Friday, June 26

It rained again overnight. I was asleep when Jean got up to put the rain tarp up–all by herself and in the dark! It was a good thing, because it rained quite a lot. I woke up at one point and heard it. I was grateful to see the tarp up. Thank you, Jean!

This campsite is large sandbar, and probably half the group decided to pitch tents on the beach; the rest of us went a bit up the hill. This morning, I’m writing this sitting on the beach, listening to the last rapids we came through to get here. It’s a fabulous soundtrack.

Gloria just finished her gift, a yoga session on the beach. The guides are getting breakfast ready.

Jean and I already struck the tent and are mostly packed, so it should be a leisurely time after breakfast, which has just been called. The guides are cute. They holler in unison to let us know what’s up (“Hooottt coooffffeeeee!” “Breakfast!”)

Our journey today took us from beautiful, tall canyon walls, trees, and abundant greenery, to wider canyon spaces, not as tall. There were some exciting rapids, too, enough to keep us on our toes.

Lunch was on a nice sandbar and then we were off again.

It’s always fun to watch the folks in the duckys. I think for the first four days, at least, all three duckys were in use all day long. The guides maintain an awareness of where they all are and how they’re doing, and Miche, who’s raft I’m in today, keeps an awareness of where each of them is.

At one point, we had a long-term visitor–a moth or butterfly. It landed on Michelle’s foot (the white dot in the picture) and just stayed there. Eventually Michelle asked what we should name her. I thought “Fluffy.” She was thinking “Felicity,” so she became “Felicity Fluffington.” 🙂

During a stretch of still water, some of our group tried doing the rowing. In our raft, with Miche as our guide today, that was Michelle and Heather. They both did great. Heather actually did quite a bit. We were all impressed. Here’s Michelle, lookin’ like a pro:

It was, too, a really windy day. The guides had to work really hard. At times it seemed like we were traveling backwards!

In the afternoon, because we were beyond the reservation, we’re free to camp anywhere. For our last night in camp, we’re on the left side of the river.

It was truly very windy, so when we stopped, we spent some time in the river, hoping the wind would die down a bit before trying to put up our tents. Our strategy wasn’t very successful, but it was nice to have some cooling off time in the river since we hadn’t been able to do a swim break all day.

We’re pros at setting up camp now, so that part went pretty quickly, despite the wind and blowing sand.

This beach has really fine sand, and with all the wind, it feels like I have a second skin of sand. It gets everywhere, settling on bodies, books, sleeping bags, and tent floors. Just gotta’ live with it. On this last night, I planned to skip my regular bath routine; after all, we’ll be showering with clean water tomorrow night! But I couldn’t ignore that my hair was icky and feeling matted, so I decided to at least wash my hair. That felt good.

After dinner we had our sharing circle–our last evening get-together on our last night of the trip. It was pretty special. Jen asked the guides to join us (some have periodically, but maybe not all at the same time as they’ve been attending to other business). Jen did a special appreciation for each one, acknowledging their individuality and reiterating how awesome they are individually and collectively.

Our group sharing was Gwen’s gift. Earlier this trip she had had us select a name out of a hat. Our assignment was to be aware of that person during the trip; maybe make notes of what we observed.

Tonight we were to write an appreciation about that person that we’d read aloud to them. We were all both givers and receivers. This was pretty moving for everyone as we discovered who’d been aware of us over these past few days and heard what they’d observed. And as we each shared our observations of others, we could see what an impact that had on them. One of the most impactful sharings of the trip, for me anyway.

The last thing we did tonight was to create a group sculpture in the middle of the camp. Everyone was to find a natural object or objects in the surrounding area as we felt led to. The sculpture turned out to be a pretty big mosaic of rocks, sticks, dried plants, and such. We walked and danced around it to see if from all angles. Pretty fun.

Then, as the light disappeared, off to bed!

My last adventure this night was finding the bano, which I hadn’t visited in this campsite yet. In the darkness, I wandered off in that general direction but couldn’t find it. Someone saw my headlamp and called me to the right place. Sisterhood! Grateful. 🙂

It was still really hot and some smoke had started to move in. Finally the wind had died down, but that meant it was really hot in the tent. I remembered the portable fan I’d brought but hadn’t used yet. I dug it out and turned it on. It actually did a pretty decent job of moving the air around. Still slept on top of the sandy sleeping bag until it cooled enough to get inside. And at least inside the bag, sand wasn’t settling on and under me. Off to snooze-land.