Down the River with Mike and the Ghost of Ed Abbey
"I don’t know where we are...somewhere in the middle of the desert."We stop on the way to Moab at Green River, at the State Park, to have a look at the river. It’s smaller than I had feared, even though it is running high with snowmelt. Dirty brown and looking shallow, there is only the San Rafael to be added between the State Park and where we put in. To Mike, my canoe partner, it is larger than imagined. We fret about the amount of gear and continue the Water Negotiations. --Dude on a cell phone at the Doll House The next morning we assemble with the other groups that will put in that day, and find that we probably have about half the gear and weight of the others. We have no Coleman stove, no lantern, no beer, and no meat. Our only luxuries are four cookies, a pint of whiskey, and a small wooden table I made for the trip. We are the Utilitarian 2, going backpacking light, and carrying a cooler only to contain the food. Calvinistic cuisine. Nothing needs refrigeration. The fresh fruit and vegetables we bring are sturdy. The non-perishables would last centuries if left undisturbed in one of the riverside Anasazi ruins. Think nuts and twigs. We start with 9 gallons of water. The opaque water under the canoe is flowing at 18,000 cfs. Consider it undrinkable. We were able to find enough springs along the way to not drink a drop of river water.
The ghost of Ed Abbey is there dimly outside of the group, his gear tossed in a pile at his feet. One cooler is overbrimmed with bacon and beef, the other cheap American beer. His gear is Old Iron: Canvas, Army surplus, worn leather. He wants to be on the river and in the sun, and he most definitely does not want to shit in a can for a week. He quickly wanders off during the toilet lecture. I wish I could join him.
It is a long drive to Mineral Bottom from Moab, and the tourists are as thick as flies. But we are privileged tourists, and pity the mountain bikers as we dust them good with our Blue Bird school bus pulling a trailer stacked with canoes. I think of how the dust must stick to their sweaty torsos, permeate their lycra. Riding a straight flat dusty road for miles and miles while deep-cut tangled canyons coil on either side invitingly. The adrenaline addiction runs strong. The Juniper giggles and elbows the Pinion. They know.
We are the first on the water. First after Ed that is, who tossed his gear into his inflatable, and lashed his beer cooler on an inner-tube pulled behind as a cargo barge, and was off.
The river is alive. Drowned rocks and bars and trees are evidenced by eddies and churns. Water the color and consistency of chocolate milk swirls and finds it’s way strongly seaward. At random places and times, the river will boil and trash in an upheaval, hinting at something chaotic and supremely hydraulic below. The upheavals seem to follow the canoe, and roil impatiently like a canyon Leviathan. We call her Nessie, and she is with us until the confluence. She does not venture below, as we will.
The canyon has many moods. Near the put-in, the canyon is wide and sweeping. Young red Kayenta sandstone stacked on Moenkoepi yellow and grey. Deeper in the trip the walls bear inward with incoherent and ancient layers of Pennsylvanian mudstone. Laid when ferns ruled and goggle-eyed fish-things slopped among the cockles. Fossiliferous, our geology book describes them, as if the rock came first and grew the fossils like pearls after.
In the morning, the burnished water wafts us along under a warm sun. Bird calls echo above the hum of bees in the blooming tamarisk. The stringy blooms hang creamy purple in some trees and bride white in others, luxuriant but more subtle than lavender. Beavers give watery chuffs of warning from the shadows as we pass, and occasionally slap and dive unseen. Their sign is everywhere: clipped willow bungi sticks, three-toed tracks on the sand, turds and brown smears on the banks.
The sun moves higher and the midday heat turns the calm morning over to see what nasties live underneath. The wind strengthens and blows upcanyon, funneled and focussed by the walls. The heavy canoe is heeled sideward, wind pushing above and current pulling below, trying to swamp the heavy canoe. Waves form on the wide river, then whitecaps. The wind blows bitter from rushing over the snowmelt water. Every afternoon. Better to be off the river, but side canyons beckon below, so we strain and swear to paddle at a pace which an hour before was effortless.
