{"id":27906,"date":"2022-10-28T10:00:17","date_gmt":"2022-10-28T17:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/community.nrs.com\/?p=27906"},"modified":"2022-10-24T10:30:26","modified_gmt":"2022-10-24T17:30:26","slug":"sharon-of-the-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community.nrs.com\/duct-tape\/2022\/10\/28\/sharon-of-the-river\/","title":{"rendered":"Sharon of the River"},"content":{"rendered":"

My mom, Sharon, decided that 2021 was her year to get on the river with me. At 67, she\u2019d never slept outside for more than a couple of nights in a row, and she\u2019d never been on a multi-day river trip, even though I\u2019ve worked as a guide my entire adult life.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Nicole Q<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At first, she wanted to come on my October Grand Canyon trip, but it was a charter, booked up by a group from Santa Fe and an astronomer from California. I worried my mom would be an outlier, and I envisioned her on the outside of circles, a satellite or constellation unto herself, hiking alone, or setting up her little tent on the outskirts of beaches.<\/p>\n

I also knew I\u2019d be busy marrying coolers and scrambling from boat to boat, squirreling around for some elusive jar of olives buried deep in the bowels of a dry box, always distracted by a mind trained on guiding, calibrated to survey the whole group and hold individual conversations simultaneously. I\u2019d be too busy to savor sunsets or coffee chats\u2014too scattered to really<\/em> pay attention to mom.<\/p>\n