Monday photo feature

I've never been to Camp Stewart, and I can't say that I know much about the place.  But a guy I went to college with in the late 1980s was a counselor there for a couple of summers, and he gave me a staff shirt that I still have today.  And so when I heard of the catastrophic flooding that occurred this past weekend in towns like Hunt, Texas, that sit along the Guadalupe River, I felt at least a casual familiarity with the area.

At this time I have no idea how the Camp Stewart property, campers, or staff fared in the flood.  Most of the news has covered the tragedy experienced by nearby Camp Mystic for girls: the latest I've heard is that they lost 27 campers and counselors.  At the very least, I expect Camp Stewart's 2025 season has been upended entirely.

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Summer bares its teeth in various ways

The Gulf moisture has returned, and it surely feels as though another classic Mid South summer is upon us.  So far the conditions aren't the most insufferable I've ever experienced, but it wouldn't take but a small upward tweak to produce something much more oppressive.  I guess we have an advantage around here in that we're used to dealing with high heat and humidity; most homes and businesses here are equipped with air conditioning, for instance.  What was so bad about that heat wave that hit much of the nation a couple of weeks ago is that its affected area included the upper Midwest, where many people don't have AC.  The weather here in Memphis today would be tough indeed if I couldn't retreat into my air-conditioned home.

Meanwhile, parts of the country are dealing with another kind of meteorological ordeal: too much rain.  I made a very cursory visit to the Texas hill country back in the late 1980s, but otherwise have no experience with the area.  Nevertheless, I feel a bit of a connection to the region that has been devastated by flooding this weekend: when I was doing a lot of whitewater slalom racing in the 1990s, I knew a group of Texans who spent a lot of time training on the Guadalupe River, the drainage that has seen a lot of the worst flooding; and as summer camp alumnus myself, I feel empathy for those hill country camps that have lost campers and staff.  Camp for me was nothing if not a safe haven, and the idea of a natural disaster laying waste to the property in the middle of the night while camp is in session is hard for me to comprehend.

As of this writing I haven't heard the latest news, but another part of the country, on the coast of the Carolinas, is also dealing with heavy rainfall from Tropical Storm Chantal.

All I can say is that things aren't so bad here where I live, and for me life goes on as normal.  Yesterday I paddled the surfski and found some decent surfing out on the Mississippi.  When I reached the mouth of the harbor a small barge rig was moving upriver, and I ferried out to catch a few brief rides on the modest waves it was producing.  At the same time there was a much larger rig coming downstream, and when it reached my location I fell in behind it.  The waves were full of squirrelly water--typical of southbound rigs--and they were also wandering left and right at odd angles as the towboat pilot made the giant slalom move defined by the Hernando DeSoto Bridge upstream of us and the Harahan and Frisco and Memphis-Arkansas Bridges down below.  But they gave me some pretty exciting rides.  Each time I caught one angling toward the left bank, say, I looked for one angling back the other way that I could link onto.

This morning I opted to paddle the whitewater boat and do some drills within sight of the marina.  The sun was hot and bright, and I did a lot of my work in the shade beneath the A.W. Willis Avenue bridge.  I did all kinds of forward stroke drills, backpaddling drills, spin drills, blade-control drills, and Eskimo rolls.

Both paddling sessions this weekend made me good and wet, and that's something I welcome at this time of year.  I finished them both with a hose bath on the dock, and I'll take that over some chi-chi spa every time.

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High anxiety

The digestive situation has been up and down since my last post.  I continue to have that unsettled feeling down in my tummy.  The good news is that it hasn't stopped me at all from doing the physical activities I'm wanting to do these days.  I've been paddling my boat and doing some bike riding, and haven't skipped anything because of stomach distress.  While I really hope to see some resolution of this problem before I launch into the Grand Canyon, I'm hopeful that even if I don't, it won't be something that makes me absolutely miserable on the trip.

