Stone-age Rafting
By Ann Vileisis

Tim and I are old-school boaters. We pump up our raft by hand, bolt together four planks to make a wooden frame, and then tie it on with a motley assemblage of webbing and rope. An old piece of luggage carries our pots, and we still use leaky black bags lined with plastic to store food.

We are "anti-new" in part because we despise the decadent over-consumption that seems to mark our age, but also because the two of us share a quirky trait. We both develop attachments to favorite gear and then hate to get rid of it-particularly if it can still serve some function. The leaky black bags remind Tim of his days rafting the Stanislaus River in California before it was dammed. I sewed our throwbag stuffsack from an old pair of ranger pants I wore while volunteering at Canyonlands National Park. We love to use things up fully-turning usable parts of old gear into new gear. Worn out dry bags resurface as patches for less-old dry bags. Tim built the raft frame with leftover lumber from his brother's garage. Every piece of gear on our boat has an origin story, and we would like each piece to have a reincarnation story. From our point of view, the perfect piece of boating gear is one that has been or can be recycled.

Each time we rig the raft for a trip, our humble outfit seems more and more archaic in comparison to other rafts at the put in. This time, our boat is laden with gear for a 40-day adventure-a 470-mile trip through the Green River in Colorado and Utah. Just upstream, a group of more-modern boaters rigs a fleet of blue rafts gleaming under aluminum frames, pumpkin-orange dry bags, and a suite of metal boxes and calf-sized coolers. I have forgotten how primitive our little gray raft looks with its shoestring-tied-on bail bucket until I see these elegant self-bailers bobbing next to us. As I crank down on a rope to tie off a trucker's hitch, I hear the other boaters chuckle at our set up.

"Hey, don't you guys even have a cam-strap?" one good-natured, beer-bellied fellow finally asks as he pulls at a scraggly graying beard sprouting from his chin. I smile and point to the only cam strap we own, an orange one-found half-buried on a beach-that now belts our tiny cooler shut. "Is THAT the only cooler you have?" he asks. "If you don't mind me asking, what are you going to EAT?" He belly laughs.

"Lots of catfish and sand," I jest back. After his chortling subsides, I explain that we've brought simple but hearty fare.

"Well, that's cool," he concedes as he pulls a beer from his drag bag, pops it open, and then lifts the can in a mock toast. "Me, I like my creature comforts!" He howls uproariously with infectious good humor that prompts us to join in his laughter.

After we push off and wave good-bye, our modest outfit once again grows in my estimation, unimpeded by comparison to other craft. From my banana-yellow, Prijon T-Slalom kayak, just as archaic as our raft, I watch how easily our stone-age raft responds to Tim's masterful oar strokes, moving deftly through the first rapids below Flaming Gorge Dam. We pass through Red Canyon, Swallow Canyon, 40 miles of meanders to the crimson walls of Lodore Canyon, then through Whirlpool Canyon and Split Mountain Gorge, where we shoot out into a hundred-mile, flatwater reach.

There's nothing like flatwater for inspiration. While whitewater engages a boater in the present moment with the need for quick moves, rowing flatwater-several long, windy days of flatwater-provokes thought. It starts the mind wandering. No matter how burley and strong you are, no matter how your pectorals bulge, after several days of rowing into wind, you begin to daydream about how it might be easier. If only you could set up bicycle pedals hitched to a propeller or jerry-rig a sail to tack directly into the wind. Maybe using the bail bucket as a sea anchor would help. Flatwater is the mother of all invention.

This morning, a long stretch of flatwater compels Tim to scheme up a new idea. "Do you see any rocks on that cobble bar about six inches long and two inches in diameter?" he calls over to me. I could tell he'd concocted a plan by the precision of his request and the crinkled lines on his forehead.

I paddle my kayak over to the bar, hop out and manage to find two red stones of similar weight and shape. I rinse off the silt and stonefly carapaces, place the rocks on my spray skirt and ferry them downstream to the raft. As I hand the cobbles up to Tim, I ask, "What are they for?"

"You'll see," he says with the smile of a kid who can barely wait to tell a secret.

I watch as he sets blade angles, suspends the rocks with parachute cord on the underside of the blue oar shafts-just beside the handles, and then duct tapes the hell out of them. "Look Annie," Tim exclaims. "Counter-balanced oars!"

