination.  We all appreciate the river for something different.  Therein lies the problem.

When the others awoke we had a magnificent leisurely breakfast of bacon, eggs, coffee and cake.  A quick pack, a long joke-du-jour by Jed and we were back on the river.  It was a spectacularly hot day, with a strong dry upstream wind and a clear blue sky that made the canyon colors jump out at you like from a cheap post card.  Everyone was very animated even before we crashed the first rapid.  Having survived the cycle of one full day had made us seasoned river rats and happy campers.  People scampered around the raft, assuming different positions for the ice cold rapid runs and hot interim drying cycles. We stopped numerous times to explore side canyons, pictographs, streams, waterfalls, cliffs, springs and to take shade, lunch and pee breaks. We were continually challenged to push our personal envelopes by taking higher cliff dives, rougher rapid swims, more technical waterfall climbs and hikes further and further away from the mother river.  The experience was liberating, the scenery indescribable.  Powell said that it was, “one thousand Niagaras, one thousand Yosemites”. 

The Natives say that you never see the same river twice but the river we were seeing was a far different river than the one John Wesley Powell saw for the first time more than 100 years ago.  With the installation of Glen Canyon dam and the ignominiously named Lake Powell, the river has been tamed, harnessed and controlled.  Without the dam, the river would be flowing at almost 120,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) because of the healthy winter snow pack still melting in the Colorado Rockies, the Wind River range of Wyoming and the Uinta mountains of Utah.  Even with some extra flood control releases at the dam, the current river was flowing at a nominal 27,000 cfs.   The river would, historically, be blood red with sediment and close to 60 degrees, but now, 200 miles below the dam, it was still flowing emerald green, hungry for sediment and barely 49 degrees.  Why drown a canyon to tame a river we asked; for fountains and light shows in the mid day Mojave heat of Vegas, to grow rice in the Imperial valley or irrigate cow pastures at 7500 feet in northern Utah?  The token Bureau of Reclamation flushing flows of 45,000 cfs released for one week last year have helped scour the channel and rebuild some beaches but it is apparent that to mimic the natural system they will have to release more sediment filled, warm water for a longer period of time to match the natural range of variability.  It’s at least a philosophical step in the right direction towards considering the rivers ecology as well as its economics. 

The day unfolded into and endless series of rapids and rocks, sun, sky and spray.  One of the guides asked me where I lived and what I did for a living and for a fleeting moment I forgot.  We assumed the timeless rhythm of the river, deep-sixing our wrist watches and looking for a place to camp only when the sun slid behind the edge of the canyon.  We eddied out to a slim beach and ran to find the best reclusive camp site.  After some minimal nesting we returned to the boat to get out of the blowing sand and to get closer to the beer.  We had several cases on ice and we were not planning on packing any of it out of the canyon. The guides bathed and dressed in their best black tie outfits and prepared another feast of steak and trout, while we watched helplessly. At this point in his journey Powell and his men had lost most of their food, clothes, blankets and hats but still maintained a lyrical quality in their journals and their appreciation of this awesome spectacle. Nothing mattered more than the rolling of the river and the changing colors of the canyon walls.

After countless beers we shuffled to our cots to tie our traditional, last night, togas and prepare for dinner.   The canyon wasn’t the only thing glowing this night and we floated above the shifting sand, smiling to ourselves.  We came back styling, to a table full of champagne and a paparazzi of cameras for every conceivable group shot combination .  Dinner was superb, both the cooking and the company.  Dusk languished into night and the Milky Way rolled into the northern sky amidst shooting stars and satellites.  Travis broke out his guitar and someone added an imperceptible bottom rhythm with a harmonica.  Generations were united during a eclectic sing along that ranged from Axle Rose to Kum-by-ya.  Powell said that the Grand Canyon is “a land of song” but I’m not sure this is what he meant.  Eventually, one by one, the crowd retired to their cots, to contemplate the night on their own terms.

