Project RAFT

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union and the crumbling of the Berlin Wall, a group of American boaters ventured into the wilds of Siberia and discovered Soviet citizens, using home-made rafts, launching themselves down torrents of whitewater that would give the boldest river rafters pause. Late in the ’80s, a reconstituted group of the same American rafting enthusiasts returned to the Soviet Union to compete in the whitewater competitions that Soviet clubs organized.

Out of these encounters emerged the idea for a non-profit dubbed Project RAFT which stood for Russians and Americans for Teamwork. The idea was to bring teams of Soviets together with teams of Americans for a semi-annual whitewater river rafting competition and environmental festival. It was fleshed out to include teams from any nation in the world capable of fielding a river rafting team of 6 to 7 individuals.

The first official Project RAFT gathering happened early in the spring of 1990 and was hosted by the Nantahala Outdoor Center. Hundreds of Project RAFT participants, their devoted followers, NOC staff and interested observers converged on Bryson City, NC, for a week long event intended to bring people together and inspire peace. Even though, by this time, the Soviet Union had splintered, there was still a need to show that there was no ill will between worldwide members of the boating community and that cooperation and face-to-face contact between our culture and theirs trumped all other means of diplomacy.

Project RAFT was also determined to set a standard for environmental stewardship and use the whitewater games as a platform to instill an awareness that free-flowing rivers were still an endangered ‘species’. At Nantahala, teams were encouraged to bring samples of endangered free-flowing rivers from their country for a ceremony of the intermingling of waters. The ceremony was an excellent way to call attention to rivers many of us had never known.

Project RAFT continued into the mid-90s. The next event was in Costa Rica, the last one was held in Turkey. The beauty of the concept was that it fostered a spirit of cooperation and camaraderie between teams from all over the world even as we were competing in the various competitions — slalom, grand slalom, river orienteering, river rescue, triathlons.

Evenings we shared common meals, bonfires and stories before retiring to our tents. At least once during every competition/festival the hundreds of participants would rendezvous at the put-in of a selected river and we would randomly clamber into rafts and spend the next couple of hours sharing the river, if unable to share meaningful communication due to language barriers.

In any event, 2009 marks — approximately — the twentieth anniversary of a concept that, sadly, is not still taking place. It was difficult and costly and a pain to put together, manage and facilitate, but, I suspect, the events continue to resonate with those who came to take part. I know I have dozens of fond memories and quite a few humorous tales about the three events put on by Project RAFT that I and several other Orion river guides attended. But those tales are for another blogging.

The Story of Orion – Part 4

Change.

I am uncomfortable with change.

I wear the same clothes day after day, haunt the same haunts, perform the same routine over and over. Amongst the instructors, during guide training, the common refrain goes, “. . . but, we always do it that way!” And yet, between 1974 and 1976, I careened from one of the smallest colleges in the universe, to one of the largest universities ever built, to a state college in the farthest reaches of the continental United States.

In suburban north Dallas, my life was so free of change I attended elementary through high school without ever leaving one street! Arapaho was the name of the residential street where Arapaho Elementary, West Junior High and Richardson High School were located one after the other like some sort of meat processing facility or car manufacturing assembly line.

Arapahos were nomadic Plains Indians who never set foot in north Texas. I was a sedentary suburbanite who had hardly set foot outside of Texas. I love to observe the irony in these things.

In any case. . . change.

I landed in Bellingham and enrolled at Western for my third institution of higher learning in the same number of years. I expected my friend from Prescott, Bob Ratcliffe, to also be enrolled, but I learned belatedly from his (former, but unbeknownst to her) girlfriend, Marcy, that he had taken one of life’s little detours. She had no clear idea what his plans were but he hadn’t enrolled at Evergreen State either, which had been his first option. It must have caught her by surprise, as much as it had thrown me for a loop, because, within a quarter, she recollected her backpack and returned to Colorado.

I remained at Western on my own. I imagined Western, being a state college, would be filled to overflowing with local yokels. Hundreds of in-state students who hadn’t been accepted at the larger universities. Students whose grade points were not worth getting worked up over. Community college graduates climbing the academic ladder.

Imagine my surprise when the first dozen people I met were from out-of-state. And then the next two dozen people I met were from out-of-state. There were so many of us we formed our own little clique. I encountered Washingtonians who reinforced my stereotypical image and many who shattered it, but the cadre of folks I hung with were predominantly transplants.