The float is an unlayering. Weaker layers dissolve to insignificance, resilient levels reinforce and cap the walls and mesas. White Rim Sandstone is our gripping ledge, our standard, recognizable for most of the trip. Mike hankers for a cliff jump, and it is off the just fully exposed White Rim that he leaps. It later roofs Anasazi ruins, and then forms waterfalls at mid-wall. In the side canyons it crusts the drainages, separating and isolating, keeping the Unknown in and the Other out.
A typical day finds us staggering into camp ravenous and stone-worn. Abbey’s ghost is already there, his daily float and explorations unknown to us. Mike is a Vegan, which means not only no meat consumption, but no animal products in his life at all. No milk, no honey, and no leather in his boots. To simplify meals, he planned and brought all the food. I somehow couldn’t contemplate a week without animal products so I sneaked in some cheese (rotten bovine suckle). Ed just laughs as he sits across camp with his smoky driftwood fire and his greasy skillet. "Pussy food," he mutters, his guts twisting with excess bile even in afterlife, still trying to digest the beasts of his mortal existence.
I am caught between. Mike is at the edge of a new world, applying his principles to his own life, and trying hard to not support that with which he disagrees. His life is pure compared to most Americans. He consumes as little as possible, uses mass transit constantly (not easy in the SF Bay Area), and considers the impact of every dollar and meal that passes through his life. He is bothered by the compromises he must make to live in modern society. He minimizes his impact on this world in reaction to the impacts of the other 6 billion (and counting) of us. He bends and prostrates himself before the wildflowers to find their beauty and know their essence. Hypocrisy is one of his greatest fears. He speaks of harmony and reason, and changes the world by changing his own life, priestlike.
Abbey was more of an external warrior. Unable or unwilling to change his ways, he struggled to force change in the world around him. His causes were correct, but his methods were abrasive. He used the ways of the old world to make a new one. Contradiction was a way of life to be celebrated. Of course I am speaking more of his characters and image than of the man himself, whom I did not know. He found purity in the act of blowing up the corrupt and tyrannical. His solution to smoldering oppression was more gasoline.
As a devil’s advocate I try without success to show the futility of Mike’s efforts in the face of American consumerism, 5000 years of animal domestication (more of hunting), and even evolution. He is resolute, his logic watertight. He is a meatless missionary. He must live his life the way he does, there is no other rational conclusion. Change will come. If he can change, so can the world. I cannot disagree, all else is weakness.
Abbey whispers in the other ear. Relax, drink a beer, eat a cow. We’re all weak, so why fight it? Cows don’t damage the world, people do in the way they use them. If we could break down the bastions of corporations and government, and return to the land, much will be solved. Smash the concrete and televisions, and reason will come. Meanwhile, as long as there are so many of the buggers stomping around, we may as well enjoy them. Big steps, dear Ed, big steps.
On the train of life, Abbey is up in the dining car partying and conspiring the next hot iron in the eye of the establishment. Resist much, obey little. Mike is the trainjumper huddled in the rain, leaning against cold steel, refusing to be a part of any of it. The partiers rally around Abbey, but in the back of their mind know Mike is there, resisting, obeying his own heart. Mike sets a great example, but I want to take ACTION. Maybe there is need for both. Maybe I can contemplate changes in my own life, but still kick over those cairns. These are my thoughts in the sleeping bag as the full moon glares down on my own contradictions.
Mike’s plant power must be something magical. He hops up canyons like they were steps to a kindergarten. His vegan boots stick like tar to the crumbling sandstone. It is humbling to explore with him. I am used to being the fastest hiker, the most confident climber, the most stringent resister of comfort and hunger. I am on all fours crabwalking and whining down slopes that he just strides and hops. My confidence is put into place as he tries to perform 7-foot pull-up lift a leg over sandy mushstone ledges 50 feet above the wash bottom. He could do it, too, if I would just come up and give him a little boost. I cannot even bring myself to get to his jumping-off points. Humbling.
