My daughter Amanda married last November and is eager to start a family of her own. She has babies on her mind and asked me if I had any photos of her when she was a baby. I do. But in those days, thirty years ago, I shot only 35 mm slides. In one of my efforts to compact my stuff I had dumped thousand of slides from Kodak carousels into shoeboxes. So my task was to sort through these shoe boxes, full of slides, looking for baby Mandy.
There was an unintentional consequence. My squinting eyes found those baby pictures, and they brought tears to my eyes. I also rediscovered exquisite photographs from my past: a year in the wild bush of arctic Canada, climbs of Colorado Fourteeners, New Zealand’s Milford Track, the Australian Outback, river trips on the Thai-Malay border, water skiing in the Adirondacks, flying my Piper PA20 CF-XXO, backpacking around Mt Robson in BC, Yellowstone in mid-winter, skinny dipping in Tahiti, Christmas in Berlin, camping in Yosemite Valley and on and on. I did not regret a single slide, not even the Cheju mistake, but occasionally I felt a gust of melancholy. Not about remembering the astonishing adventures I experienced, but instead the regrets of opportunities I have let slip by.
I had worked so hard to get a visa into Burma. Can you imagine Burma in 1977? But still shaking from a nasty bout of Malaria, I let the visa lapse. Or the opportunity to paddle the South Nahanni with Sonny Neuman in 1980 before they put in boardwalks, composting toilets and the devil only knows what else (I did get down the Nahanni in 1999 with my daughter Lara. High water had scared most people off. So, although far from pristine, we still had the river to ourselves, astonishing trip!). I could have easily done epic trips from Fort Resolution to Rat River by snowmobile with Ric Green and Danny Beaulieu. Why did I not do more barrenland flying with my little floatplane? Even stuff like missing my nephew’s basketball games when he played for Wayzata or ski trips with my mom and sisters to Aspen? I had excuses- money, time, an aversion to snowmobiles, ignorance of beautiful places like the Bowron Lakes when I stayed at Wally Monkmen’s cabin just a few miles from that magnificent loop. Or shyness, like the time I had an opportunity to be tossed in the air on a walrus hide but I was too self-conscious to “go for it”.
This all boils down to an invitation. I was busy working on my new book this fall and did not really work to “sell” the Rio Grande. Frankly, I didn’t think I would have to. My groups have had such a fantastic time the last few years I thought word of mouth would fill it. And going on a trip with me and Cliff Jacobson! Cliff is a living legend. Just to spend a week with him anywhere is an opportunity not to be missed. He is in his seventies! That window is closing. So when people tell me, I’d really like to go but…. I cannot help feeling they are making a mistake. A mistake they will some day bitterly regret.
So, if you are one of those people. It’s not too late. I still have spots and will accept barters and IOU’s. By March, I will have gone down the Rio Grande six times. As much as I love the cliffs, solitude and springs of the Rio Grande’s lower canyons, those that know me know I rarely do anything seven times. I cannot promise you this river trip beyond 2015. So just do it. Join me on a Rio Grande expedition, not for me, for you.