I clearly remember the day I remarked to a table of new friends at a Fairhaven District teahouse that “I wouldn’t be surprised to look up one day and it will be six years later and I will still be in Washington.” It seemed incredible to be imagining such a long span of time in such a strange land. My comment was spoken after my first quarter of homesickness because I also remember re-packing my Pinto for Christmas break fully intending to return forever to the Lone Star State.

However, a sudden relationship with an erudite, environmentally sensitive blond sprite from Ohio brought me back to Bellingham. I say ‘sudden’ because it unfolded and sprung to life only a week before I packed to head home. We had been ‘study hall’ friends throughout my first fall in the Northwest, but intimacy had not surfaced until the eleventh hour. Our relationship didn’t survive the summer of 1977, but it served as the bridge between Texas and Washington that helped me to leave behind the past and begin to concentrate on my very own future.

Talk about a simple twist of fate. I have no idea what path I would be traveling if I had returned to Texas. Odds are, however, I would not know anyone in the Northwest that I know today. Once I arrived back in Bellingham I committed myself to the half-baked idea of pursuing a degree combining recreation and counseling.

But first I had to figure out how to survive monetarily. I enrolled in the work-study program and landed a job with Bellingham Parks and Recreation. What I loved most about my job with park maintenance was the carte blanche to drive a city vehicle with impunity — across park grounds, double parking in the roadway, driving the wrong way on a one-way street. In the fall of 1977, I scored a coveted position as a Resident Aide for the Fairhaven complex on the south end of the campus.

The Fairhaven R.A.s convened in early August and determined that the twelve ‘stacks’, or apartment buildings, at Fairhaven would each be given a theme and we would try and match the incoming students to the ‘theme’ of that dorm. I opted for the ‘Outdoor Recreation’ and ‘Environmental’ stacks.

Meanwhile, from the moment I drove back to WWU, I immersed myself in outdoor activities by proposing and leading river trips on the Skagit River through the college’s Outdoor Program. I was amazed at the ease with which I could check rafts out from the Outdoor Program on my flimsy credentials. It would not be inaccurate to say, after my brief apprenticeship on the Colorado River with Prescott, that I ‘cut my teeth’ refining my rafting skills on the mighty, ‘Magic Skagit’.

A spring trip in 1977 was an eye-opener for me. Michael Bellert and Linda Zimmerman, two new friends who recently moved from Chicago, and my high school sweetheart, Jill Jeanes, who had flown to the Northwest for a visit, suffered an icy dunking in the S-Turn when the hysterically historic raft we were paddling, known as a “World Famous”, stood on its hindquarters (if rafts had hindquarters to stand on) and the four of us unceremoniously slid into the frigid, emerald waters. No neoprene in miles, of course. Lots of New Zealand wool, however.

The “World Famous”, of unknown vintage and origin, was equipped with wooden slats for seats, instead of thwarts. To compound the hilarity of its design, the seats were varnished and the front end bulged like a snake in half-swallow. Additionally, the “World Famous” was as substantial as a gas station vending machine condom.

As we dropped into the entry of the S-Turn, and the bow bucked high toward the sky, Linda, Michael, Jill and I all slipped off of the seats like pats of butter on a hot roll. To be fair, the “World Famous” wasn’t meant to be a whitewater raft. But, also to be fair, we were, generally, clueless. When we returned our bedraggled selves to Goodell Creek Campground, we met an outfitter from Alaska who showed us what a real raft was supposed to look like and taught us our first drinking game. He and his wife also introduced us to a blended whiskey we were unfamiliar with. . . the drink of choice on hoary winter nights by gold-addled prospectors and wild-eyed river runners…Yukon Jack.

The Story of Orion – Part 2

Thirty days in the redrock country of Utah did not make me an outdoorsman. (Thirty five years hasn’t molded me into one either, for that matter.) In all honesty, I don’t recall learning very many ‘outdoor skills’. No survival skills, no map and compass skills, no river rescue skills. Since a majority of the river trip was a float trip, we barely learned how to steer the rafts.

It was a thirty day wilderness orientation trip with minimal structure. I remember a fair amount of hiking, as well as backpacking. We ate an enormous amount of peanut butter and jam on round crackers called ‘Bolton biscuits’ which was just one of the indestructible foods that we hauled down river in used military black bags referred to as ‘blags’. We also ate an enormous amount of tasteless granola and freeze dried dinners. We brought 5 pound bricks of cheese that we kept unrefrigerated for the entire time. The cheese blocks grew sweaty and greasy in the unremitting heat of the desert, but, remarkably, none of them grew moldy or had to be discarded.

