There’s something about river guides that many people don’t grasp. For all of the shortcomings attributed to guiding—bad hygiene, excessive hooting, lack of professional drive, fun-hogging—(valid or not) multiday river guides are semi-well-oiled machines. Over the 90-day period of straight gear-schlepping, the days are too long and the river demands are too tiring to not learn to be energy-efficient throughout a season of wilderness living. Fishing, hiking, cooking, rowing, band-aiding, patching, rigging, de-rigging, storytelling, truth stretching; it all takes physical and mental energy. It takes a schedule. It takes an agenda, which both the brain and the body must conform to in order to survive the stretch of summer into fall, to survive high-water nerve-racking into low-water rock-dodging. With such a demanding schedule, it takes the help of a special stimulant.
Caffeine. More specifically. Coffee: the lubricant that keeps the gears grinding and glow plugs fired up. That magical brown, aromatic sludge. Tropical forests have been decimated for it. (I do not endorse this behavior, of course.) Entire countries have built economies upon the back of it. It seems that Starbucks owns 50% stock of the world’s busiest street corners because of it. Just a touch of half & half please.
This essential chemical brings me, along with my compatriots, from the haze of our zombie-like states into the land of the living on those early Middle Fork mornings. Fellow coffee-consumers can concur; by the dregs of cup two, the natural diuretic is lubricating ALL gears.
My eyebrows rise. There’s movement. I double-check my agenda. Day 3. 8:23 am- Sprint for the toilet. Reminder: Watch out for other guides’ dirty tricks. The thing about “the schedule,” it doesn’t necessarily integrate with the schedule of others. With a finite amount of time between flipping the pancakes and breaking down the kitchen for yet another day of whitewater adventure, guides scramble to fit six minutes of private “groover-time” into their mornings. Toilet time is a precious commodity on the river, and things can get messy, even between friends.
A flapjack slaps the griddle with affirmation. The sound of a spatula thrown down in urgency echoes throughout the canyon. I look over and catch McCale’s eye. Her agenda must notate roughly the same as mine on this day. An unfortunate coincidence. We both look up the hill towards the promise land. We fly from the kitchen. I jump the makeshift booby-trap she pre-set last night. Not this time McCale! The trail to the groover is long and neither of us has gone for a jog, or done anything besides row, since the beginning of the season. We’re dogging it. We grab the “key” at the exact same time. The key: a paddle that’s used to show bathroom vacancy depending on its placement. It flexes under both our grasps. We know there’s only one way to solve this conflict, a method older than Martin Litton himself. Rock, paper, scissors.
Rock. What was I thinking?! I knew I should have thrown paper. I lose. Shamefully, I walk away in defeat only to hear squeals of disgust from behind me. McCale, victorious, proudly raised the lid of the river-throne only to find the vault-like toilet filled to the brim with sticks, pine cones and leaves. A squirrel, a marmot, a grouse looking to make a nest? No. A river guest ashamed of having others see his/her deposit, had hurriedly grabbed at anything within grasp to cover up this disgusting…Appauling. Unimaginable. Human. Totally normal. Natural act of bodily waste management. God forbid people know you poop!
This debris cannot remain in the groover. It will clog the United States Forest Services’ groover-cleaning machine and nobody wants to make the USFS angry. McCale and I make eye contact. We both know what needs to happen. She cringes and snaps the rubber-gloves on. I try to hide the smirk. This has been the best game of rock, paper, scissors to ever be lost. I win.