fall 11 / 24:3 - Grand Canyon River Guides

ager or manager of some sort of radio or tv stations,things like that. It was only in the last maybe ten yearsof his life that he became a real estate broker. I have onesister, so it’s kind of a small family. I grew up as an incurabletomboy. I mean, probably some of my earliestmemories are of me getting in trouble for having goneinto the ocean when I wasn’t supposed to, fallen intothe water, gotten muddy. There’s all kinds of picturesof me completely bedraggled as a little kid with a littlebowl haircut. So I think it kind of made sense that Iwould end up doing something like this. I spent mostof my life just outdoors. We grew up in the suburbs ofthese towns, so it wasn’t like we grew up in the country,but I was outdoors as much as I couldbe. Even when I was akid, I remember being reallyinterested in archaeology.My mom would takeme to local archaeologydigs from the communitycolleges and stuff like that.My mom and my sisterand I spent two and a halfyears in Tucson when I wasseven, eight, nine—right inthere. She and my dad wereseparated, so we moved to thedesert, and I loved it there. Iwas really sorry to leave. Whenthey got back together, wewent back to California. I wasvery sorry to leave, I loved it2.5 year old, Mt. Diablo CAin Tucson. But that waskind of my first introductionto this part ofthe world. My parentshad met at the Universityof Arizona, so theyknew about it, butthat was kind of myintroduction.My mom wouldalways take me toIndian dances. Igrew up going tothe Hopi mesas fordances, and goingout to New Mexicofor the pueblosthere and going totheir dances. Mymom loved thispart of the worldso much. Her interestin it was reallySan Francisco Zoo, 1964.cultural. Mine justsort of started to evolve into more of a natural historyinterest. So I was just fascinated by the rocks and theplants and that kind of stuff.* * *Christa, age 5, with her sister in Tucson, 1967.Steiger: How did you get from that first Hatch tripto actually gettin’ a job?Sadler: Well, that fall I entered Santa Cruz for gradschool, and I wanted to study geology, but kind ofpage 30grand canyon river guides