They tell me that the rock formations of the Grand Canyon, some as old as 3 billion years, were pushed up 50 million years ago and the canyon was cut in a paltry 6 million years.  In geological times there could have been hundreds of grand canyons.  They say there are distinctive rock layers missing in places and parts of the river used to flow the other way.  You can not travel this canyon without thinking of the greatness of God, and the insignificance of man, but you also can not forget about the huge power dam above you and the bigger, controlling one below.  There have been several plans for dams in the canyons, the last as recently as Ronald Regan.  Congress has passed a law that forbids dams in the Grand Canyon, until they pass another law.  Only God can make such a place for the ages but only man can muck it up in a matter of years.

Sleep comes easy in the canyon on the comfortable cots, under a light sheet at first and into the sleeping bag by morning.  I missed the first light of the third and last day but heard the blowing of the conch shell to signal that cowboy coffee was ready.  Another great breakfast, a quick pack, a long joke contest and we are on the river before the sun.  We are into the backwater of lake Mead already, flat but flowing in this incredible canyon.  We float over the submerged Separation Rapid where several members of Powell’s first crew abandoned the main group, and walked away to their death, only 100 yards from the end of the last bad rapid.  The morning, for our group,  is an easy scenic motor until we meet our jet boat that will wisk us across 50 miles of slackwater and the upper, ugly portions of the lake.  When Powell went by here he passed a family of naked Indians, the man wearing only a hat, the woman only a necklace.  When he reached the eventual pullout at the confluence with the Virgin river there were surprised Mormons fishing for their bodies with Seine nets.

We say heartfelt thanks and goodbye to our mentors who will spend the next day motoring, unpacking, packing, cleaning, driving, unpacking and packing for the next trip.  Our short time on the river has been a revelation and we are momentarily jealous that they get to stay on the river all summer.  We promise to write and keep in touch but we know its a lie.  We go back to our jobs, our wives and our lives but we won’t forget the Colorado River, the Grand Canyon and who we were, for a few short days, when we were there.  The commercial river experience was not that different from the private ones I had been on.   It was a lot less work and worry but the group bonding experience was strong and real.  The ‘sense of place’ feeling came on quick and strong since we were not so distracted with logistics and tasks, packing and un packing, rapid performance anxiety and fear of the unknown.  Our appreciation of the Canyon was amazingly rapid, almost like a microwave version of a slow baked river trip, but it was real and valuable.  Don’t get me wrong, a three week trip is worth every minute of time, toil and tribulation but for those who don’t have the time, temper or wherewithal for the long run, the short survey trip is a valuable experience.  The more varied people who can capture even a small part of this wilderness experience, the more people will ‘get it’ that we have to preserve these magnificent places and experiences for generations to come. 

A boat, a bus and another plane ride, over the flat blue lake, looking like a beard on a beauty queen in it’s Mojave wasteland.  We fly over the dam that sits like a plug in a puddle.  Hoover Dam tamed the lower river in the 1930s and created the relatively sterile looking Lake Mead without much opposition or loss of unique beauty.  It was, and still is, an Art Deco engineering marvel that set the stage for development of the West.  Power generation revenue from this cash register dam was enough to fund most of the Bureaus subsidized water development projects in the forties, fifties and sixties and is still going strong. The lower canyon is stark and dark with lava flows and ancient silt and sand stones in a Mojave vegetation complex full of Barrel cactus and Fire Sticks. 

Glen Canyon Dam was built in the 60s as a trade off with environmentalists for not building a dam in Dinosaur Monument.  The sole purpose of Glen Canyon Dam is to give the upper states water use flexibility and guarantee a ten year water supply to the lower basin states.  The 500 million dollar per year power generation revenue is just icing on the cake.  David Brower, then president of the Sierra Club, made the deal with the Bureau of Reclamation before he and the environmental movement knew that Glen Canyon was an irreplaceable national treasure. The upper canyon was shady, lush and airy with vertical faces of polished red sandstones and side canyons as thin as a man or as cavernous as a cathedral.   As a regretful older man, Brower, along with the Sierra Club and ex Bureau chief Dan Beard were proposing the removal of the dam because of the waste of water from infiltration and evaporation - enough annually for the city of Chicago, and the lack of a real need for the storage.  He fought the power companies, the water users and more than 3 million recreationists that enjoy Lake Powell annually.  To Brower, flooding Glen Canyon for recreation was like flooding the Sistine Chapel to get a closer look at the ceiling.  Perhaps the proposal was the last desperate act of a regretful eco-warrior, or perhaps it is an extreme bargaining position for better environmental operation of the dams or perhaps it is an idea so outrageous that it might be worth reconsidering.   We flew back to Vegas, over what is left of the lower Colorado river, then over the Pyramid and the Statue of Liberty, a Circus, a Castles and the Space Needle.  The lights, air conditioners, fountains and sprinklers were still on, but the old river wasn’t.

