A Rapid By Any Other Name: Chieftain column 8/11/10

Here's my Chieftain column from last week...this here photo gives a look at some of the new rock in the river at high water.

And Furthermore
Jon Rombach

That resurfacing job on our highway looks great, if I tilt my head so I can see past the crack in my windshield from all the rocks kicked up during the chipseal project. Ah, well, good roads are important and it stimulates the economy. I’ll be swinging by Mountain View Glass for a quote from Joe and Mandy on just how stimulating a new windshield is going to be.

I got that crack driving to Minam for one last rafting trip down the Grande Ronde before the river gets too shallow. All that rain and snowmelt we had a couple months back blew out tons of rock in the section of river near Barnes Spring and, by golly, Wallowa County and the Grande Ronde River have a brand new rapid. It’s a bouncing baby Class II, I’d say. Has its mothers eyes. I floated over right after it was born, and at high water it just kicks up easy waves. At low water, the Grande Ronde now pools up on the right side, then zags left over the new gravel bar through shallow braided channels. Not difficult to negotiate, just interesting to see a new feature.

This new rapid doesn’t have a name yet …I talked with Dennis the BLM river ranger at the boat launch and we briefly discussed this lack of a name. I casually referred to it as Rombach Rapid just to see what he thought, but he didn’t seem to think much. I’m just worried this rapid is going to be named the obvious ‘Barnes Spring Rapid.’ Booooring. No offense, Barnes. The other rapids would just be picking on Barney his whole life. Martin’s Misery will steal lunch money. Minam Roller will start fights. And The Narrows – well, The Narrows is a Class IV and can be something of a bully. Wears a leather jacket. Moved out and got it’s own apartment in Clarkston. Drives a muscle car. You know the type.

Maybe we can do a write-in campaign to name this thing. Whittle your suggestion onto a piece of driftwood and drop it in the Wallowa River. All entries will float down toward the confluence with the Grande Ronde and some might even make it to this rapid I’m talking about. We’ll have Ranger Dennis check in the springtime and if there’s a name on a stick floating in the eddy, then there we go. If not, we go with ‘Barney Rombach Rapid.’ I’m sure the Geographic Names Board will approve of this method. It sounds almost scientific.

I’m disappointed with myself, though, for not being able to come up with a decent name in this situation. Ever since I was a young boy, my dream job has been to grow up and get paid to think of names for colors of housepaint. You ever pay attention to those? Rustic Tangerine. Misty Floormat. I think the paint industry people cut words out of old 18th century novels and cooking magazines, then spinning all the words inside a Bingo ball cage to draw out unlikely matchings when they need to name a new shade of semi-gloss ... ‘OK, people, here we go … our new version of tan shall be … “Croissant” aaaaand … “Countryside.” Oh yes, that’s lovely. Soon all the breakfast nooks of the world will be graced with the gentle hue of Croissant Countryside.’

Actually, that’s not a bad name for a Class II rapid. I’m going to go carve that on some driftwood right now.

Kesey, Cassady, Kerouac: Chieftain column, July 28, 2010

Here's the 'Furthermore' column from the Chieftain from last time around...I don't recall if Fargo ever did get that blue 70's Camaro on the road.


And Furthermore...

Ken Kesey once asked if he could help me. I didn’t know much back then, so I said, Nope, I’m just waiting. Kesey wrote ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,’ ‘Sometimes A Great Notion’ and helped co-author the 1960’s. The man knew more than others about how certain things work. Or stop working.

He also knew some kid was in his barn, staring at his crazy painted bus. Apparently trespassing. I grew up about five miles from Kesey’s farm, in Pleasant Hill, Oregon. My buddy, Fargo Kesey, bought an old Camaro in high school and asked me to help get it on the road. The Camaro was parked in his uncle Ken’s barn. Fargo was late. And that’s how I had my big conversation with literary heavyweight Ken Kesey: Can I help you? Nope.

Years later, I did have questions. What are the odds that the same man, Neal Cassady, would drive Jack Kerouc’s ‘On the Road’ and other work, which helped drive the Beat Generation … then Cassady ends up behind the wheel of Kesey’s bus, Further, helping to drive another cultural shift. Did Cassady use his turn signals so America could brace itself? Did anyone ever ask Neal if they were there yet? Did Cassady ride the brakes, or use them at all?

‘Kerouac, Kesey, Cassady’ became the title and focus of my final research project in college. It was supposed to be a history paper comparing cultural shifts among the Maori in New Zealand with North American tribes, specifically the Blackfoot Indians. My notes from studying abroad in New Zealand got soaked with saltwater during a sailboat wreck in Hawaii. I took an extension on that final paper. Then another. The University of Montana finally hinted that if I wanted my piece of paper with ‘Diploma’ on it, I’d better send them their paper. Soon.

My copy of Kerouac’s ‘The Dharma Bums’ had more notes written in the margins than what survived after my New Zealand research floated around on the bottom of my ruptured boat, so I wrote all night about cultural shifts America experienced because Neal Cassady learned to operate a clutch. If Ken Kesey had asked, ‘Can I help you?’ during that frenzy, I would have said yes. Get this down to FedEx and overnight it to Missoula, would you, Ken?

Japhy Ryder turns the engine off in ‘Dharma Bums,’ sets the e-brake and takes Kerouac for a walk. Shows him the mountains. Gets Jack interested in Buddhism. Slows him down. Gets him to listen for quiet. It almost seems a yang to the full-throttle yin Kerouac picked up from speeding around with Neal Cassady.

This Japhy Ryder is based on Gary Snyder, Pulitzer prize-winning poet who was here in Wallowa County at the Fishtrap writing conference this month. My favorite moment came during a question-and-answer session when someone in the audience explained they had taken a year-long course studying poetry, and the instructor had asked them to answer this question: What is the poet for? They never found the answer. Could Snyder help?

