Getting a New View of Native Lands

It was my fourth night on Utah’s Green River, and I was in a deep, exhausted sleep. One clearly spoken sentence jolted me awake: “Peter, there’s a bear behind your tent.”

I jumped out in my boxers with flashlight in hand. The bear was just across a shallow stream leading to the main river, and it rose up on a rock overlooking camp. In the dim moonlight, the beast’s phosphorescent eyes stood out like beacons in the glow of my flashlight.

At the beginning of the trip I had asked Rick Chapoose, my Ute Indian rafting guide, what he did when bears came into his camp. “I just tell them to go away,” he had said in his soft Western accent. I wondered at the time whether this was some dream catcher-Father Earth-gentle steward gibberish.

But there was Rick, cigarette in one hand and flashlight in the other, looking at the bear and saying, “Go ‘way!”

The bear stayed put. I calculated it could cross the stream, climb the bank and be all over me in 2 1/2 minutes.

While Rick talked to the bear, I picked up the biggest pot I could find and banged on it with a large spoon. I didn’t stop until the glowing eyes slipped back into the dark.

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The Green River enters Utah south of the Wyoming border at Flaming Gorge and flows along the eastern side of the state until it joins the Colorado River in Canyonlands National Park, 100 miles north of the Navajo reservation. In this wild country, the river cuts through massive amphitheaters of stone that can take a man’s loud cry and wrap its echoes around a canyon bend. In the heat of midday nothing moves but the river and fat catfish rising to its surface.

A last-minute family cancellation for this August trip two summers ago limited our group to Rick, his partner Debbie Ducey, two mixed Labs named Lucky and Little Bear, and me. Rick supplied the rafting expertise, Debbie the organization, and the dogs the early warning system.

I love adventure travel and reading about Native Americans, and my teaching experience in the Peace Corps in Samoa and Thailand heightened my enjoyment of and desire for cross-cultural experiences.

So when I saw the small ad in the back of a Men’s Journal magazine for a rafting trip on the Green River with a Native American guide, I was intrigued. I could study the river system as well as the people who had lived around it for centuries with the help of Rick, a full-blood Northern Ute, the people for whom the state was named.

There are other rafting outfitters on the Green, of course, but I chose Rick’s company because of the intimacy of the group and his depth of knowledge and experience. Rick specializes in small groups--10 or fewer--including families with kids as young as 5. He teaches the history of and gives information on the flora and fauna of the section of river that explorer John Wesley Powell named Desolation Canyon in 1869.

Rick’s roots run deep here; he has been rafting people down the Green for years, as did his father before him.

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We put in at the ranger station called Sand Wash, a former ferry crossing for cowboys that’s down 25 miles of bad road from Fort Duchesne. Near the end of the road was a narrow canyon with a flat mesa looking down on it.

“Perfect place here for an Indian ambush,” I said to Rick.

“I know,” he said. “I wanted to put a line of Utes on horses up there all colored up in war paint for the tourists.”

From Sand Wash we would float 90 miles south on this meandering river to the town of Green River. You won’t see a single active settlement on either bank along this stretch. In fact, three-quarters of the length of the river’s east bank is Northern Ute reservation, off-limits to non-Indians. Ten miles from Sand Wash, the river enters Desolation Canyon, where surrounding peaks start at 5,000 feet and rise to more than 8,000 in the heart of the canyon. Cell phones don’t work, and speedboats and motorized personal watercraft aren’t allowed. There are no shops for food or drink.

But there are terrific stops along the way. Indian petroglyphs, 1,000 years old, are only a few minutes’ walk from the river at Flat Canyon Rapid, two miles south of Cedar Ridge.

An abandoned moonshiner’s shack is squeezed into a cave along one slope of Firewater Canyon. We saw two abandoned ranch sites, complete with sheds, ranch house remains, fenced-in corrals, irrigation ditches and fruit trees picked clean by wildlife. There are bubbling cold springs in tree-covered glades for cooling off in, and riverbank beaches wide and clean except for whitened animal bones.

