I grew up on the premises of a river company. As a small child all that meant was that one of my hundred ‘uncles’ was always around the food room to be forced into a game of barbies. The river was a non-entity to me, however riding in the shuttle to pick up dad from the Stanislaus takeout was one of my favorite treats. That air of satisfaction at the end of the trip, tinged with the smell of sunshine, was intoxicating.
As I got older I realized that my dad wasn’t always around like other dads. His home was (and still is) on a rubber raft in a world where there were no little girls. It was like he had a secret life that I knew nothing about so I became obsessed. I pumped guides for stories. I read books and memorized Bill Belknap’s mile by mile guide to the Grand Canyon.
Finally, when I was eleven, I got to visit dads house!
My pulse was pounding in my ears and my feet were barely touching down the first time I climbed aboard Crystal. I remember running my fingertips along the black strip on the outside of the boat, and whispering to her as though she was a horse when no one was around. Her yellow rubber had been dulled by time and she was slimmer than the other rafts as one of the last of the bucket boats in the fleet. But oh, the way she danced over the waves! It was love at first sight. I ended up spending every summer for twelve years on the river.
The sights, the smells, the essence of the Canyon are as much a part of my soul as the house where my mother raised me the other fifty weeks of the year.
Experience is what builds interest and inspires passion. I grew up a stone’s throw from Yosemite, but I didn’t fall in love with nature until my dad engaged me in the outdoors.
Now I have two kids, and the first decision I made as a parent was to take a job where I could expose my children to my passion. I work for a rafting company whose purpose is to show people how to connect to nature, and to help protect the places that we cannot live without.
They hang out in the food room and play with the guides, and they have waved goodbye to mommy at put-in as they go for a ride on the shuttle. It has occurred to them already that grandpa and mom go away to a magical world.
A world we can’t wait to show them.