Warming to the chilly San Juan River

This might be the only river trip that we come back from the river with more ice than we left with.

I thought that on Saturday morning, after I awoke to a curtain of steam over the river, a furry coat of rime frost on all metallic objects, and a crust of ice in the water jugs.

But, at least it wasn't raining any longer. Or lightninging. Yet, anyway ...

Monsoons & canyons ...

Two great sights that look great together.

This is your brain on silt ...

We all who crave the river understand: Things are different out there on the water. Especially after several days on the river.

"Things," of course, don't actually change -- but our perceptions of things change after a few days of floating. Our views of the world, both the real physical world, and the "world" we construct in our minds with our daily living. That's one of the reasons we go on the river -- especially for long river trips: to not only get out there in the real "real" world, but also to change the way we see the cultural/social/economic worlds we live in most of the time.

Because those changes in our psyches wrought by the rio are, we know from experience, real and valuable and better than the way we perceive things after having been submerged in our daily at-home worlds. That's why "re-entry" after a long river trip is sometimes such a hard and jarring affair.

So, what is that change that being "out there" induces in our ways of perceiving the world around us? Is it just an environmental thing, a shifting of ideas? Or is it an actual, physical, mental re-wiring of our brain brought on by silt, sun, and time on the water?

That was the question addressed by a group of neuro-scientists recently when the took a five-day trip down the San Juan River earlier this summer (Mexican Hat to Clay Hills). While no answers were uncovered on the trip, the five researchers used the river trip as an environment more condusive to brainstorming -- because of that calmness and clarity of mind found on the river -- future research looking at how the brain reacts to wilderness experiences.

And the trip's effects on the otherwise un-wilderness-y scientists themselves also became fodder for future study. "If I looked around like this at work," one relaxed researcher observed," people would think I was goofing off."

This trip and its questions are chronicled in an Aug. 15 New York Times article "Outdoors and Out of Reach, Studying the Brain," by Matt Richtel. It's a worthwhile read for those of us who get what the river does, but, well, haven't thought too much about how the river does it.

As a side note, scientists or not, seems ike men, at least, are the same on the river: Talking about the middle of the trip, Richtel observes, "The men drink Tecate beer and talk about the brain."

Now that' a man's brain on the river, eh?

Below is a brief video included with the article. In the video, one of the group wraps his canoe in Government Rapid. When we went down the same stretch in mid-June, a few weeks after the trip described in the article, that green canoe still sat submerged and fully wrapped at the top of the rapid.



Read the article here.

Check out some of our own "brain research" from a June San Juan trip below. There was, shall we say, a lot of drinking Tecate and talking about the brain ...

Reservoir dogs: of Navajo and Nighthorse

Someone called it "the New Mexican mating ritual."

There were nine of us sitting on a cliff overlooking an arm of Navajo Reservoir. We jumped fromthe cliffs and swam and just sat gazing out over the flooded canyon filled with blue water, the rounded and crumbling tan sandstone cliffs dotted with pinion and juniper, watching the clouds float above and the boats play below.

It was the last day of the summer for our gaggle of teens, and so, as has been our ritual the last few years, we packed up and headed south for the cool and clear impounded waters of New Mexico's northernmost so-called "lake."

That's when a jet ski driven by a big guy, with a girl with a pennant of brunette hair flying behind and her arms wrapped around the driver's ample waist, buzzing loudly up and down the channel in front of our band of rocks, decelerated and turned into our little cove.

He stopped his machine somewhere on a rock shelf somewhere below us, out of sight. Then he shot loudly out back into sight -- minus his girlfriend -- and proceeded to put on a screaming, splashy display of sharp turns and jumps and spins on his manly machine right in front of us. For the amusement of his girlfriend? To impress her? Or, as someone sharply pointed out, perhaps as some sort of homo motorus mating dance?

Whatever it was, it was damned silly. And loud. And somewhat annoying, even if amusing.

But that is the nature of Navajo Reservoir. It is 35 miles of the San Juan River (plus arms up the Pine and Piedra rivers) flooded and given over to water-borne motorsports in the arid Four Corners highlands.

Yes, despite my personal aversion to big-ass water projects, even we can appreciate coming down here for the cool respite of the lake its cliff jumping and scenery. And I can even enjoy the motorhead wildlife watching, as big, expensive boats circle the busy lake aimlessly over and over and over ...

That's fine. But here's a proposal: How about making Lake Nighthorse -- the reservoir filling Ridges Basin for the Animas-La Plata project -- a lake for non-motorized recreation?

Already in the Four Corners, the major reservoirs backed up behind the region's big dams -- Navajo, McPhee, Glen Canyon, and Vallecito, in particular -- have been given over to the water-machine culture.

