As you don’t have my book in front of you, I need to explain this first entry before getting into the day-by-day journey we made starting back on the 22nd of October 2010. A year earlier, in late November 2009, we signed up with the OARS Company, hoping for a journey down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. We were informed that those trips were sold out. Not a few days passed before OARS blasted out an email that they had a cancelation on an October trip; I was on the phone within 60 seconds of receiving it. Informed that this was a dory trip for 18 days, I told the person I was talking with that I had to check with my wife, she too thought that was a good idea. We hadn’t really considered a dory trip down the river as, at $12,000 for the two of us, this would be the most expensive trip we had ever taken.
One of the rules of the company was that we couldn’t pay with a credit card, cash only. I called Caroline, outlining where we could cut costs, and felt comfortable that by July 24th, 2010, we could pay off the more than $10,000 balance we’d have open after making the mandatory $1,500 deposit to reserve two spots for us. Excitedly, she agreed that we should throw caution out the window and go for it. Then, on December 12th, Caroline’s birthday, we drove up to the Grand Canyon, and on a snowy ledge with the Colorado River in the background, we wrote and signed the check.
We changed our diet; cut back on travel, we watched where every penny was going. Not only would we need to save, save, save, but we also had a bunch of things we’d need to buy before we left in October of the next year. I also had a logistical problem to solve as I had and have sleep apnea, which required me to travel with my CPAP. A full breakdown of what that took and looked like was posted the following January in 2011; you can read it by clicking here.
The book opens with this image on the first page; it is a map of the camps we stayed at during our trip, starting up at Lees Ferry – Mile Zero. There are many others down in that 226 miles, but these were ours. And then my dedication:
For Caroline Wise…
My wife is the other half of me which allows my senses to fully appreciate the beauty in life. Through our incredible love, life takes on greater depth; it is more profound and more full of passion. In a world of possibility, our horizons appear boundless, even in light of limits to time and all things manifested by our fragile emotions and the uncertainty of physical being. But from my perspective, today is a perfect day to be in hopeless, never-ending love. We are four eyes, two minds, and two smiles dancing through a wondrous life, celebrating its rewards and travails.
When a crack in the earth of our perception opens wide and time dilates our senses, stretching us to a breaking point, when experiencing one more grain of sand threatens our idea of self with certain dissolution, we pull the straps of our mental flotation device tight and hold on. Pray our mind is going to rise above the surface of the swirling maelstrom that is engulfing us. We are now in the Grand Canyon.
And that’s how the book opens. Next up: Day 1 of Stay In The Magic – A Voyage Into The Beauty Of The Grand Canyon.