I think stress is likely to blame for these woes.  With less than eight weeks to go before I Launch Day, I've had a lot of anxiety about whether I'll truly be ready.  I do in fact think I will be, but being responsible for having everything ready for fifteen other people as well as myself is weighing on me.  It's not entirely rational: I think I've put together a strong group with a number of people whose experience makes up for my inexperience in certain areas.  Just last week I was writing here about good I was feeling about things... as I said then, the best thing I can do is trust my companions to do their thing, and give them support when they need it.  But sitting here at home without any of them around, I'm having hard time relaxing in the belief that everything will go smoothly, and letting it go.  

Again, the physical conditioning seems to be the least of my worries.  I did some good bike riding on Monday and yesterday.  Tuesday I paddled the whitewater boat in the harbor, doing lots of the stroke drills that I used to do in my slalom racing days.  When I paddle the surfski I usually paddle for 60 to 90 minutes, but when doing stroke drills in the whitewater boat, I've found that 40 minutes or so is plenty.  I think a big reason for that is the high degree of concentration I put into those drills: it's more mentally taxing than just forward paddling and taking in the scenery like I do in the ski.  In any case, I had an enjoyable time down there on Tuesday: those sessions remind me of the hours I spent 40 years ago playing around on the lake at camp, in whatever boats I had access to there.  That was a huge part of my early paddling education.  It was sunny and hot on Tuesday, but my routine included some Eskimo rolls, and that helped me stay cool.  And of course I took a hose bath on the dock afterward.

I was in the surfski this morning, and when I reached the mouth of the harbor I found not one but two big barge rigs coming up the Mississippi from below the old bridges.  I found lots of big workable waves, especially once I was behind the second rig.  I didn't really get any of those sweet extended rides that every surfski paddler dreams of, but I got a lot of brief ones, many of which I was able to carry onto other waves--similar to "linking runs" in a downwind situation.  The most satisfying thing was how well my body responded to the near-constant sprinting I was doing.  While there were moments when I was too gassed to keep paddling, each time I recovered quickly and resumed my attack.  That's always been a sign that I'm in pretty good shape, and I've been feeling good about that the rest of the day.  The session I had this morning may have been just what I needed.

It continues to be hot today, but making it more bearable is that the breeze is from the north, meaning the humidity is down.  I expect in another couple of days we'll be back to the usual south wind that carries moist air up from the Gulf of Mexico.

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Monday photo feature

You just never know what you might find when you go down to your local river.

Last Tuesday morning, when I took my whitewater boat to the Walnut Grove access on the Wolf River, I was getting ready to take the boat off the car when I looked down and saw the pictured bill on the ground at my feet.  I felt a rush of excitement at the thought of being a hundred dollars richer, but that feeling quickly faded away as soon as I took a closer look.

I wonder how a movie-prop hundred-dollar bill ended up on the ground down by the Wolf.  It's very crisp and clean and it was sitting on top of the sandy soil, so it couldn't have been there very long.  Here in Memphis we do have a rather vibrant community of filmmakers, so it's not farfetched to think that maybe a movie scene was being shot there a few hours before I arrived.  The parking area for the Walnut Grove access is underneath the Walnut Grove Road bridge, which sports its share of spray-painted graffiti.  With the right framing, lighting, and camera angle, it could easily be made to look like a gritty inner-city setting where a drug deal or similar shady cash transaction might take place.

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The darnedest thing, this human body

In most respects I've been feeling pretty good as spring gives way to summer.  One exception is the left knee discomfort I mentioned in my last post.  Another is a couple of flare-ups of my hemorrhoids, and that's got me somewhat concerned, seeing as how that's one problem I really do not want to have to deal with during a sixteen-day Grand Canyon expedition.

