Grand Canyon River Trip - A Winter Adventure

"Adventure is putting yourself out on the edge...finding that border line between your comfort zone and where you are a little bit uncomfortable. and then, hopefully, finding your way through."   Curt Joyce, Kayaker -- 1983-2014

On November 18, I will join a group of fourteen people for a one month 279 mile journey down the Colorado river from Lee's Ferry, Arizona/Utah to Pierce Ferry, Arizona through the heart of the Grand Canyon.

I was invited on the trip by Hazel Clark and her husband Tom Martin. Both Tom and Hazel have been a part of the canyon for decades: hiking, boating, learning about, writing about, talking about the canyon and its surrounds, organizing to help save it and its watershed. Good people, who have offered me an amazing opportunity to see and live in the canyon during its most cold and quiet season. Yet, the decision to go did not come easy.

Though I have rafted the canyon before, it was always either in the summer or fall with my family, and the trips never lasted a month. When I agreed back in spring to go on this coming trip, November seemed far away. I figured I had plenty of time to get my head around the idea of being gone for so long and during such a challenging season.  But it has taken me until this week to finally make my reservations to fly to Flagstaff where I will join the group I will live, eat, paddle, cook, camp and hike with for 30 days.

Entering the canyon takes commitment. There is no easy way out once those walls start rising, no way to call and check-in, no texting to see if Elijah's homework is done. There's no way to wish Chuck and Elijah a happy Thanksgiving, or Chanukah. No way to tell them what it is like to spend my 56th birthday at the bottom of the Great Gully.

As the days get closer to my departure, I find that my reasons for agreeing to go feel flimsy compared to my very substantial fears. How will I deal with being so disconnected from my family? How will I feel about the isolation in the dead of winter? How irresponsible of a mother am I being? How selfish? How will I ever stay warm enough? The temperature could drop below freezing, and the river water? I don't even want to think about it. Plus there is the dark. Winter nights are already long, and the canyon will cut our few hours of daylight short.

Still, I feel compelled to go. I met Tom and Hazel as a result of my writing about Kaitlin Kenney - the young woman who died while rafting the Grand Canyon during the winter of 2013. Search parties were looking for her while I lived on the South Rim as the National Park Service's Artist in Residence. Those essays about Kaitlin led to many personal revelations about what it means to be alive. Really alive. The risk it takes, the perseverance and bravery. They led to my hiking into the canyon on solo retreats, and then other challenges—always out and in the wild. Challenging myself. My mind, my body, my soul.

I will use this blog to describe how I am getting ready for this next trip—a month winter rafting the canyon. I will post about what geer I will use, what films I am watching, books and blogs I am reading, music I am listening to. What I am packing, and what I am saying to myself and my family as I get ready to walk out that door.

This morning, I found this beautiful Vimeo Film about a Grand Canyon river trip taken last year. During it, kayaker, Curt Joyce, lost their life. The film is called Why We Go. It explains some of my reasons for why I am leaving for the river in a few weeks.


Why We Go from Brett Mayer on Vimeo.

A Half-Naked Man Walks into a Bar -OR- One Writer's Struggle with Distraction

El Tovar Hotel, Grand Canyon, Arizona

The man sitting next to me is half naked. I am sitting in El Tovar’s Bar on the edge of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, working on my novel, when he comes in wearing nothing but a shirt and jacket, and then sits down right beside me. I keep writing, noticing him only like a moth might notice there are more things in a room then just a light. But after about ten minutes a thought intrudes—why is this dude half naked?

And then, like one of those annoying low-pitched hums put off by a refrigerator, a sound that never bothers you until you actually begin to think about it, this notion of a half-naked man sitting just four feet away, starts to hum. The word “shorts” cames to my mind. Of course. He is just wearing very, very short shorts on this very, very cold snowy day. 

Maybe, I think, he is one of those European types, like the man that was with us this summer on our rafting trip down the Colorado. He was Danish, and every morning at sunrise he would run into the river and go for a swim. I’m talking 45 degree water. The man sitting next to me now, he could be from Denmark, maybe even further north, someplace where they like to roll in snow and then beat themselves with switches. There are people from all around the world at the Grand Canyon. Just this morning, while hiking in a snow storm I met people from China,  Romania, Baluchistan, and Nepal. Siberia even. The man sitting next to me could be a Siberian wearing very short shorts. 

I keep writing. 

I am a moth, I think. I will not be distracted. Naked men can walk all around me. They can dance, they can shake their junk, and what will I care? I won’t. Not one little bit. I have work to do. 

An opportunity like this—to sit on the edge of the Grand Canyon in the El Tovar Hotel’s Bar on a snowy night. An opportunity to do what I love - to write, and write and write and not have to make anyone’s dinner, or wash anyone’s clothes or make anyones bed (but my own, but my own, but my own) comes—what? Never? 

Maybe if you are single. 

Maybe if you are not a mom.

But I am married and I have a child. 

So, go head, sit there naked man. See if I care. 

I set down my pen. Look up at the TV. Snow storm in the Northeast. Big drifts. Big plows. Big news. I rub my neck and then, slowly, discretely—look to my right. 

Orange, skin-tight pants. 

That’s all. 

Just orange skin-tight pants on a middle aged man with a beard. 

Back to work.

-Naseem Rakha 2/9/13

Getting into a Groove

Daily schedule—Wake around 5 am. Make coffee. Stretch. Draw for 10 minutes. Check email. Get dressed, get outside for a walk. Sunrise at around 7 am. Be out there for it. Fill water bottle with spring water. Come back take shower. Work until 11. Have breakfast. Work until three. Stretch or dance or get outside and watch ravens—anything. Then, back to work. Keep at it until 5:30. Go for a walk. Come back. Eat. Go to El Tovar. Have a glass of wine. Work until 9. Come back. Check email. Perhaps blog. Get to bed by midnight. This has to change - this last part. Tonight I am aiming for 11 PM.

Also, tomorrow I want to go for a hike so I won't be back in my room until maybe 10am or even 11. So there will be that to add to the schedule.

And tonight? While walking home from the bar? There were more stars than sky.....

-Naseem Rakha 2/6/13

Artist in Residence Opportunities

I was lucky. Nine months ago, I saw a film at the Grand Canyon Visitor Center that mentioned its Artist in Residence Program. They highlighted a painter who was living and working at the Canyon for a month, and I thought - lucky painter. I did not think—hold on a minute, I'm an artist. That noble idea came from my husband the following morning.

"I wonder if they take writers in that program."

They did.

The deadline was four days away, but I knew I was suppose to apply. So I did, and now, I am getting ready to go back to the Grand Canyon. This time alone. This time to do what I love to do more than any other thing I love to do. I don't leave for another two weeks, but in my mind, I am preparing my exit. And you could be too.

Here is a link to other Artist in Residence Programs hosted by the National Park Service. Want to spend two weeks writing at Crater Lake? How about Zion? Or Mesa Verdi? Or, you could head North to Denali, or to middle America in Nebraska's Homestead National Monument. There are so many opportunities for you and your art. Musicians, potters, weavers, painters, poets, sculptors. The most beautiful places in the United States patently wait.

By the way, if you apply - and are accepted - let me know.

-Naseem Rakha 1/15/13

National Park Service Artist In Residence Programs