Until I Get it Right

John Friel

I did it again.

When you say you’re leaving for, or just back from, a raft trip through the Grand Canyon, a common reaction is, “Wow! Trip of a lifetime!” If that’s so, I’ve lived three lives.

This time, my son and I hiked in via Bright Angel Trail, caught up with friends already on the river and floated the remaining 140 miles over the next 10 days.

Bright Angel is the easiest way in by foot and it’s a beautiful killer: A relentless, 8-miles downhill slog, the desert heat rising with each step. We encountered several uber-fit fanatics bent on going down and back up in a day, a goal the Park Service strongly discourages. They jogged effortlessly along in shorts and shoes, a water bottle in each hand. Their 0% body fat did not jiggle. These people are, to put it kindly, sick. Lean, fit, robust—and sick. May their tribes decrease.

Finally, mercifully, the trail ended. There at last was the brawny brown Colorado River and there were five rafts. Life got wetter and better.

You’ve heard of the Canyon’s rapids. There are dozens of them, many huge and scary. Hugest and scariest is Lava Falls, where the river drops four stories in a short violent stretch that feels nearly as endless as the trail. You’re battered by wave after raft-swallowing wave even if you do everything right. If Lava had a soundtrack besides its own visceral, unnerving roar, it would be a mashup of “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” and the theme from “Jaws,” cranked up to 11.

Our rowers got it right. You’ve never seen 12 happier people than our crew at Tequila Beach, where boaters pull in to regroup, repair, right flipped rafts, count heads and celebrate surviving Lava.

Later, at Phoenix airport, my son and I agreed we’d rather run Lava repeatedly than board an airplane. If a raft flips, you can swim out. If a plane malfunctions, sayonara.

Afloat or in camp, on several occasions I found myself in a place of indescribable calm, a state of near ecstasy at simply being where I was. I did not seek these moments; they found me. Bliss was a tenuous, qualified condition: My legs still ached, I felt the stifling heat and heard the next rapid’s rumble—no, wait: that’s thunder, here comes another deluge—but the distractions failed to detract, rendered moot by a headlong rush of beauty, evolving with every bend, every sweep of the gaze.

One such moment was the full moon cresting the Canyon’s rim across the river. Such a buildup! Such an entrance! A rapidly growing glow, radiant clouds and finally the thing itself, too brilliant to gaze upon, clearing that rocky lip.

The light soon became a nuisance, making it hard to fall asleep. We joked about moonblock and moonburn. But that cliff-clearing nanosecond was an absolute epiphany, a burst of unalloyed gorgeousness trumping, for an ecstatic instant, an entire vast gorge teeming with glories.

These states of joy are not built to last. That’s why they’re called moments. Ephemerality is the magic that renders them precious; their very fragility fuels their power. Theirs is the beauty of a night-blooming datura, glowing in a moonshaft filtered through tamarisk to set that exact flower alight, dazzling the fortunate eye and heart.

That beam and that blossom did not seek one another out any more than I sought those serene, luminous moments. But to be present at such confluences, to breathe them in, live them and share them, is perhaps why we are here.

I clutch at these vivid intersections, striving to capture them in words the way a camera in the right hands freezes pieces of time. But moments are notoriously wary, elusive as the coyote who steals the bait, leaving a teasing wisp of fur in a trap set to snare the whole beast. I’ve missed before. I’ll miss again.

To describe the indescribable, to grasp at ghosts, is the trip of a lifetime. Yes, it’s a quest doomed to fail. But isn’t that the best kind? GP

John Friel is marketing manager for Emerald Coast Growers and a freelance writer.