River Guide Mark

Forward

This is a river story about my friend Mark. He and I had been friends since 1983. Mark died March of 2010. We ran rivers, camped, mountain biked and spent a lot of time together over the years. I wrote this story for his family. Mark had this subtle, submissive, sneaky sense of humor. Sometimes you wanted to clomp him over the head with an oar, but instead would end up just cracking up.

For my dear friend Mark who I think about every oar stroke on the river.

Mark and I were on the Upper Salt River in Arizona with some friends rafting and camping for the weekend.  Commercial river trip buses were pulling up and unloading people who had come for a big day of white water rafting. A guide from Desert Voyagers came over to our campsite in a panic. He knew I had previous river guiding experience. “Heather, we are short a guide and our guests are here! Can you be a guest guide for us?”  I must say I felt quite proud as I took great pride in my previous river guiding experiences. It was okay with Mark and our group of friends for me to abandoned ship and work a commercial trip.

After all the guests were loaded into the boats, the Desert Voyager’s lead guide realized they were still down one more boatman. He came over to me as I was gathering up my life jacket and getting ready to head over to my boat of paddlers.  He asked me if I knew of anyone else who could guide a commercial trip. I said that Mark had paddle-captioning experience. I neglected to add the fact that his experience was from running rivers privately, not working as an actual “river guide” as I had.

Without even giving it any thought, Mark comfortably agreed to paddle captain a boat for them. He passed by me now sitting in my boat on the shore with my customers and smiled at me without any concerns or anticipation of his “inexperienced” predicament. Mark’s raft, full of waiting people, was next to mine. He climbed in and all of his guests immediately looked to him for leadership and guidance. I began my safety and paddle talk with my crew. I could see Mark watching my every word out of the corner of my eye. I introduced myself and got everyone’s name. Mark immediately did the same thing with his crew. Then Mark looked over at me and was clearly waiting for me to say my next set of paddle instructions. I began, “The first thing you want to do is to remember to keep your hand on the top of the paddle so if we hit something, your paddle won’t hit a person.” Suddenly, I hear the echo of my words, “Now friends, it is important to put your hand on the paddle so that…” Other than the, “now friends” part, he repeated my words, verbatim. Copycat Mark continued.  He did not even try to be subtle about it. He turned his body all the way around to watch me speak and then quickly turned back to his crew and repeated my words. His crew watched Mark’s copycat behavior and had a look of worry on their faces. I think someone even asked, “Can I go in her boat.”

The paddle talk came to an end and boaters began to paddle out into the big eddy to practice what we had discussed with our customers. I was practicing paddle strokes with my crew for about 30 seconds and looked back to see how Mark was doing but he was GONE! He was no longer in his boat! I keep staring at the raft he was once in and thinking maybe I got the boats mixed up.  Suddenly, Mark’s big sombrero-type hat, floated out from behind his raft like a little sailboat. “Mark, where are you?” I hollered. I was wondering how he could have fallen out of the boat, it was total flat water; a slow moving big swirl of an eddy. Next thing I know, his crew is pulling soaking wet Mark, their boat captain, back into the raft. I even remember someone saying, “I’ve got his hat!”

This started a chain of laughter with all of the people also floating around in the eddy that Mark and I had come to camp and raft with. Since Mark and I were now acting as “official” river guides, our friends were going to just follow us down the river. They sat in my boat waiting for us to go, all the while watching Mark’s “guiding” antics. They watched the whole episode of Mark completely copying my paddle talk and then falling off the back of his raft before even reaching moving water. Our friends were laughing so hard that they were falling inside the boat and on top of each other. They were pointing at Mark and howling. This got me to laughing and heckling Mark as well. Mark’s helpless crew was watching their captain get laughed at. They looked terrified about their predicament with their questionable “leader.” Mark just started barking out paddle commands as though nothing had happened. He totally ignored our heckling and immersed himself with his guests.  Eventually, Mark and I followed the other ten or so Desert Voyagers boats out of the eddy and into the down stream channel.