We had three rafts and they were all paddled. The rafts were stuffed with thirteen people’s worth of gear. Two people shared one blag for their sleeping bags, ensolite foam pads, extra clothes and a second set of shoes which were, typically, boots for hiking. We carried no coolers. We had no tents. Our aluminum-framed backpacks were strapped to the rafts separately in one large awkward bundle.

As we paddled the silver-painted glorified military assault rafts, we sat amongst our gear which was spread throughout the raft from the bow to the stern. You may imagine that I learned knots from rigging gear every day, but until we reached the seventeen miles of whitewater below the confluence of the Green and the Colorado, we relied on gravity. The only knot I could tie in 1974, before the wilderness orientation and after the wilderness orientation, was the one I used to tie my shoelaces.

(And, everyone who watches me tie my shoes laughs because I do something back-asswards, but I can’t tell you today what it is. My mother taught me that bow-tie and I have no intention of relearning a more efficient method five decades hence.)

Two of the rafts we paddled were 15 feet long with large diameter tubes. The 15 foot model with the upturned snout was called a ‘Yampa’ after the Yampa River in northwestern Colorado. The smaller 13 footer was named for the Selway River in Idaho. Ironically, I have never paddled either of those rivers.

The rafts had been christened with names as well. The Selway was named ‘Guacamole’, perhaps because it was the craft most likely to be turned to mush in the whitewater of Cataract Canyon. The two Yampas were named ‘Merlin’ (I always presumed for the magician, but it might also have referred to the town near the Rogue River) and ‘Orion’, the company’s namesake raft and constellation.

Other than hiking and backpacking and eating ‘cardboard-flavored’ meals, the only other organized activity I remember — not including the three-day solo at journey’s end — was a rapell from a one hundred foot sandstone cliff somewhere in the bowels of The Maze. Somehow I was selected to go first. As I nervously hung over the cliff’s edge, my mind waging a battle between fear and humiliation, I remember Len Barron, the sociology professor who had accompanied our trip, leaning over the precipice and say in his East Coast accent through his brushy gray mustache, “You know, James, it’s perfectly permissible to smile.”

Len would later say during the campfire evaluations that I should consider breaking the mold, dare to go out on a limb, commit to doing something out of the ordinary. I was not a risk-taker, and it was obvious. If I played my cards at all, I always played them close to the vest. Len challenged me to think outside of the box I created for myself.

(Of course, he also told one of the slightly uptight female students that she should get herself laid. Len’s candor and generalizing repelled most Prescott students. Indeed, only a couple of us selected him as an advisor.)

I ramble about the Prescott wilderness orientation because it was during that period I realized there was something about being outdoors with a group of people that energized and inspired me. I sat down in the mouth of Dark Canyon at the beginning of those seventy-two hours knowing I valued family and community, but I don’t think I understood or fully appreciated the extent I valued them because I had never been forced to confront my values and to mull them over endlessly.

My time in slickrock country during the fall of 1974 did not seal my career path. I did not receive an epiphany that said, “Go forth and found an adventure travel company and you will be forever satisfied with your existence”. The whitewater of Cataract Canyon was sufficiently exhilarating but it did not convert me into a whitewater junkie. I did not pursue rafting or kayaking or hiking or rock-climbing immediately after my wilderness immersion.

What I learned in my wilderness sojourn with Prescott College was the value of community and a method by which communities can be formed, strengthened, reinvigorated and grown. Up until that time I had blithely wandered through my life cherishing my friendships, my family and viewing from afar my father and mother growing church communities throughout Texas, but not fully appreciating that I needed to maintain contact with the process of community-building or I would wither away.

This wasn’t fully clear at the end of my wilderness orientation either, but it was beginning to be a niggling irritant in the back of my mind. The sort of irritant that might just blossom into a pearl if given sufficient time.