Wild horses graze on the hillsides, and wild cattle, possibly survivors from the failed ranches, gather at the river in the morning to drink. Wildlife abounds. We saw black bear (twice), beaver, white-tailed prairie dogs, jack rabbit, huge catfish, pronghorn antelope, marmot, eagle and Rocky Mountain goat. We spotted cougar tracks and beaver sand slides, formed when the rodents slip down into the river from clumps of foliage and leave a neat groove. We got a whiff of skunk, which stayed out of view.

The Green River has Class 1 to 3 rapids, mild to moderate, with waves high enough for a dousing but not high enough to be life-threatening. Anyone can make this trip, really. For some, it’s not so much the ferocity of the white water as the isolation from modern civilization that may be the deciding factor.

Green River rapids aren’t as powerful as those of the Colorado as it sluices through the Grand Canyon, but the sparse population in the Utah hinterlands means the land through which the Green flows, overseen by the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management, is well preserved.

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If you’ve read about the mountain men of the Old West, you’ve read about the Green; it was prime beaver habitat and the source for pelts bartered at yearly rendezvous in the 1830s along its northern branch in Wyoming. Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch also knew the Green. It’s part of the Outlaw Trail that ran from New Mexico through Utah to Hole-in-the-Wall, Wyo.

For a party of 10, Chapoose Canyon Adventures prepares two 18-foot Rikens, oar-rigged rafts that hold lots of food and equipment, and enough two-man rubber kayaks, called duckies, to accommodate those who prefer self-propulsion. There’s also at least one “swamper” to help with camp setup and cooking. Besides making and breaking camp--the hard work of unloading, setting up the kitchen, cooking, dishwashing, reloading and securing--outfitters set up the “groover,” or portable toilet, mandatory on the Green. Rangers check for these and other items such as life vests and first-aid kits at the Sand Wash put-in.

Our small party tackled the river in one Riken, in which Rick navigated with gear and dogs, and in a ducky, which I shared with Debbie for most of the river and all of the rapids.

The rapids on the Green change with the season. In spring the force of the water is greatest and the ride the fastest. But later in the season, as water levels recede, rapids may switch from one bank of the river to the middle or the opposite bank. Some of the better white water is at Rock Creek Rapid, where the ghost ranch of the same name spreads out; Joe Hutch Rapid, which shoots raft bows toward the sky; and Wire Fence Rapid, which curves and forces boats into a central washing machine-like current that peters out at a magnificent white sand beach.

The campsites were as memorable to me as the rapids. The rapids could be navigated in five minutes, but the nights seemed to go on forever. The crickets were so loud the first night at Sand Wash that I tossed and turned. It was only over coffee the next morning that Rick said he heard me snoring. I must have slept--but I didn’t feel as though I had.

The second night was relatively quiet, and the fourth night was the bear.

And then there was Night 3.

Around Mile 50, the skies clouded over and the wind picked up. We set up camp early just below the abandoned Rock Creek Ranch.

After helping unload, I set up my tent while supper was prepared, choosing a flat spot between sagebrush bushes. It was fairly open country with paths leading to a canyon and north to the ranch. But the wind made cooking impractical, so we had a snack and retired just as the rain began to patter.

It was just getting dark when the storm hit with fury. Thunder boomed, and lightning illuminated the valley. With a fierce crack, lightning struck the peak right across the river. An eerie light filled the canyon, and a humming sound reverberated from the peak. The wind howled against the tent, which felt like a sail about to lift off.

Suddenly I felt something warm and furry leaning against my feet from outside the tent. I had seen enough bear tracks and scat along the riverbed to conclude I was toast--or dinner.

Cautiously, I peeked out. It was Little Bear, the Lab, trying to get out of the wind and rain. Little Bear, it turned out, was a good bluff but a bit of a coward at heart. I saw parts of myself in her, and we had bonded.