Besides Nessie and Ed, our constant companion is TEX, our friendly aluminum shitbox. I was hoping to brush up against TEX my usual once-a-day, but the onslaught of fiber changed all that. I don’t remember if I had more meals or more talks with TEX on the trip. He was light and fun in the beginning, almost a novelty, but as the cooler got lighter, Ol’ TEX sure got heavier. Must be Nessie and Ed visited him once in a while too.
Abbey was on the Green at least twice before—he mentioned the trips in his writings. He wrote about an unknown arch up a secret canyon in The Maze. If a man spent enough time searching, Abbey said, he might find its burning heart, but not likely. Not likely in one lifetime. We searched for both, found neither. It became obvious that he was confused in hindsight, or evasive about which canyons were where and what was in each. After visiting them, I would assume confusion; it’s The Maze after all. But then I reconsider what I know of Ed, and evasion seems more likely.
We did find secrets in side canyons in the Maze, but not Abbey’s arch. I will be shy about what and where, at least in this text. We thrashed through yards of tamarisk thickets and nettle fields, emerging scratched and coated with pollen, to find only blank walls and empty alcoves. We were thwarted daily by overhanging waterfalls, often after a long hike or a dangerous set of climbing moves. We named or renamed some of the canyons we explored and camps we made: Next Bend, Twin Falls, Foxhole, 7 Foot, Kitty, Moon Crack, Desert Rat. We found ruins overrun by heavy-footed tourists, and picked clean or overturned by pot hunters and souvenir sherd grabbers. Canoeing a river is not enough of a filter to keep the unethical away. Anything close to the river is definitely high use. Nothing is easy in the Maze, except just floating on by. They estimate that without the use of TEX and his kin, there would be more than 30,000 shit piles a year accumulating in the narrow corridor.
As we approached the confluence, the river became more intimate, and the slope of the water obvious, its flow strengthening. At the confluence, I expected the end of the earth, a waterfall into oblivion, maelstroms and tempests swirling in a huge mist. We found two flat rivers quietly merging, as if it was always their destiny to become one. Nessie would leave us there, the rapids below must hurt her ears. The whitewater between the confluence and Spanish Bottom is mild but suprising after 50 miles of flatwater. The combined flow was running at 40,000 cfs. Gets yer attention.
From Spanish Bottom we hiked up to the Doll House and beyond, where we ran across the quoted dude and his technology, transported via 4WD and the Flint Trail. The area seems too easy to access now, popularized in guidebooks and magazines, approachable on bladed roads which used to be axle-busters. Everything chopped up into long weekend, fly in from the overstressed job, gawk and move on to the next postcard scene bites. I mourn for the shrinking American Wilderness.
Our last morning on the river I see Abbey loading heavy and rusted ammo boxes into his inflatables. He will run the rapids of Cataract Canyon into the stillwater of Lake Powell without us. What is he carrying in the containers? When he thinks I’m not looking, he pops one open and adds more to its contents. I see. The box is full of Jasper stones. The ruby rocks are scattered over the floors of all the canyons in the Maze. Other stones are water polished and round. The Jasper is sharp and hard edged, recently broken. Flesh colored. I understand now. He has been collecting them, secreting them away. They are the pieces of the burning heart of the Maze, shattered and scattered about. He has found the heart and it is broken. Is he taking the pieces to rebuild it or to hide them? We will not know on this trip. We watch him disappear into the foam of Brown Betty, the first of many rapids downriver.
The jet boat arrives early. We are not prepared. They whisk TEX away like a stolen baby, and need no help loading the canoe. We are passive again, tourists again, just plain passengers. Someone offers me a cold beer and I gladly accept. Gas is burnt and everyone laughs at the speed. Mike frowns. Abbey smiles.