fall 11 / 24:3 - Grand Canyon River Guides

I would go in front of him, and he would hold ontomy backpack. At first, I find out I’ve got a blind guy onmy trip, I’m like, “What kind of experience is he gonnahave? How can we possibly do anything with this guy?It’s the Grand Canyon, it’s a visual experience.” And itwas so amazing to me, because his experience of theplace obviously was very different from mine. When Iwas hiking with him, I started off by trying to explainevery rock in the path, “Oops, go to the left here, oop,we’re gonna step down.” And after a while he said, “Youdon’t have to tell me that much, I can usually feel itpretty well.” And it got to the point that towards theend of the trip we’d hike for hours and we would neversay anything about the trail. We’d have conversations,or we’d be in silence, but I just learned how to slightlyexaggerate my movements, if I was stepping off a rock,so that he knew there was a downstep, or step to theleft slightly. And the only time I would ever need tosay anything was, “Oh, you’ve got about three inchesbetween a prickly pear and an agave, so go really carefully.”And he loved it. He would come back just filledwith cactus spines, beaten up, scraped up. We’d pull thecactus spines out of him and bandage him up. I thinkthat’s where I kind of—it really gelled, that my job isnot to do everything for these people. My job is notto be everything, or keep them safe from everything,or make sure that they have this particular kind ofexperience. My job is to be there, and help them havewhatever experience it is they are gonna have. I askedhim at the end of the trip if he wouldn’t mind describingto the group what did you “see,” experience, whileyou were here? And he described the sounds, how hecould tell the differences between the side canyons bythe way they sounded, or the way the walls felt. It wasjust a really powerful thing, because I wasn’t…I mean,I was part of that in the sense that I helped him hike tothose places, but I wasn’t part of it in the sense that hehad completely his own experience. I really appreciatedthat, I loved that. To me, that was one of the best tripsI’ve done as a guide. It was like the true meaning ofbeing a guide is to just be there to facilitate, but not tohave the experience for the person.* * *Steiger: After There’s This River… you’ve publisheda couple of others. I’m sorry that I don’t know yourwhole bibliography, but I know I’ve seen several books.Sadler: You haven’t been following my career?!(laughter)Steiger: I can barely remember my own, much lessthose of my friends!Sadler: Well, I’ve got the book Life in Stone. That’sbasicallysort of thehistory oflife on theColoradoPlateau,so I’ve gotthat out.And thenjust a lotof journalarticles andmagazinearticles andthings likethat. I likenatural historywriting,because itnever felt tome like I wasgoing to beone of those people who was out there doing primaryresearch, being the p.i. in an investigation, and scientificresearch, and teaching at a college, and gettingtenure and all that. I love research, but I like the kindof research that goes with writing to translate thingsfor the public. That’s always been my love. I’m glad Ihave the training that I have [a Masters from nau inEarth Sciences], because it allows me to talk to researchersand translate their research, translate theirresults, and then turn it into something that hopefullyis useful to people who aren’t trained. I don’t know, Ithink geology’s really interesting. (laughs) And I thinkwhen people say, “Oh, geology, that’s really boring,”it’s probably because they had really boring teachers,or nobody ever helped them connect the dots. I mean,especially if you’re spending all your time in a placelike the Grand Canyon. But everywhere, it’s really funto know what this place used to look like before wegot here, and what it might look like in the future, andjust to know how mountains were formed, or oceanswere formed, or things like that. I think that’s kind ofbecome more of my focus with the river trips now, isdoing like I mentioned, these educational trips, becausethere’s nothing saying you can’t do that while you’realso going downstream and having a blast. So you canhave the water fights and the hikes and doing all thatkind of stuff, and having a wonderful time, and justsitting and enjoying the scenery, but it’s also, I think it’sreally wonderful for people to have a sense of the placethey’re traveling through as well—all aspects of it, thebiology, and how the river works, and the Indians thatboatman’s quarterly review page 35