There she was, shaking, just like me. (Rick and Debbie didn’t use a tent; they slept in bags under a tarpaulin with little room for dogs.) Little Bear figured an Eastern greenhorn might be of help, and I welcomed the company. She relaxed, leaning against my feet as the storm spent its fury. Then she trotted away to find Lucky.

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The next morning, like most mornings on the Green, was clear and fresh, and all of us acted as though nothing had happened. After three hours of drifting quietly, then calmly bobbing up and down the last soft rapids at Three Fords, we entered Gray Canyon. The rugged mountains with tree and sagebrush slopes changed to the rock formations of Navajo country. Flat-topped mesas, the hallmarks of John Ford movies, appeared. Red rock walls abutted the river, and desert vistas stretched across a far horizon.

Rick had told me that when he takes businessmen down this river, they talk about office matters for the first two days and finally begin to relax on the third. Just when they start to see, they have to pack up and leave.

It hadn’t been quite that way for me because I knew I had found what I wanted on the first day. Still, I too had changed on this old river. I could tell by sparkles on the water’s surface whether rapids were coming, and I could see by its eddies how big a rock the waters hid. I could follow a submerged beaver by the stream of bubbles it released as it explored the depths. And I could dig my toes deep in the white sand of the riverbank, where bones and driftwood gather, and count myself lucky for having this river come into my life at least once.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Guidebook: Rafting on the Green

Getting there: From LAX, nonstop service is available on Delta and Southwest, and connecting service (change of planes) is offered on United, American and America West. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $134.

Major rental car companies are represented in Salt Lake City.

Greyhound bus leaves Salt Lake City daily for the scenic ride through Park City and Sundance to Roosevelt, Utah, the closest large town to the Sand Wash put-in. Fare is $30 one way.

Bighorn Express, (888) 655-RIDE (655-7433), runs a shuttle bus from Moab to Salt Lake City for $49 for your return after the trip.

Where to stay: Frontier Motel & Grill, 75 S. 200 East, Roosevelt, UT 84066; (800) 248-1014, fax (435) 722-2212. Doubles $53.

Best Western Inn, Route 1, Box 2860, East Highway 40, Roosevelt, UT 84066; (435) 722-4644, fax (435) 722-0179, www.bestwestern.com/prop_45055. Doubles $65.

Moab overnight: There’s not much happening at the rafting takeout in the town of Green River. You’ll be better off to go 40 miles southeast to Moab, known for mountain bike trails and as the gateway to Arches National Park.

Red Stone Inn, 535 S. Main, Moab, UT 84532; (800) 772-1972, fax (435) 259-2717,

www.moabredstone.com.

Rooms for two people are $64.95-$69.95.

Arranging a trip: I went with Chapoose Canyon Adventures, (877) 722-4072, www.chapoose.com. A five-day Green River trip, all meals included, costs $998 for adults, $549 for children 15 and younger.

Among other outfitters on the Green River:

World Wide River Expeditions, (800) 231-2769, www.worldwideriver.com.

Western River Expeditions, (800) 453-7450, www.westernriver.com.

Sheri Griffith Expeditions, (800) 332-2439, www.griffithexp.com.

With transport for your equipment and a permit from the Bureau of Land Management’s Desolation Canyon river unit, (435) 636-

3460 or (435) 636-3622, www.blm.gov/utah/price, you can take your own raft down the Green, or you can use an outfitter.

For more information, consult the annual “Utah Rivers and Outdoor Adventures” pamphlet from InterWest Publications, 775 Dahlia St., Denver, CO 80220; (303) 333-5781, www.utahguides andoutfitter.com.

For more information: Moab Area Travel Council, (800) 635-

6622, www.discovermoab.com.

Utah Travel Council, Capitol Hill/Council Hall, 300 N. State St., Salt Lake City, UT 84114; (800) UTAH-FUN (882-4386), (800) 200-1160 or (801) 538-

1030, fax (801) 538-1399, www.utah.com.