Why We’re Here

   People, usually our moms and dads, often ask us just what is it that we’re doing with our lives. It’s a damned good question; one we often ask ourselves. Some of the clues I’ve gotten toward the answer have come through those I’ve run into along the way…

   Early seventies: I was a young, gangly, relatively clueless boatman, leading 7-day motor trips through the Canyon. I confess, my interpretive skills were minimal, but I got the folks to Pearce Ferry every time. Well, all but once, but that’s another story.

   I’d been doing this for while when I ran a trip with an old Sanderson boatman called Giant. The man blew my doors off. He was a school teacher in real life and he really knew how to teach people things, how to convey things. A performer. A bit of a ham, too, but you know what? On the last night, around the campfire, when he wound up his spiel, people cried. The whole group was so moved with what had happened to them, what he had helped happen, that they cried. I mean, people always have a good time and all, but he made it into a much more accessible thing , helped them to get so much more out of it. And they cried.

   I studied. I changed my whole approach. My trips become a bit more of an experience than a tour.

   Later: The early eighties and I was rowing a trip for Wilderness World. At the damsite Jimmy Hendrick, trip leader and famous wildman of the river, took us all into the tunnel for a talk. Again, my doors were blown clean off the hinges. He told the story of Brower’s fight against the dams, and how Brower won by mobilizing the nation. He told them this in the pitch black with no flashlights. He told them that it was up to them now to keep up the fight, to keep informed, to not be in the dark, to join conservation organizations and write letters. He told them it was their duty and they believed it because he was right. We entered the tunnel with a bunch of plain folks and left with a group of conservationists.

   Again, I studied and worked on how and what I can do down there.

   So then I was up in Desolation Canyon, rowing into Rock Creek and saw my old best pal from High School standing there. Bruce Hamilton, the guy who sent me out west so long ago. I hadn’t seen him since, but I’d followed his career: he was already a very big wheel in the Sierra Club, out there saving the world. And I was still a lowly boat-schlepp, pissing my life away, having a good time floating down the river. I told him this and I apologized for it. He looked at me, puzzled, and said something like” You don’t get it, do you? You’re the ground force. You’re the one connecting with people, changing lives, motivating them, pointing the way. What you’re doing is every bit as important as what I’m doing. If not more so.”

   Now it’s 1993 and I’ve been trying to write this essay for several months, trying to figure out how to say what I want to say. And suddenly I don’t have to because this letter arrived that says it all, far more eloquently and genuinely than I ever could. Read this:

   March 22, 1993

   GCRG:

   A few months ago, I noticed in the Newsletter that you asked the guides for any interesting stories they had received from clients. I tried to write a letter explaining how my Grand Canyon Experience changed my life, but it was quite long and I got all philosophical and mooshy.

   My favorite movie director and writer, Lawrence Kasdan, said this on the radio recently: People have one of two reactions when they see the Grand Canyon; one is to feel small and insignificant, the other is to realize how short of a time we are here and that we need to start doing something with the time we have left – something valuable and worthwhile.

   To make a long story short, when I got back from my “vacation” (a trip so unlike any other, it’s difficult to classify it as just a vacation), I assessed my life situation while bulldozers pushed dust and noise and the highway closer and closer to my little pink house at the end of the cul-de-sac. I was one month away from 30, had lived in California my whole life, and worked as a secretary in the same office since I was nineteen.

   I decided to quit my job and move to Alaska.

   Since that decision, five years ago, I have changed my career, changed my friends, quit wearing high heels and make-up, I write to my congress representatives all the time stating my opinion about one thing or another, I started recycling, I became a volunteer firefighter, I sang in a rock band, I was a d.j. with my own radio show, and most recently, I organized a pro-choice organization in an area where about 1/3 of the voters are anti choice and another 1/3 just doesn’t care one way or another, about anything… well maybe one thing… conquering the wilderness.

   I can’t say that my adventure in the canyon is completely responsible for my new life, but it did awaken something in me that had been smoldering, just waiting to be ignited by the spirits of the blowtorchey corners, the shocking icy droplets, the caress of cool green ferns, the secrets of ancient red and orange and purple rocks, the illuminating turquoise waters, and the smooth brown skin of the young Indian boy who quietly joined beside me behind the waterfall to spy on the unsuspecting river rats frolicing below.

   I guess I can’t help getting philosophical and mooshy; my memories of the Grand Canyon are inspirational and sentimental.

   Thanks for everything you have done to protect the Grand Canyon. One of your river guides is indirectly responsible for my writing of the enclosed letter. [urging British Columbia to spare the Tatshenshini from development]

   You guys/gals care about things that are important! Keep up the good fight.

   Sincerely,

   Deborah Gilcrest
   Soldotna, Alaska

   Yeah. What she said. So get in the boat. We’ve got a job to do.

Brad Dimock