The Greatest Game

 

Filip Forsberg stands at center ice waiting for the ref to blow the whistle for the final shootout shot of the night of a meaningless game with the Utah Hockey Club at the Stockton-to-Malone, Delta Center.  He is not Steven ‘Stammer’ Stamkos, the old pro with two Stanley Cups, who just missed on the last shot attempt for the Nashville Predators.    He is not Peter Forsberg, his Swedish namesake star of a previous generation in Colorado, but he is a 9-year Swede NHL veteran who started strong, leading the league in plus/minus at times during his rookie year, a stat that quietly defines the best two-way hockey player.  He has matured and solidified into a franchise player for the Nashville Predators. 

He has endured this pesky fast and young Utah team all night long with their relentless stick checks and touch passes. He suffered silently the novice but knowledgeable Utah crowd at the Delta Center with them cheering their goalie ‘Veggie’ Vejmelka, or the sniper Guenther and diggers Keller and Cooley.  These guys live, train and sleep at altitude but the weight of the game wore them down.  He had watched their clueless happy fans on the Jumbotron all night dancing or drinking with their self-recognition and fanatical comradery.  Forsberg has been ridden all night by the 28-year-old defensive Russian vet Sergachev and disappointed by his star-studded team for underperforming and a slow start.  Some of them had reached their peak with other high-performance clubs and traded away while their stock was still high, only to fade away in a smaller market.  Tonight, they rallied late against the misplaced enthusiasm of Utah’s youth, grinding out a close checking, big old bone crushing comeback tie in the third period, led by a smart play and a nonchalant goal by Filip himself. 

The Utah crowd was strangely enthusiastic considering their mathematical elimination the night before, but this was the last game of the first season that turned out better than expected in every way with close games and crowded stands throughout busy sales of food, beer and merchandise.  Salt Lake is a basketball town but they love their new hockey club.  SLC has risen from the ghost town of suburban flight in the 70s, to a fun and vibrant CBD with good jobs and bars, industries and restaurants and a lot of there, there.  It is fun again to go downtown to see a show or a game, movie or a play.  Bolstered by the Olympic infrastructure and Brigham Young’s wide street grid, access was rarely a problem, and egress was always smooth and fast.  With the sleek high-rise, postmodern architecture gymnastics, the sky was the limit.   The world is now welcomed to Mighty Five National Park and the greatest snow on earth on our silicone slopes. This is the hockey place.

Overtime was exciting but fruitless, without the mad dash from the bench to the net for a quick game winner accomplished by Sid the Kid Crosby the month before, showing that he still had game when he needed it even if his emasculated team didn’t.  Regulation play was without the tragic early season drama when Ovie broke his leg from an inadvertent collision at this same center ice.  Ovie and Sid were the real veterans and stars of their generation, outscoring or outlasting the Great one, Wayne Gretzky, who during his time out scored and outlasted Howe, Orr, Bossey, LaFleur and LaMieux, combined.  This felt to Forsberg like the passing of the torch to a new generation of hockey players driven by the tic-tac-toe passes thru the blue of the goalies crease.  He felt, at times, like the lumbering slugs of the 60’s and 70’s without helmets or face guards or curved sticks. 

But I still had memories; of my dad going to the classy sounding Stanley Cup finals at Madison Square Garden. Of Bobby Orr dispatching the St Louis with his speed and finesse on snowy 12 inch black and white TV while I wrestled with my childhood friends in the upstairs bedroom.  When mom shouted what are so inexplicably violent about, we always replied innocently ‘nooothhhing’.  Of watching the dump and chase Islanders win 4 Cups, sitting alone in ignorant Utah bars, before they relinquished to the wide open speed of Gretzky’s Oilers.  Of getting front row seats with my best friend in the 70’s in Chicago Stadium to watch the Black Hawks play Guy Lafleur and the Montreal Canadiens - Les Habs….

