It was an eight-hour drive from Salt Lake City to the Marble Canyon Lodge. Prince, a Tribune reporter, and I drove down in the company 4×4. The assignment was this: The Feds were flooding the Grand Canyon for a week, letting more water through Glen Canyon Dam than had been seen in ten years. We would be rafting those waters. In normal flows, the huge rapids of the Grand Canyon rate a 10 on a 1 to 10 scale of danger. For a flood like this one they broke the scale and were simply labeled “+”. Only seven rafts would be riding the flood. The assignment of a lifetime.

(Reading it now in 2008, this next paragraph sound so dramatic and ridiculous, but I’m leaving it in anyway.)

My wife was worried for my safety. But even worse I would be missing her birthday. We spent our last day together with our infant son. I told her about various insurance policies to cash in on if I didn’t come back alive. I told her to sell all my photography equipment and buy a house, but keep the Leica. Give it to my boy when he’s old enough to appreciate it. We hugged and I was out the door.

The long drive was a chance to talk. Prince is our roving reporter and had just been in Montana covering the government’s standoff with the Freemen (earlier in the year they had sued him for one billion dollars which they insisted be paid in gold minted coins). He had a story for every town we drove through. There was the man building a huge boat in the land-locked middle of nowhere. And as we drove past the few buildings that made up Big Water he told me about the mayor and his five wives. “Someone told me his wives were really just lesbians,” he said. He also had amazing dirt to dish. “So and so is a drunk.” “So and so is loser.” Then a couple hours were filled with laughter as we played some tapes filled with cordless phone calls recorded off a scanner. Stuff like this:

“You know how I cure my colds? Just get wasted, man. The colds just bail!”

“Didn’t I tell you that until you leave your wife don’t call me?!”

“God has let me know a few things that aren’t generally known by Christians. I know some things about the financial system that even they don’t know.”

We finally got to the Lodge and had dinner with our river guides. The rainbow trout was excellent. I retired to my room and took a steaming bath until all the hot water was gone. It would be my last warm water for a week. The next morning we ate breakfast at the lodge. While I had enjoyed the trout last night, they should have cleaned the grill. The pancakes had a serious fish taste. We tipped well anyway— the Tribune was buying.