Because oarlocks support oars one-third of the way down the shaft, two thirds of the oar and its blade hang heavily beyond the raft. While this imbalance gives a rower good leverage, holding up the oar on every return stroke can also tire a rower out. Offsetting the weight of the blade with a counterbalance near the oar's handle makes rowing easier. Tim's idea isn't entirely original. Years before at a boating shop, we'd drooled at the pricey, counter-balanced oars Sawyer sells. Tim had decided that someday, when he reached geezerhood, he'd indulge and buy them. But after four pensive days of flatwater rowing in the middle of nowhere, he had to have them NOW.

To try out the oars, Tim turns the boat and pulls downstream. After three vigorous pulls, he's flying. "I can't believe how much easier this is!" he shouts with the delight of a crackpot inventor. "Why didn't I do this twenty years ago?"

I now have to paddle my kayak harder to keep up with the raft. "You see," he explains as he pulls, "twenty percent of the effort of rowing is the return stroke-moving the oars back into position to pull again-but these rocks take the weight off my arms. The return stroke is nothing! You're going to flip when you try these!"

I have to admit that, despite the physics, I'm suspect of those river cobbles duct-taped to our oars. They make our boat look even more primitive, in fact, downright Flintstonian. But when I take my turn rowing into the wind later that afternoon, I'm sold: "These rocks make the oars feel weightless in my hands! What a great innovation!" Our rock-weighted oars propel our raft through the blackfly-infested flatwaters of Ouray National Wildlife Refuge and the splendid canyons of Desolation and Gray. We muse about the appropriate nature of our stone-age technology in the stone-encrusted landscape surrounding us.

On day 21, at the boat ramp in Green River, Utah, where we stop to buy groceries-including one of the town's famous watermelons--we are once again anchored next to a fleet of sleek, self-bailing rafts rigged for a five-day trip through Cataract Canyon. This time, a Hawaiian-shirted boater comes over with a grin and says, "I've been admiring your counter-balanced oars."

Tim beams as he packs onions into a recycled bag. "They're the greatest, simplest invention!" he explains. "And the best part is I made them myself-for about 2 cents worth of duct tape!" The Hawaiian-shirted boater laughs and nods. "I've got duct tape," he says, "so I think I'll stop at the first cobble bar and pick up some rocks."

Through the hundred, gorgeous, flatwater miles of Labyrinth and Stillwater Canyons, Tim pulls on the rock-weighted oars and enjoys his weightless return stroke thousands of times each day. Then after the Colorado River adds its muscular flow, he rows through Cataract Canyon before the final push through 30 miles of flooded river in Lake Powell. The wind gusts fiercely, so we anchor up in a shady alcove to wait it out as powerboats and jet skis scream by. Then after the sun drops low, we take turns rowing through the quiet, starlit night. "You know," Tim reflects, "it would have taken thousands of years of tumbling for these rocks to make the trip they've just made attached to my oars."

When we reach Hite Marina, we face the sad task of packing up our wonderful wilderness adventure into the back of the van. We also confront civilization at its motorized worst. One fume-belching truck after another backs down the ramp and unloads a powerboat or jet ski right next to us. I think I might get sick. When it comes time to pack up the oars, Tim pulls off the duct tape and removes the elongated cobbles. I watch as he puts the stones down on the concrete boat ramp and then, after a few moments consideration, picks them up and nests them in the back of the van. "Are you going to save those rocks?" I ask.

"No," he answers, "I'll find two more at the next put in. But I can't quite leave these river rocks here at the edge of Powell Mudhole. They've served me so well, I want to at least return them to a real river where they can keep on being cobbles."

After driving about two hours from Hite, we come to the San Juan River. Tim pulls over just beyond the bridge, turns off the engine, opens the van's back doors and extricates the two river cobbles from beneath the mountain of gear. We each take one and walk down to the silty river's edge. With cottonwood leaves rustling overhead, we hurl the stones into the current. With two sonorous kerplunks they disappear, two pieces of perfect gear, recycled to tumble once again in a flowing river. "Thank you." Tim says.

Stone-Age Boating, Vileisis, P.