The pace was unbelievably fast and furious, especially from our vantage point where pucks caromed off the glass and players’ faces were being smushed, right before our eyes.  Then it happened, in slow motion - the magic, the move, the moment.  Guy Lafleur took a clearing pass in full stride deep in the Black Hawk zone as he cut from his wing towards center ice. The crowd rose with the "Flower" - as the MVP scoring champ of the early seventies was called by the press.  He wheeled effortlessly across the Fire Line dealing the puck from side to side with his long, wooden stick.  Guy's long, straight dirty blonde hair billowed freely behind him as he accelerated. Two Chicago defensemen chased after him, thwacking his arms and hands with their sticks, annoying but not deterring him.

As he passed the blue line, he was flying at more than 30 miles per hour, bearing down on Tony Esposito who had come out of the net for the classic confrontation. Just as Lafleur passed in front of us he shifted sideways, dug his blades into the ice, and stopped dead.  He did not stop with a slide, nor on a dime, he stopped instantaneously, defying physics and fate.  His hair flowed in orderly slow motion, like seaweed in the ocean currents, from behind his head, past his ears and eyes, until it swept in front of his face and hung there expectantly.  The defensemen suffered the same inertia, stumbling past Guy and colliding in front of him, screening Esposito's view of the puck and of the Flower.  With a flick of his wrist, La Fleur shot the puck over the Espo’s glove side shoulder, top shelf, launching Esposito's water bottle in the air and lighting the red goal lamp.  We howled.

The home crowd exploded, and both benches erupted in appreciation at the display of pure athleticism.  The hapless Chicago defensemen were stacked and tangled in their own net along with the Tony Esposito and the puck.  We fell all over each other with high fives and bear hugs, banging the glass and kicking the boards.   La Fleur skated slowly off in front of us, with his lips pursed in a classic French-Canadian look of ennui.  I could still see La Fleur at the post-game T.V. interview, smoking a cigarette (Camel, no filter - two packs per day), saying that it was just another goal and a good win for the team.  We had never seen such style, such speed, such grace and will never forget it.

The NHL game had seen dozens of transitions over the last 100 years since it was born before the Great Gatsby of the Roaring Twenties.  Hockey is a modern game played on manmade ice, indoors, mostly by Canadian men, in shorts.  It had survived the basketball generation on bad TV’s, but fans could see that game of big men on a small court with a big ball.  The NBA network advertisers relished all the time outs and play-stoppage to sell their wares.  Now with large high-definition TVs anyone can follow the puck from the den, living room, pool, bar or the kitchen, and the camera can dolly back to show more of the rink and the action.  The nonstop action of hockey appeals to a younger generation with a shorter attention span and demand for instant visual gratification.  With minimal play stoppage of play the action is nonstop where each team has a couple of Time Outs per game, and they hardly ever take them.    It is against the culture and the Code of hockey.

The culture is about being more and appearing less, never talking about yourself in interviews, and thinking about the team, always.  Goals are given two assists, which count as much or more, and celebrations involve everyone on the ice and then the entire bench.  The stat of pride is plus/minus where you share triumph and defeat with your linemates.  Players are penalized for flopping and teams are penalized for erroneous challenges.  Hurt players hardly miss a shift as they are sewn up with pulled teeth and sometimes broken bones or collapsed lungs.  The Refs control the game but the players control the culture, The Code, where if you hit our star or goalie, cheap shot my friend, over celebrate my misfortune or take a late shot, someone will beat you up.  The Code is the same as life – Don’t be a dick. It is largely the reason for most fighting for enforcement.  Hockey is also an intense reactive sport where the softest thing to run into out there is another person.  Tempers flare, people are intimidated, trash talk proliferates, and fists fly.  But at the end they will shake hands, go out for beers, marry each other’s sisters and carry on with style.

