I hope you’ve been REALLY muddy at least once in your adult life, because there is something about being so completely dirty that the mud becomes irrelevant that is awesome.
A few months ago I ran the Dirty Dash – a muddy, 10 k obstacle course that pushed me not only physically, but also mentally since I’d hadn’t run more than a mile in years. When we finished I felt euphoric, the mud more a mark of success than something that needed to be immediately remedied. I think it’s important to have moments like that, to remind us how much our body can physically take and that our culture’s obsession with cleanliness isn’t necessarily a better way. Mud can be a mark of living in the present, of priorities, of happiness.
But as difficult as that race was, the mud of this weekend’s river trip made that look like a clean day. So. Much. Mud.
The first two days in Cataract Canyon were wonderful; the warm water cooled us just enough to make the hot, sunny canyon even more beautiful as we bumped down the river at low water. We’d all packed enough hats, clothing and sunscreen to avoid any bad sunburns and our lounging skills were in fine form, two of our boats were even tied together so we could cross the 30 miles of flat water in a few hours with only one motor. We’d never used motors on our rafting trips before, but since we were attempting to do Cataract Canyon at low water in only 4 days they were our only choice.
The camp sites were a little muddier than we were used to, but nothing we couldn’t handle, and when we headed up stream to take a beer float a few of us even purposely walked through a mud field that sucked us in past our thighs. It was definitely smelly and the river water wasn’t much cleaner but at that point the mud was still our friend, an entertaining addition to our weekend. A little mud never hurt anyone right?
Only a few hours later the rain started and more or less didn’t stop for 48 hours. It didn’t put too much of a damper on our trip, we still scouted and ran the rapids in the rain, opting to jump in the water often because the temperature was warmer than the air. A few of the smaller rapids were much more exciting when a torrential downpour hit, blurring our vision and upping the drama. We set up a tarp at camp and played cards and talked to pass the time, listening to rocks fall and echo from the sheer cliff walls. The canyon was still beautiful in the rain, fog creeping over the cliffs and waterfalls appearing from nowhere.
We got a late start on the last day of our trip due to the rain (one tent waking up to a few exclamations of, “we’ve been sleeping in a lake!”) and as we motored the last 30 miles we got to see more than we could have ever expected. The canyon was unreal, filled with hundreds of waterfalls and mini flash floods that got larger with every second. One time we were only seconds in front of a flash flood that rushed out of a side canyon, spilling rocks and fast moving water into more than half of the river. We stayed towards the middle after that as rocks fell on both sides, watching sections of the river bank collapse and melt into the already dark brown water. So impressed were we with the echoing downpour (and the shots of leftover Fireball and Tequila to keep ourselves warm) that our almost 8 hours of rainy river time was more or less bearable, making our 6pm arrival at the take out that much more foreboding.
As we pulled up to the take out, already cold and exhausted, our hearts dropped; it was way worse than any of us could have imagined. The water level was so low that we had at least half a football field of exposed muddy river bottom to carry our stuff over before we even got to the actual boat ramp which was so steep that even if it hadn’t been raining our vans and trailers wouldn’t have been able to make it down. At the top of the ramp (I’d say it was about as tall as a two story building) was even more mud, the parking lot no better than the mud pit below. The rain was still coming down with no signs of breaking, leaving us no choice but to power through.
Our first attempt to get the vehicles out ended in failure so we unhooked the trailers and pushed to make sure the vans made it to the gravel ramp. We walked the trailers to the vans, leaving caked footprints the size of Bigfoot’s in our wake. Working as fast as we could, many people abandoned their shoes as we stripped the boats to bare bones and carried the gear barefoot over the mud pit. Shoes were necessary to hike the gravel ramp so we booted up and carried everything up the hill and then loaded the first round into the precariously backed up trailer. Afraid the weight of the boats and gear would get us stuck we took the trailer full of gear up to more stable ground, dumping everything next to an unused pile of gravel that taunted us. We backed the trailer back down two more times to get the boats (which took all eight of us to carry step by step over the insanity that was that take out. It was dark by the time we had all three boats on the two trailers and started to reload the rest of the gear, the rain still pouring down and more than a few of us shivering and soaked from working in the rain all day.
We didn’t bother sorting things as we piled our gear in the cars, stripping to swimsuits or less to climb in the cars and wash off our feet with drinking water. We thought we were on our way until we powered up the muddy gravel hill and heard some loud noises, only realizing at the top that our packed trailer had come unhitched and was dragging by the safety chain. Luckily nothing was damaged and it only took a few minutes to hook everything back up and start our 6 hour drive back home. I was so chilled I opened up my sandy sleeping bag and wore it in my chair as we tried to stay awake.
We got back sometime around 3am, all of us heading for showers and then bed, knowing even then that the weekend was worth it. My friend Megan described the trip best, “We’re all officially bonded after that take-out, sealed with mud.” 