So, how about water recreation for those who seek quiet, and peace, and human-powered enjoyment of lakes?

Ridges Basin is perfect: It is surrounded by what's left of the Bodo Wildlife Area, sacrificed for the Animas-La Plata Project -- and originally deeded by the Bodo family to remain forever wild for wildlife) -- and so, despite the travesty of the condemning and destroying of the heart of the wildlife area, would still honor the place and the intent of its creation.

And, I believe, as the only lake set aside for peace and quiet and paddling and rowing, it would become a big tourist draw for the Durango area. The motorheads have plenty of other places to go -- all those once wild canyons now submerged.

Let's have a place for that, even after flooding, still honors that peace. And those of us who seek quiet.

After all, we need places for our mating rituals, too.

Floating the San Juan in August ...

... is like taking a slow boat to Utah. Or, uh, in Utah. Through Utah?

Well, whatever it is, is certainly is slow. Especially this year, when our annual dose of welcome monsoonal weather has failed to materialize over the Four Corners.

Last weekend, I got to do five days on the lower San Juan -- Mexican Hat to Clay Hills -- with some folks I've never been down with before. Some I've known, some I met there. Some who've been down the San Juan before, some for whom it was their first visit.

Some Augusts at this time of year, the river can be in the thousands of cfs. And there can be floods and fluctuations in that flow. A few years ago, we were on the San Juan at the end of summer, when over night the flow bulged. We went to bed with the river a stately 1,000 cfs, and awoke to a bullying 10,000 cfs in the morning. It stole our groover and a bunch of gear, too, but this was a thief in the night, and there was nothing we could do about it. We were fortunate we'd tied our boats high and securely.

Not so last week, though. Last week we found the river slow and gaunt -- a mere 500ish, with its skin hanging off as wide beaches and long sandbars, and its bones showing through in rocky rapids and bouldery midstream obstacles.

Case in point: I humbly admit I suffered my first-time-ever wrap in Government Rapid -- usually an all-bark/no-bite class II bit of splashy water. This year it was a sieve of boulders, a sandstone net that snagged my cataraft like a rabbit in a snare.

I bowed humbly to the river as we tugged and low-sided and tried to pry and finally got roped off the rock. The river this year seems determined to remind me to always be respectful ...

Aside from that, though, our float time consisted of mainly long, lazy days on the water. On the second day we floated for 17 miles -- which took us a good 10 hours. And what did we do in those 10 hours -- and all the other hours we spent on the slow boat ... across? ... Utah over five days?

Talked. Sat silent. Looked. Smelled. Felt. Thought. Didn't thought. Rowed. Didn't row. Did nothing. Drank warm cheap beer. Which was everything we set out to do.

But isn't that the San Juan River? As staggering a landscape as the canyon of the San Juan is -- with its crumbling-layer-cake limestone ledges and cliffs, its herds of Bighorn sheep, its sprawling sandy campsites, it's fantasmagorical sidecanyon hikes, and its opportunity for day upon day upon night upon another day of such beauty -- it isn't all that popular. We saw two other parties on the river, and it turned out I knew one of them.

The reason, I believe, is that the San Juan doesn't offer big whitewater, which deters most folks, given its remoteness and long shuttle (the 56-mile lower, Mexican Hat to Clay Hills, section, anyway). It's slow. And so, for mst, especially younger, more adreline-addicted younger river runners, there's nothing there.

They're wrong. Everything is there.

Everything for us, anyway. For our kind. Because with its slow, sweltering loveliness, the San Juan is a river for poets and drunks (two traits that, in my experience, are often correlated). Not loud, hammering, sloppy, sotty drunks -- but philosophical, pagan, playful, active, convivial drinkers. Like us.

And families. And both other parties we saw, including ours, were parents with kids. Fellow San Juanistas.

Slow floating down the San Juan suits me. It suits me and all those fellow San Juanistas. Enough said. And it suited this band of companions brought together for this particular trip this particular time down this, the Four Corners' family river.

Gathered on our slow boats to through over across in around and within our kind of place.

Check out more pics from the San Juan here:

Four days on the San Juan

It was about damn time. To get on the river, I mean.

Late, even: Last year we were on the Dolores in April and May, and the San Juan by late May. But this year, very little Dolores River, and no San Juan permit forthcoming on first application from the Bureau of Land Management (overseer of the San Juan in southeastern Utah).

But our friend Matt managed to snag a cancellation on the San Juan for the first week of June, and by then we were all damn near rabid to get on the river. Sure, it wasn't our usual week-ish run down the length of the lower San Juan, and instead was just a little 24-mile Bluff-to-Mexican Hat jaunt. But, hey, we'll take it. So we took it.



