7/12/07 Highway 285 North of Fairplay, Colorado. Morning.

It's always good dropping into a wide Colorado valley in midsummer with boats loaded and Parliament pumping through the speakers and the feeling that a trip is just beginning and anything is possible. "Put a glide in your stride and a dip in your hip," Will sings along, drumming on the wheel. "Get on board the Mothership."

We're heading down through Fairplay then cutting across the high-altitude grasslands near Hartsel and taking forest service roads into Eleven Mile Canyon of the South Platte River. Will's come out here from our hometown in Georgia. It's been a year since we've seen each other.

Along the roads are these vast ranches that are completely abandoned. Large timberframe farmhouses now boarded up. Barns and corrals and cattle-chutes empty in the wind. Full-on communities and ways of life stopped as if in mid-sentence.

7/13 End of FR 224A. Badger Flats. West of Lake George. Morning.

A full and good night's sleep after camping at the foot of Badger Mtn. Will and I were too tired after our day of paddling to even build a fire and just cooked a mammoth pasta and meat sauce and passed the pint of Maker's Mark before falling into our tents under a dome of stars. This was the first day of paddling and camping with Will in a year. The tarp poles were still in the tool-box where we'd left them last summer which added to that feeling of seeing a close friend after not having seen them for a long time but not a day has seemed to pass.

Looking down now into the South Platte watershed with South Tarryall and Pilot Peaks dominating the view. The morning sun in our faces. A thick haze rises out from the ridges reminiscent of the Smoky Mountains in southern Appalachia.

7/14 Hecla Junction. Morning.

We paddled Brown's Canyon of the Arkansas River for the first time yesterday. This is the most heavily rafted run in Colorado and indeed for the first couple miles we were weaving in and out of oar-rigs and paddle-rafts having their typical splash wars. But soon the trips thinned out and we found ourselves alone in a canyon of smooth boulders and powerful little rapids. Because of of Colorado's topography (and stream-beds being the natural corridors through the high mountains) most rivers here have roads alongside them, including the Arkansas. Brown's Canyon (the Royal Gorge as well) is an exception.

Every river has its own language. The type of rock in the riverbed, the gradient, the amount of flow, and other factors determine how the rapids will form. And while each rapid is unique, the entire stretch of rapids taken together often seems like variations on the same theme or pattern, which, once you begin to see it, translates into the way you run that particular river. In the South Platte for example, the crux of every rapid was a series of offset boulders that the river forced you to tweeze through. The key was paddling harder than you thought you needed to and just following the flow. Here on Browns Canyon, just like I'd remembered on the Numbers section upstream, there were always these beautiful pillow boofs (launches) to look for on big rocks which, if you hit them correctly, would set you up to run cleanly through the squirrelly outflow.

Unfortunately at one spot midway through the Canyon Will missed one of these boofs and filled his open boat in the hole below. Somehow he snagged his full bow under the current and then as his stern filled he unintentionally performed a perfect mystery move which is where you and boat sink completely beneath the water under control. We laughed our asses off about it later but at the time he sucked in some water and was in the classic initial stages of a flush drowning as he bobbed downstream with a canoe full of 2,000 pounds of water and, as they say, the fear of God in his eyes.

At the takeout Will got a ride back with a private raft group and I just sat in the sun and watched other trips heading further downstream towards Salida. One of them was this old-timer in a cata-raft sitting in his tall chair and wearing a cowboy hat and drinking a beer. His dog was right beside him like a lookout and I noted all the gear including a fly-rod he had on board. I envied the way he would just pull up anywhere to set up camp.

I told Will about it when he came back a few minutes later and as always we worked ourselves into a frenzy imagining the possibilities of future trips and visions of the growing families that would be sharing this River Time. But then we realized the sun was dropping over the Collegiate Peaks and we needed to make camp.

7/15/

Up early but moving slow after a late night capped with whiskey. We were celebrating another fine day on the river and went large as it was our last night here although we never mentioned that of thought of it that way. For us it was just pure stoke and laughter. Memories too. Stories to bring other souls close to our campfire. Bros who've gone down in avalanches and drowned in rivers or just drifted away.

At sunset we explored the ridgeline thinking that we'd reach the river but quickly realizing that the terrain was too steep and it was too far for a simple evening jaunt. We stood in a gully studded with juniper and pinion pine and nopal cactus breaking up through the dry ground and took the first shots of whiskey. Storm-clouds were forming over the mountains on the other side of the canyon. We circled back and climbed to a saddle above camp. Wind was swirling through this open place and the sprigs of sage were trembling. We polished off the whiskey as the last colors faded from the sky.

"We're so here," Will said, gazing at Brown's Canyon. The clouds had blown through now and Venus, Jupiter, and the head of Scorpio were beginning to emerge. He wasn't talking about being in the moment or anything like that but referring to where we should paddle our last day. Here.

For whatever reason Will had carried a lot of trepidation into this trip over what and where we were going to paddle. He kept saying it was just not having paddled since last year and feeling physically beat but admitted now it was more just a matter of finding that stoke to be on the water. In going from one terrain to another there's always a transition time, a time to adjust to the altitude, the climate, to truly accept being there in that place. I pointed out the ironic timing. As always it seems just when you're feeling good and in the flow of a place it's time to go. The curse of short trips. We talked a little about extended travels and how it was good living when you could spend an entire season in a place like this, guiding rafts, or just camping out and paddling. How the body gets strong and you begin to mark time in different ways like the movement of constellations or the beer supply or the rising and falling levels of the river. But for now we just had this one last day. It only made sense that we'd return to Brown's canyon where we were camped and where we'd paddled but without that sense of both of us being in the flow yet.

It's difficult to pinpoint when exactly it occurred but somewhere in the Fractions (a short but continuous section above Buena Vista) Will just let go of whatever it was that was bothering him. It was our third day in a row of deliberately getting on something for the first time without other boaters with us or even info on the run. As we banged through the rapids Will reached some kind of crux with his emotions and when we eddied out between two long rapids he told me he just wasn't feeling it. That he was getting pushed around. I mentioned just taking out but there wasn't anywhere right there we could do that. As we continued on through another series of shoals I looked back and he was paddling differently as though he had no muscle left but was just finessing his way down. It was as if all this time he'd been trying and trying to get into the flow and now that he'd stopped trying he'd finally gotten there.

We finished off the run with afternoon thundershowers on and off but when we took out it was full sun and there was a wildflower meadow full of brown-eyed susans. As Will hitched back to the car I took of all my clothes and just stood off in the warmth. There was a group of female kayakers plus a couple dudes down by the banks where we'd left the boats and I wondered if they'd ever seen a man carrying his kayak up from the river naked. I decided that if not then now it was time.