It’s not rocket science
When I came home from my first weekend of training as a river guide in 1970, I didn’t know if I had a future in guiding or not. Actually, we weren’t training to be river guides. We were training to be whitewater boatmen. There were no women among our ranks. This was men’s work. When women did come in, the term “boatwomen” was clumsy. They called themselves “boathags” for a while, but that was like the N word. Only they could use it. Anyway, I told my wife Suzie that I wasn’t sure I would make made the cut.
The training process had started the Saturday before, when we convened at a large meeting room in the trailer park where Lou Eliot, who basically owned the American River Touring Association even though its assets legally belonged to the state of California. That’s a long story that we won’t go into now.
There must have been sixty or more people at the meeting. Fifty of us aspirants; Lou, of course, and his son Bob, who for some reason was wearing a climbing rope as one would wear a bandolier; and a handful of veteran guides, strutting their stuff. It was all quite intimidating. At 29, I was the oldest person there by far other than Lou. Lou showed some rafting movies, which elicited hoots from the veterans, especially when one of them was on screen. We were given a history of ARTA and finally divided into two groups of about 25. One group was to train the following weekend, and the other group would train a week later. Half of us would be eliminated after these weekends. The other half would get further training. Those were not comforting odds. The pressure was on.
I was assigned the first weekend. They say that you have only one chance to make a good first impression, and I missed that chance. A member of our carpool, Jeff Fowler, an instructor, over-slept at his fraternity at Cal. It took us over an hour to find him, wake him up, and get him dressed. We arrived over an hour late.
There was quite a bustle at the Camp Nine put-in on the Stanislaus River when we did get there. The trainers were scurrying around inflating boats, tying on frames. All but Johnny Dorr, who was sitting in his red Porsche, shaving with an electric razor. I took an immediate dislike to him, a dislike that deepened when I found that he was a USC frat boy. USC stands for University of Spoiled Children. John did have one experience that elicited both my sympathy and respect. When he was 15 or 16 and flying in a small plane that his father was piloting, his father died of a hear attack. With no flying experience but help from the control tower, Johnny landed the plane.
Back to the river. I don’t recall what I wore that first day, but I know that I was very excited and very cold. No one was making new inflatable rafts then, so all our boats were some kind of military surplus craft. On that first trip I was in an army assault raft, long and narrow with no floor and no stern. We lashed the side tubes together with nylon cord. Matt Murphy was our instructor. The only other trainee I remember was Rob Sawyer, a friend of Matt’s from UC Santa Cruz. The first rapid – a Class II—was named Cadillac Charlie. Less than a quarter mile from put-in. By the time we were though it I was not only cold but smitten. Bingo. I had found my place in the universe. That is, if I made the cut.
What I remember about the rest of the day was that I was both chilled o the bone and elated. We took out at Parrott’s Ferry and drove back to the Camp Nine for the night. I have no recollection of eating.
It rained heavily that night. I had a down sleeping bag, a quarter inch Ensolite pad, and a light-weight backpacking poncho, which I slowly realized was not waterproof. After a pretty sleepless night, I found myself in a soaked sleeping bag, in a shallow puddle of water. The smart guys without tents had slept under the truck.
I had some homemade bread and a hunk of cheese for breakfast. When I offered to share it with the lead trainer, Alan Duebner, he ate most of it. So much for kissing up. I somehow got through the day on the river, but returned home with mixed feelings. As cold and miserable as I had been, I was in love with rafting. I also had doubts that I made the cut.
The following Wednesday I got a call from Alan. He told me that they were shorthanded for the coming weekend, and would I be interested in being a trainer.