Hockey had come to Utah, struggling thru years of minor league teams and celebrating the Canadien Team defeating the USA in the 2002 Olympics. Who was Forsberg to burst that bubble in the last home game of the year.  Would it be like Jaques Demurs calling out Marty McSorley’s illegal curved stick and pulling the goalie with six minutes left to save the Stanley Cup from Gretzky’s upstart LA team and bring it back to Montreal for the 22^nd time?  Would taking this game be like Les Habs taking the Cup from LA and putting hockey back 10 years in LA and the USA?  Naaaahhhh.   Dream on.  It’s just a game. Played to win, not for the fans or the coach, the owner or the press, but for the team, for each other.  With a slow start every season and every night, pacing themselves to the long grind but eventually succumbing every night to natural competitive spirit they all had, clouding out the crowd and the pressure to just play the game the best they can.  After 80 games and 1600 minutes of ice time, 200 brutal hits and 40 beautiful goals, 40 planes and hotel rooms and nights away from home it came down to this. 

But Forsberg had forgotten all that torch passing stuff and he was there in the moment, flashing his well-established handlebar mustache under his plexiglass visor.  He picks up the puck, skates off to the left and slowly circles in on the goalie ‘Veggie’ with a Predators stealth.  After a few fakes and a flip back from his forehand, to get the goalie to move and spread his legs, he buries the backhand over the lefty goalie’s stick side and skates to the team meeting him halfway to the bench, celebrating the win.  That is how it is done lads.  The crowd is subdued momentarily but then celebrates the season with the home team for the last time.  The gauntlet has not passed to the next generation yet but there is anticipation in the air, for the next stars, the next season, the next champion and the next incarnation of the Greatest Game.

Matthew Lindon

waterandwhatever.blogspot.com

 Award winning writer Bryan Gruley’s newest submission “Bitterfrost” tells the story of Northern Michigan and murder, hockey and high jinx in a neatly crafted mystery tale of love and friendship, retribution and revenge, validation and vindication. Matt Lindon has this month’s book review.

 

Michigan has given us some great, manly, fiction writers, like Hemingway, Jim Harrison, and now there is Bryan Gruley.  Along with Kent Haruf, from Illinois, they are all my favorites conveniently found in the same aisle of our library. 

 

Full disclosure – Gruley is an old friend of mine from Notre Dame who won a Pulitzer Prize with the Wall Street Journal after 9-11 and now writes mystery novels. His latest publication, “Bitterfrost,” is his best effort after his warmly received Starvation Lake series.  Good writing is a learning progression, just like ski jumping or marriage, and Gruley seems to have hit his stride.

 

“Bitterfrost” is a cold but bittersweet story about a fictitious town in Northern Michigan where a gruesome double murder has occurred and is blamed on local sweetheart, Jimmy Baker, who was a hockey goon in a previous life. His local hockey ‘friend’ Devyn Payne is the relentless lawyer, with her own history and baggage, who comes to his defense and rescue. 

 

Sure, there is a likable detective and amiable bartender, but they are just support characters, window dressing to these two all-stars. There are back stories and sub stories, but the plot stays true and simple without any cheap tricks or ironic twists.  The writing is terse, and sometimes tense, but flows on an easy cadence, with a powerful ‘zinger’ word or sentence on every page. The voice is familiar and friendly, as a matter of fact, with local Michigan and hockey idioms used to keep it light. There is no gratuitous violence, and no one gets naked, has sex, or falls in love unless it is absolutely necessary to the story.  Characters are attractive and agreeable, until they are not. 

 

The obligatory court scenes flow quickly, unlike the real thing, and I make a cameo appearance as the strapping 62-year-old Judge Mathias Lindon. Who done it?  Who cares? All you want is for the good writing and reading to continue.

 

“Bitterfrost” is a smart story of penance, for the bad things we all do. It is also about self-fulfillment and realization, our limits and confidence – both true and false. We discover that self-confidence is often a bluff. The first few pages and the entire second chapter neatly foreshadow the rest of the story, which wraps up only when we find out it is really a rom-com disguised as a mystery, like life. 

 

Gruley has come-into-his-own nationally as a novel writer and is no longer just a regional sensation. He is Bonafide. So run, don’t walk to your nearest library to reserve your copy of “Bitterfrost.”  It is reading time well spent, that you will not regret.   Look for the sequel “River Deep” next year. 

 

Bryan Gruley’s “Bitterfrost” is available at your local libraries and bookstores and of course Amazon, if you must.