All boats had clean runs through the rapids which were the Upper Salt day stretch classics: Maytag, Mother Rock, Grumin and Overboard. We pulled over for lunch that had been prepared by the shuttle bus drivers out on a big sandy beach. Mark got in line before the guests and was inappropriately nibbling on ham, turkey and tomato slices with his hands as he went through the food line. (He referred to this free-for-all nibbling as “Yogie-ing around.” As in Yogie the Bear gobbling his way through picnic baskets.) He made a plate and wandered of to eat while the rest of us “professional” river guides, respectfully waited at the end of the line for our customers to get their food first.

Mark was out on some rock finishing lunch while “we” guides were still in line waiting to eat. “He’s a piece of work,” said one of the Desert Voyager guides looking at Mark who was laying in the sun with his hat over his head, wearing his wet mid-thigh cut off jeans and beat up flip flops; not even Tevas!

After lunch, the guests and guides were all drying out on the warm rocks and visiting.  I ended up sitting with some of the paddlers who were in Mark’s boat and they were talking about the different rapids they had run before lunch. “Oh, did you see that huge hole we missed in Bubbles Rapid?” said one,

“Yeah, and how about how big that wave that was in, Dishwasher Rapid!”

“There are no ‘Bubbles’ and ‘Dishwasher” rapids?’” I thought. Then I realized the fact that Mark had no idea what the names of the different rapids were. He never had a reason to know them before when running private trips, so he just made them up when his passengers asked. “Bubbles… Dishwasher…?” Those don’t even sound like rapids!” I giggled.

On the second part of the day, all the guides, including Mark, glided smoothly through Exhibition, which was the last big rapid. I felt a sigh of relief we made it through the day without Mark having anymore boating incidents. Down on the lower stretch before Cibecue Creek, the river widened a bit and there were several rocks that were easy to avoid but could flip a boat. I have no idea how he managed it, but Mark hit one of those rocks. The next thing I saw was the bottom of his raft popping up in the air like a ping-pong ball and eight people haphazardly flapping about in the water. The boat righted itself with the loss of its passengers and everyone, one at time, managed to clamber back on. By the time I caught up and floated past Mark’s recovered situation, he had them all laughing and slapping high fives with their paddles; a guide trick he learned from me earlier in the day. There was not an angry or upset soaked passenger aboard; just bursts of laughter and merriment. I was bewildered.

The day came to a close and our customers were all preparing to get back on the bus. Mark’s crew all shook his hand, talked of their great day and bid him farewell as though they had all been long lost friends. “How does he pull off a day, with all of his screw ups, and still sends away seven thrilled passengers who knew he was no ‘professional’ river guide?” I thought. My paddle crew drifted off to the bus without even saying a “goodbye.”

That night, we were all back in camp carrying on about Mark’s first river guiding experience and how he repeated my words during the paddle talk, how he fell out of his own raft in flat water, how he made up “Bubbles” and “Dishwasher” rapid names, and then how he managed to dump his whole crew out of the boat on a rock that one would have to TRY to hit. We were all just laughing away at Mark. “Ha ha, Mark is so funny. Ha ha! Let’s all laugh at Mark!”

“So Heather,” says Mark, interrupting our laughter. “Did you get a tip from your padding crew today?”


“Noooo?” I said sheepishly.

Mark then pulls a wad of wet random bills from his front pocket. He begins to count. “I got two $20’s, two 10’s and two 5’s. I got $70 bucks,” he said. “Is that about the average tip for a river guide?”

My mouth dropped, I looked at Mark and our friends sitting around on the picnic table. Mark just smiled at me and stuffed the money back in his pocket. We stopped laughing at Mark.

About a week later, I was paying for some food in a drive through and came up a few cents short. I started feeling around in the side pocket of my car for some spare change. I felt some folded up paper. I pulled it out and there was a previously river-soaked $20, a $10 and a $5, exactly half of Mark’s tip money that he had stashed in there for me to find. Just as Mark’s paddle crew that day, I was not planning on such a delightful surprise. Mark, river guide extraordinaire!

By Heather Glass