The Story of Orion – River Rafting in Washington – Part 1

The Story of Orion

As told, and remembered by the Grand Poohbah Hisself

In Twelve Parts. . .

~~~

I am going to begin at the very beginning.

At a time when Orion was not even a gleam in anyone’s eye. At a time when I had no idea I would spend the majority of my life in ‘The Great North Woods’, as my high school girlfriend’s father liked to call it, or ‘The Great NorthWet’, as Emily Johnston prefers to call it. A time when outdoor recreation meant Starcraft pop-up trailers and the word campground was spelled with a ‘K’ as far as my family was concerned — as in Kampgrounds of America, aka KOA.

It was the early ‘70’s. I was in love with iconoclasm, progressive country and environmentalism. I was out-of-step with everyone who lived in north Texas. A high school classmate reminded me the other day that I would recycle my paper lunch sack until it was as limp as toilet tissue. I had begun questioning the twin Texas sacred cows of competition and football. If old enough, I would have voted for a Hispanic (a relative of Fidel Castro) for governor. My father campaigned for him, a sacrilege in the Republican fortress of Dallas.

The Vietnam War was winding down. Watergate was heating up. And disco, thanks to the BeeGees and John Travolta, was catching on.

I did not have a single clue where I would go to college or what I would study when I got there. I wasn’t even certain college appealed to me. Even though I was a member of the National Honor Society and a successful public school student, I sensed an ‘emptiness’ to my education.

‘Garbage in, garbage out’ was a popular expression of the time. (Had something to do with technological hunks of junk known as ‘computers’.)

For some unknown reason, since I deplored mathematics, I applied and was accepted to the University of Santa Clara’s engineering program. In fact, I was offered an academic scholarship to study environmental engineering. I have a vague memory of wanting to work on the reclamation of strip mined lands. I distinctly remember the program stretching through five years with practically every single class predetermined — all the electives were clustered toward the fifth and final year.

Despite my antipathy toward math and science, I felt I needed the scholarship in order to attend a college, so I awaited my enrollment like a prisoner awaits his execution. I have no idea what I was thinking. It seemed the ‘thing to do’.

Out of the blue, my father, a Presbyterian minister with a nationwide audience through his weekly column in the Presbytery’s national magazine, came to me with an alternative proposal. Perhaps he had noticed my lack of excitement. Perhaps he saw something in me that I hadn’t plumbed. Perhaps he played a hunch. Maybe he hoped to live through me vicariously.

In any case, he told me about a small liberal arts college in northern Arizona called Prescott College. A reader of his from Arkansas had mailed a letter and a National Geographic article featuring Prescott and its unusual curriculum, educational style and freshman orientation. This reader told my dad that she thought his youngest son, whom she had read so much about in his weekly essays, might enjoy this sort of education. (I don’t know the name of this ‘angel’, but in hindsight, I send a much-belated and deeply heartfelt thank-you.)

When my father suggested I consider Prescott College, and that he would foot the bill, at least for the first year, a weight was lifted from my shoulders. If nothing else, I could postpone deciding my future for another couple of years while I explored alternatives at Prescott. Those of you who know me well, know I do not tend toward excitability. So it won’t surprise you that my father was more excited about Prescott than I was, and what excited him the most was the orientation program for all freshmen and transfer students.

Prescott’s wilderness orientation program, following a week’s worth of matriculation, was a thirty-day sojourn somewhere in the wilds of Southwest. The incoming students were divided into several groups of ten and then trucked to Baja to sea-kayak, the Manti La Sal mountain range to trudge about in the snow, the Grand Canyon to hike or to the Green River in Utah to raft. Each group was joined by several other students with outdoor recreation experience and one faculty member.

As it turns out, and quite by accident, I was shipped off to Moab, Utah, for my very first experience whitewater rafting.

I was eighteen. I had never camped without running water. I had certainly never camped without a physical structure over my head. I had never been on a river with whitewater and, the concept of controlling a boat in cataracts (for we were rafting down the Green River to and through the Colorado River’s Cataract Canyon), was incomprehensible to me.

I don’t remember physically shaking in my boots. But I do remember being infinitely relieved I wasn’t in a lecture hall with a couple of hundred other students listening to a professor drone on about trigonometry equations and the importance of slide rules.

Leavenworth Wenatchee River Rafting

On a whim, I went to YouTube the other day and typed in “Leavenworth Wenatchee River Rafting“. Imagine my surprise when I discovered a six-minute, produced video of a day with Orion on the Wenatchee River out of our darling faux Bavarian Village, Leavenworth.

The video was produced last summer by one of Orion‘s stalwart regular guests and was a delightful ‘inside edition’ to the nuts-and-bolts of a one day raft trip. I especially appreciated the humor, even in regards to well-tended, rental wetsuits with a limp rear patch — there was some reference to an “escape hatch”. We work very hard to stay on top of our rental gear (which isn’t really rented, but comes with the package) but it is exasperating fussing with 250 wetsuits, both inside and out, to make certain of their total integrity.

The video producer is a guest whom, by memory, I only know as ‘Scooter’. He calls himself on his website ‘Vespa Boy’. As an organizer of day river trips, he has been terrific to work with and you can tell by the video he takes great pleasure in introducing friends to whitewater rafting as well as his impromptu productions.

If you are truly bored, go to YouTube and type in “Inflatable Monkey Rafting”. I could have used Scooter producing THAT tiny piece of frivolity. Guides on a ‘busman’s holiday’ once again.