Chuck tells us to sleep in. Today is going to be a slow day on the river. As usual, I wake up a bit before dawn. I do some yoga stretches to work the aches out of my these tired bones. And it is the bones that are sore, not the muscles. I lavish some care on my feet, which I'm glad are in good shape and haven't blistered. It's important to us a wet-wipe to clean the ever-present sand off the feet before rubbing lotion on them. Otherwise the exfoliating action is as subtle as sandpaper. After eleven days, my skin has been rubbed bare and my toenails are splitting to the quick. By daybreak only Steve is up. He walks down to the river and then comes back and takes a photo of the sleeping camp and then goes back to bed.
I walk down to a flat rock in the wash that divides Camp Stony Beach from the Grassy Knoll. The wind is coming down canyon and cool. I take photos of the sunrise and of the water moving. AJM comes down a minute to use the river facilities and then goes back to bed. There's the horn, calling us to coffee. Didn't I tell you. We are called to our meals by someone blowing a conch shell.
We stop at National Canyon for a hike and lunch. There's a wide sandy beach here and some other party camped here the night before and left some sand sculptures. I carve a squiggly river zig-zag (in homage to Andy Goldsworthy) and SAM takes a big stick and draws squiggles all over the beach.
I mention to Chuck how I notice that everywhere we go there are signs of people, piling stones, leaving them lodged in a crevice, or drawing in the sand. He says that people need to leave their mark, to feel a sense of immortality. But I don't agree. Like Andy Goldsworthy's work, all these things are temporal, they decay in time. I think what drives people is the desire to participate in the beauty around us, to organize it, because finding and displaying patterns is a primal human trait.
We hike take a short hike up to the first rock fall dam. There is a nice little patio here and after the A-Team investigates the pool above, we sit under the shade of overhang and listen to Allen read us two stories from There's This River. Then we all have a nice nap in the shade before returning to the hot and shadeless beach for lunch.
We put in just above the Vulcan's Anvil, short of Mile 178 Left. We are less than 2 miles to Lava Falls Rapid, which has been on our minds since yesterday. The camp is very spacious and everyone spreads out. The way Pat and Hawk spread out their belongings today, hanging their wet clothes on the tamarisk, makes it look like a hobo camp. We get a large secluded site, among the trees, away from the main camp but just up the hill from the dories.
AJM and I wash our hair in the river. There isn't much sand or rock on this beach and we keep sinking into the mud. AJM pours water over my head just like Robert Redford did to Meryl Streep in Out of Africa. And the camp gets a fresh can for our toilet. All's right with the world.