Snyder’s studied Zen Buddhism, so I prepared myself to not understand his answer. To be honest, I didn’t even understand the question and never really understood poetry. What is the poet for? Snyder took two seconds and cleared it all up with the answer: To write poetry. Next question. No wonder he got the Pulitzer, this guy.

I should have asked Ken Kesey what his bus was for when I had the chance.

Slight Chance of Rainbows

What the hail? Wallowa County has been getting slapped with sudden thunder and lightning spurts this week, sometimes with hailstones, often with ripping wind....

These here shots were at the lake yesterday and that monster of a cloud was building quick.

You have to peel your eyes, but there's a chunk of rainbow under the base of the cloud in that upper photo.

Got home and talked to Mom Rombach, who described an identical cloud forming out from her backyard over in Washington State. We think it was the same one, though can't explain the atmospheric anamoly that had it appear in both places at once. Please investigate, Bureau of Clouds.

Bigfoot and Butterflies

‘Where Bigfoot Walks’ is a sturdy title so I pulled that book off the shelf when I was staying in a cabin down in Troy, Oregon between the Wenaha and Grande Ronde rivers earlier this year.

Robert Pyle is the author. He’s a butterfly guru and got on the trail of Bigfoot between netting mariposas. Met him out at the Fishtrap Billy Meadows writing workshop last week and it’s a good thing when you can look into the eyes of whoever typed out some words you’ve processed with your own eyes. Office newsletter, classified ad, whatever. Things make more sense once you put the writer and message together.
So. He’s a helluva guy to walk with through a field full of wildflowers and butterflies. I can vouch for that one. New book, ‘Mariposa Road’ hitting bookstores soon.

Here’s some pictorials from an afternoon at Buckhorn Lookout, perched over Imnaha Canyon.

Grande Ronde N-N-N-Narrows

The lower stretch of the Grande Ronde is miles and miles of gentle flow, then boom, a Class IV. The Narrows. The river gets squeezed on a tight left turn and water interacts with basalt in some interesting ways.

I know one rower who got catapaulted from their boat, right behind their dog which took flight first. There’s a cross on the bank where you stand to scout the rapid, and that tends to add to your concentration.

Morgan and I were shuttling Graning Weed Control through the lower corridor, stopping to spritz noxious weeds with growth inhibitor.

And there were a couple bear sightings, which is always interesting. One of them more than usual. Details here
in the Wallowa County Chieftain report I typed up.

So we take a look at the Narrows this time and the usual left-side sneak is not so sneaky. It wants to push you right into a frothing hole that’s not so inviting. Next option is to dodge some upstream rocks and run right over a shelf of rock that’s got enough water to form a miniature one-foot waterfall-like feature…but we settle on a compromise and decide to just clip the edge of this shelf and squirt down the center, dodging a somewhat menacing rock that’s cutting through the water.

As Morgan is going through fifty yards in front of me, he passes that rock and stands up to wave me further right. OK. I adjust further right. Now I’ll be going over the shelf.

He waves right some more. Right, right, right. OK, I pivot in the relatively slack water above the rapid and move right.

Now Morgan and his passenger are both directing me right and I head for the far side.

Getting closer to game time. Point of no return. I’ll be sliding over that drop in thirty seconds. Water is picking up speed.

Then we stop.

I’d been looking ahead for the best tongue of water to slip over and came to rest on a barely submerged rock, lurking just below the surface.

And there I sat.

Well allrighty. This gave me plenty of time to study the situation and the results were that I was probably going to be running this rapid backwards once I spun the boat off the rock. Swell.

We adjusted the seating arrangement so Jake moved to the back of the boat and Chance bounced up and down while I wrestled with my left oar to spin us off.

Didn’t even have to run the Narrows backwards, which was handy. Down below, Morgan and Bill described that fin rock as much sharper and menacing up close than it looked from the bank. A potential boat ripper they figured called for as much distance as possible.

So that’s my new Narrows strategy. Park on a rock to get a look at things right above the technical stuff and you get a much better perspective that way.

We got home, had just enough time for a laundry scurry and headed back out for a Hells Canyon expedition with high school students from Hood River. River season is moving right along with a few calm moments in between trips. A lot like parking your raft on a rock to look ahead and see what’s coming.

This Week in Raspberries

Elsewhere on the internets this week, the Gearboat Chronicles gives a rundown on our Hells Canyon rafting trip last week, surveying for a rare shrubbery that snubs the rest of the globe and chooses only to reside along Snake River in the HC. Click here for that. Or use that link on right side of this page, lazybones.

The Chieftain column  -- you better sit down for this -- involves a bush in Hells Canyon we went looking for last week. I tried to mix it up a little bit, but there's an outside chance of the weeist bit of overlap. Ah, but it's about thornless raspberries. And who doesn't like raspberries.

Snowed all day yesterday and here it is Seis de Mayo with the woodstove cranked, snow on the ground and more of it 60% likely to fall yet today.

Cat Creek Bat Room in Hells Canyon

Floated Hells Canyon last week and pulled over at Cat Creek, which I'd never stopped at before.

Jordan Manley was telling me about a room in the house where bats holed up and, by golly he was right. I guess. I somehow assumed bat guano would be white. No reason, I just figured it that way. But the floor in there was piled up with blackish looking stuff and while I'd never smelled bat poo before, I'd say that's what it smelled like.

Jordan says he's seen bats pouring out of there and we did see a robin nearby, up in a walnut tree branch. So I'm fairly sure there's some crimefighting going on in Hells Canyon based out of that old house.