I suspect most people in our society first become aware of hemorrhoids the same way I did: by seeing those TV ads for Preparation H.  For the first half of my life I didn't really know what hemorrhoids were.  But in my late 30s I started having that rectal bleeding and ran to my doctor's office in a panic, only to be told it was a relatively non-serious thing.  Since then that area has flared up once in a while, but I never had any pain there.  I usually mention it to my doctor during my annual physical, and she always shrugs it off as part of the normal life cycle.  But sometime last year I had a much more irritating episode that prompted me to make my first-ever Preparation H purchase.  And then this year I've had a couple of episodes that, while less painful, involved a lot of discomfort not just at the relevant anal spot but deeper inside as well--in my stomach or my colon or my intestines or whatever.  That's where I am as of this writing, with a generally unsettled feeling throughout my digestive infrastructure.

I hope you can forgive me if I'm venturing into TMI territory here, but in the Grand Canyon one's bodily functions are a very serious matter.  All river-running parties are required to pack out their human waste, and that means bringing along portable toilets ("groovers") and setting them up at camp.  As long as you're nice and regular, you can just move your bowels during the hours that the groovers are available, and be on your merry way.  But at the moment I'm anything but regular.

To pre-empt those readers who are poised to hit me up with a lecture: I am indeed mindful of consuming enough fiber in my diet.  Various fruits, beans, green peas, lentils, almonds, broccoli, berries... I make a point of incorporating such things into my meals.  I get some roughage, too: I always eat some celery with lunch and some salad greens with supper.

Anyway... I hope this episode will run its course in the next several days.  According to the Wikipedia page on hemorrhoids, my symptoms are fairly typical, and they usually are gone in several days, and I'm somewhat comforted by that.  If I don't get some relief, maybe I'll have to get in to see my doctor and see if there's anything I can do to stave off such an ordeal in the remote wilderness.  Launch Day is now less than two months away.

Meanwhile, at least I haven't missed any training activities.  I actually had a really nice session in the surfski down on the riverfront yesterday.  After several weeks of very little surfing action, yesterday there was a big barge rig coming upriver generating some big lovely waves.  It took me several tries to get the boat up to speed, but then I got a really sweet ride that lasted a good 30 seconds.  I would guess that relative to the movement of the current I was moving at least 25 kilometers per hour; I didn't have my G.P.S. device turned on, and if I had it would have registered a much slower speed because I was moving against the Mississippi's flow.  Regardless, it was fun.  I got a couple of more decent rides in; sadly, the waves petered out pretty fast as the towboat pulled father into the distance upstream.

I paddled back out to the Mississippi this morning and found no upstream-moving barge traffic.  I headed upriver and eventually encountered a rig coming downstream.  Downstream-moving barges are much less reliable for making good surfing waves, and even when they do make them, those waves tend to contain more swirly water and they tend to wander from side to side: you'll get on a good wave, and it'll quickly disappear, and the train of good waves will have moved way off to the left or to the right.  That's how it was behind this rig I encountered today.  But I got a couple of semi-decent rides to highlight my hour-long steady paddle.

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Expedition prep

Planning for the Grand Canyon trip inches along each day.  There are so many details: renting the raft fleet that we need, figuring out what camping gear and clothing and shoes I should have along, ordering the food, collecting money from the other fifteen people in my party... it's a lot.

I'm happy to say that I feel pretty good about the group I've assembled.  I've tried to recruit people whose experience fills the holes in my own.  I've never done the Grand Canyon before, but I've got three people in the group who have.  While I've done several one-night overnight trips on the Mississippi River near Memphis, I've never done a true multi-day wilderness trip, but I've got at least seven people coming along who are veterans of such expeditions.  I've never rowed a big oar-rigged raft before, but seven people in my group have, and they know how to load the rafts with gear for transport through big whitewater.

And so, my job boils down to organization, communication, and delegation of duties.

I've been put in leadership positions at various times in my life.  I guess the earliest time was as a summer camp counselor: for a few summers I was in charge of cabins full of kids, and then I ran the canoeing program.  Then I taught school for a few years and did my best to run a classroom, sometimes successfully and sometimes not so much.