So we dragged our allotted river miles out over four days, and had a lot of beach time and hiking, checking out places we hadn't been for a while or ever: Riverhouse Ruin, Chinle Wash, wanderings around Eight Foot Rapid. A good pace: dead slow. And good company: lively and engaging.

And a good trip. And, as I said, as needed as an annual chimney sweep -- scrubbing away the mental ash and spiritual clogging from the working winter season.

Notes:

-- This was JUNE? Cloudy and a gritty wind and chilly much of the time, and sunny and breezy and chilly the rest of the time.

-- Kids took their own boat. Start of things to come ... ?

See some pics below.

Pythons along the ol' San Juan?... on the "science of appearances"

[ U.S. Geological Survey, Department of the Interior / National Park Service photo by Lori Oberhofer]

Last year, the U. S. Geological Survey released a study projecting that the climate of the Four Corners region could become habitable for pythons, just one long lifetime from now.


[Projected climate in the continental United States in the year 2100, based on global warming models, that matches climate in the pythons' native range in Asia. USGS image.]

Midway through this winter of seriously weird weather, while waiting for fresh pow to blanket the back country of my home range, I took a walk on the mesa the other day. Snow was melting off the fields, and in some south-facing furrows, I got a glimpse of the future. Not pythons, gators, or tigers; but, oh my, green-up was in full (so to speak) 'bloom.'

Got your attention?...a call for citizen-scientists

"Phenology is the study of periodic plant and animal life cycle events and how these are influenced by seasonal and interannual variations in climate. Examples include the timing of leafing and flowering, agricultural crop stages, insect emergence, and animal migration. All of these events are sensitive measures of climatic variation and change, are relatively simple to record and understand, and are vital to both the scientific and public interest." [USA National Phenology Network(USANPN)]

Long the province of of a disorganized rabble of farmers, hunters, gatherers, and peripatetic seekers of random knowledge (see Thoreau's "Faith in a Seed"), citizen-phenologists now have a budding national network to collate and analyze their observations. Since 2007, the USANPN has collected botanical data in two programs, Project Budburst and NPN Core Protocols, to document budding and blooming times. Both are looking for citizen observers, so all interested plant-gazers should check them out.

In December 2008, USGS announced the launch of a new Wildlife Phenology Program, a partnership between USANPN and The Wildlife Society. Data collection will begin in 2010, giving plenty of time to document the projected invasion of our beloved local waters by the dreaded duo depicted above. (OK, those two were doing the dance of death in Everglades National Park. Be careful in the Big Bend country though. See below.)


[Current areas of the continental United States with climate matching that of the pythons' native range in Asia. USGS image.]

ABCC's (Ash, Backyards, 'Clean' Coal), the river, me 'n' you ...

Video of area affected by a Tennessee Valley Authority pond breach.
(by Chloe White/knoxnews.com)

Ash is an inevitable waste product of coal combustion. If not dispersed onto the landscape through the smokestacks, then it must be kept, somewhere. According to figures obtained by the Associated Press, 461,700 tons of coal ash is currently stored in New Mexico.


Much of this is near the Four Corners Power Plant...

...and the San Juan Generating Station.
The San Juan River flows between them.

Some area residents have waged a multi-year battle to monitor and control any leaching of toxins into their groundwater. Just over a year ago, High Country News had a primer on coal combustion waste (CCW) in the Four Corners area, written by Jonathon Thompson. Check it out, while contemplating a kayak float on Morgan Lake, with Four Corners Power Plant as landscape.

One last touch of the river

Today the air thickened and the sky paled with the welcomed sensual early symptoms of an approaching winter storm. And I feel all the better for winter's imminent arrival because I got in a last blast of river season over the weekend.

It was a cool blast, for sure. When the sun was out -- or was shining on the same side of the canyon I was paddling -- it felt like we were really in the desert outback of Utah's San Juan River. But when the sun's low near-solstice slant was sliced by the canyon rim or, more so, when it made its early-evening descent behind the sandstone landscape, the cold grabbed hold and was held at bay only by the thickest polyester shields and the primeval radiant warmth and security of a driftwood fire.

Colors, too, were subdued, robbed of the life of summer -- but offering up a purer, deeper sense of raw bone against the bottomless blue of the November sky. And at night? The stars were ridiculous.

We were too, probably, seven guys away rom work and family and the general demands of the daily business's busyness. But we sucked up every glorious minute of it -- three days of paddling and guitar playing and bocci throwing and beer drinking and talking and sleeping out for two glorious and treasured bonus nights alongside the river.

Remembering yet again why we live here. And love it here. And fight for here.

And now we turn our eyes toward that slow-building proto-river we call the Snowpack ...

Click on the slideshow below for mo' and biggah pics.