Kristen in a waterfall

Every day on the trip, usually after lunch, we have the option of taking hikes up various side canyons. I’ve taken every one, and they always end up in some spot so beautiful that you don’t want to leave.

After floating down the river a bit we stop at a place called Stone Creek. Today’s optional hike was a long climb to a waterfall at the top of the cliffs.

(2008 NOTE: This next paragraph is full of attitude. It’s how I wrote it twelve years ago, but I’m older and wiser now. That said, I’m leaving it in.)

I hiked back to the bottom, and encountered the National Geographic photographer who was shooting the high water. We were the only two photographers actually in the canyon and on the river during this flood. National Geographic gets so much respect for their photography but the fact is, they pose and set up just about every shot in their cheap rag. I wasn’t about to treat this guy like royalty. Everyone else was. He was on a raft with federal employees. Against park rules, they had a keg on board. He just milled around like a loser, trying to avoid looking anyone in the eye.

(Ouch! For the record, the photographer I encountered is an amazing talent and National Geographic is not a cheap rag. I was an arrogant fool.)

After last night’s drunk howling on the part of the media group, which offended a lot of the Californians, I decided to make some new friends. Karl (21)was on the trip with his sister Kristen (20), and his friend Matt. I hadn’t talked with them very much until today. They were on the other raft and as the only people on the trip their age, they kept to themselves. We started talking and quickly realized we should have done so a lot sooner. We share a lot of the same opinions and observations of the trip. We’ve been annoyed by the all the same people. They tell me how lucky I am that Dan isn’t on my boat. They hate him with a passion.

We end up stopping to camp on a beach with a beautiful overhang. For the first time, the sun isn’t out and it looks like rain. As we get off the boat, people run to the overhang to claim the precious shelter as their own. The rest of us are left with uncovered spots where we’ll get drenched if it rains. Prince is always the first of the two of us off our boat so he always picks our campsite. It’s always the furthest one from the boat, which makes our unloading take a lot longer. Carrying our riverbags, tent, cots, ammo cans, and my camera gear that far is a pain but we always have more privacy than anyone else.

Prince has officially declared me “punch drunk.” My exhaustion has made me continuously giddy, like I am stoned. I guess carrying a backpack full of equipment on every hike had taken more out of me than I thought. As we set up our tent and cots I start to get silly. I’ve been acting silly since yesterday when we were putting up our tent and had the wrong pole on top. We bent the thing to make it fit, laughing hysterically as we ruined the tent. Tonight we made sure not to get the same tent again. Leave tent #F3 for some other sucker.

Waiting for dinner on the beach I was talking with Dan and the TV crew. When the conversation started they had their backs to the overhang, facing me. Behind them I noticed Kristen was changing. She was a beautiful twenty-year-old and was stripping down to her bikini. I wasn’t staring or anything; I just noticed and went back to the conversation. Then the weirdest thing happened. The trio I was talking to, three men over forty, somehow noticed Kristen behind them. They actually began to rotate around. Before I knew it, I was facing the river and the three drooling deviates were facing the young woman taking off her clothes. The conversation took a major detour. Dan started it off with, “Wow, just look at that overhang. It’s just an amazing wonder of nature.” The others agreed. “Just amazing.”

At this point, I looked over my shoulder and saw Kristen was now taking off her bikini and trying to keep herself covered with a towel. And she was obviously aware they were staring at her. Her face had a look of frustration as she crawled into a sleeping bag to ensure none of the creeps would see any skin as she changed her clothes.

I said, “There’s no way she didn’t notice you guys staring at her while she was changing.”

“Hey, that’s her fault,” one of the men said. “She shouldn’t be walking around with her titties hanging out.”

Whatever.