Since leaving teaching I've been working on my own, and most of the time I've had nobody but myself to be responsible for.  After quite a few years of not being looked to for the leadership of something, I wondered if I still had such qualities in me.  So far, it seems that I can still manage it, and I'm even sort of enjoying it despite the occasional overwhelmed feelings.  Certainly, the basics haven't changed: make sure people's roles are clearly defined, and then get out of the way while they do their jobs.  Of course, the unpleasant part of being a leader is when somebody doesn't do his job, and you have to confront that person.  I'm doing everything I can think of to prevent such a scenario, mostly by cultivating a relationship with each individual to the extent I can by phone and e-mail, and by weekly e-mail updates to the group in which I share my expectations in positive ways.

What I know I can control is my own physical readiness for the expedition, and the sharpness of my skills.

On Tuesday I went back to the Wolf River, likely for the last time this summer.  The wet spring we've had has brought the Wolf up to very nice levels for paddling, but unless we get some more of that significant rain--and that looks unlikely according to the current forecast--the river will drop out fast.  During dry periods the Wolf, which for most of its length in this county has been channelized to make way for road construction, gets so shallow that you can't take a stroke without hitting the bottom.

On Monday I'd ridden my bike over the Wolf on my way out to Shelby Farms, and I knew it still had a decent flow.  Nevertheless, when I got to the Walnut Grove boat ramp Tuesday morning, I could see that the water level had dropped a good five vertical feet.  Still, it had the feel of a lovely tree-shaded, sun-dappled babbling brook as I worked to get reacquainted with my whitewater boat on moving water.  I attained my way upstream, doing some ferries along the way, and coming back downstream I did some eddy turns and back-ferries and other swiftwater moves.  Once the Wolf drops out I'll take the whitewater boat down to the harbor and do some more serious sets of stroke drills, but so far I've allowed myself to stick to more relaxed stuff on the "whitewater lite" that the Wolf offers.

That discomfort in my left knee has had its ups and downs since I first mentioned it eleven days ago.  For a while I thought it had run its course, but in the last several days I've been feeling it again.  I rode my bike again yesterday, and for the first time it bothered me some during that activity.  It warmed up and felt better as the ride went on, but by late afternoon yesterday I was feeling a pretty good twinge in that area.  I'm thinking I should look for some "prehab" exercises that might stop it from developing into a full-blown injury.  Besides riding the bike I've been doing a lot of Hindu squats in recent weeks, and those things work my quadriceps muscles well.  Now I'm wondering if some exercises that work the opposing muscles (hamstrings) will help stabilize my knee.  I'm still holding off on running, and that's actually no big sacrifice, seeing as how I don't especially enjoy running.  But knowing there's something I can't do always gnaws at me.  Meanwhile, it's very important to me that I be able to hike without pain in the Grand Canyon.

When I got up this morning it was already 80 degrees Fahrenheit outside.  The Mid South is definitely included in the heat wave that's been in the national news all week.  I've been trying to do my outdoor exercise in the AM so that I can stay in during the hottest part of the day.  Today I was back in the surfski on the riverfront downtown, and after an hour of paddling I took a hose bath on the dock.  That's a big advantage of that training site over the Wolf, which has no such amenity.

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Monday photo feature

Whitewater paddling had a surge in popularity in the U.S. back in the early 1970s.  Reasons included the release of the film Deliverance in 1971; the Olympic debut of whitewater slalom in 1972, where Maryland native Jamie McEwan delighted U.S. audiences with an unexpected bronze medal in the men's single canoe class; and the wilderness paddling feats of Idahoan Walt Blackadar, who in 1971 made a daring solo first descent of Turnback Canyon of the Alsek River in British Columbia.

In 1973, ABC Television decided to get in on the act by featuring McEwan and Blackadar on a trip down the Colorado River in Grand Canyon for its "American Sportsman" program.  Pictured above is McEwan as he approaches a rapid.  You can watch the episode, along with footage of McEwan's bronze-medal-winning Olympic run, here.

Meanwhile, my own Grand Canyon launch date is just over two months away.

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