I walked across our thick, green lawn and stepped into my dad’s station wagon, the Country Squire model, a Ford, which is the company my pop had worked for my entire life and a good portion of my four siblings’ lives as well. I started the ignition, which was odd, because in my dream I wasn’t yet into my teens and obviously would not have been of legal age to drive. My dream-self was worried, but things seemed to have been put on their course, and there was no turning back now. I shifted into what I thought was Drive, but I had somehow put the car into Reverse and, before I knew it, I was speeding backward through the streets of my old neighborhood, quickly building steam and soon careening out of control.

I awoke with a start and took a moment to gather my thoughts: “Oh good, only a dream. Jeez, what a relief!” The initial panic over, I now moved on to my next thought: “Wait a minute, where am I?” I no sooner asked the question than the world answered. I was on a cot, it was cold, my sleeping bag was covered with frost, and I could hear the sound of a river’s current as it gently tumbled over the rocks of a gravel bar. It was still dark but I remembered that I had set up my cot near the bank of the San Juan River the night before, after my four friends had all retired to their bedrolls.

In an instant, all was clear in my mind, and I shifted mental gears and started to wonder what time it was and whether I should get up and start making a cup of tea. Normally, I would start my day with coffee, but I had wanted to save on weight in my kayak so had brought black tea instead since that way I wouldn’t need to pack my coffee filter holder, filters, and half and half.

Just as I was getting over the disappointment of having to start my day with tea instead of coffee, I heard the first bird of the morning – the twilight song of a robin: long, fluid, and repetitious. My mind turned back to the sound of the river, also fluid and repetitious, but with a hint of foreboding. And then it dawned on me, my dream was a manifestation of my anxiety regarding my impending four-day trip down the San Juan.

Really, there should have been nothing to worry about; after all, everything I had read and heard indicated that the upper reach of the San Juan was a fairly mellow river. Sure, there were a few “class” rapids, but they were all Class 1s and 2s, which meant that they were little more than riffles. But, still, I’ve known many people (including myself) who have flipped in no rapids at all, simply because they were not paying attention and had let themselves get pulled into a “strainer.” What, you ask, is a strainer? Well, it’s when the current of a river runs through the low-hanging branches or other parts of a riparian tree or bush. When this happens, if a paddler is caught off guard, they can be swept from their boat and into the drink. If the current is swift enough and if the strainer is thick enough, the ejected boater can be pinned against the strainer and drowned, or, at the very least, embarrassed.

Only one of our crew, Lin, had previously made a trip down the San Juan, but it had been decades before and needless to say, his memory of the trip was somewhat vague. Additionally, only two of us, Dave and I, had done a significant number of whitewater trips. But I hadn’t done one in many years, and Dave, well Dave, I wasn’t at all worried about him as he was not only a very skilled river runner but also just always seemed to have his wits about him. Dave was the kind of guy who rescued people when they had mishaps, not the guy who needed rescuing.

But again, all this was a moot point. The upper San Juan, from our launch at “Sand Island” to our take-out at “Mexican Hat,” was a mere 27-mile float, barely requiring that a person paddle, let alone do so in a vigorous and highly skilled fashion. We would have pure, unadulterated fun: me and my four friends, each of whom I had known from different periods of my life.

For the sake of context, let me now introduce the crew: Going back the furthest into my past, clear back to high school, was Dan, a friend that I have written about in these pages before. Dan and I have shared many an extreme adventure, including, because it was so epic that I simply must mention it, a motorcycling trip through nine West and Central African countries that lasted many weeks and occurred way back in the early 80s. Now THAT was an adventure that was fraught with peril. To be very clear: the Africans we met were great folks, but the land itself was challenging beyond compare.

When I returned home from that bit of measured insanity, I went to grad school in central California and met Randy, who was another member of this crew and whom I hadn’t seen for many years. I had, however, kept in touch with Randy by phone. I always enjoyed hearing his updates pertaining to living on a chunk of rural land, where he and his family raised goats while Randy also worked as a private contractor building spec homes, and his wife, Maria, was a counselor in a town nearby.

Next was Dave, whom I have already mentioned, but I will add here that Dave and I go back as far as the early 90s when we were both still new to the Arizona Game and Fish Department. We had both worked in the Native Fishes Program – which was where we had both wound up learning how to pilot canoes, kayaks, and rafts down white-water rivers in order to conduct assessments of various endangered fish species.

The fifth person of the crew was Lin, whom I had also worked with thanks to the Game and Fish. Lin and I worked together in the late 90s back in my Yuma days. Lin has the distinction of being the single most knowledgeable field biologist I have ever met. As with Dan, Lin and I have also shared many recent outdoor experiences that I have written about in the pages of this magazine.

Now that this diverse but highly compatible assemblage of old friends has been briefly described, there is something else worth noting. Throughout the voyage, it was the oddest of sensations to be travelling with people all of whom I knew very well, but who did not yet know each other. Perhaps the best way to convey my perception of the situation is to reveal that I sometimes felt that I had recently died and was now looking down from the Great Beyond at my own funeral, the type of situation at which different people from different periods of one’s life finally meet. Fortunately, the trip wasn’t about me, and thankfully my friends seldom told detailed Rob stories (only the occasional anecdote that typically highlighted how big a nitwit I can be), so it was generally easy to turn our focus to where it needed to be: the stunning scenery that surrounded us.

About now, perhaps you’re wondering how it was that the five of us all wound up taking this river trip together. The answer is not exactly simple: in 2019, another friend, Kirk, suggested I put in for a San Juan permit (the San Juan is on a lottery-style permitting basis). I was lucky enough to get drawn for the maximum five slots, and at that time Kirk had three other friends who wanted to make the trip with us. However, when the dates of the trip rolled around in 2020, COVID had hit and the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency that manages the Utah portion of land through which the San Juan flows, cancelled all 2020 trips. Fortunately, the BLM did allow the cancelled permits to be “carried forward” to the exact same dates in 2021. By the time 2021 came around, Kirk and his buds could no longer make those dates, and I wound up just asking four of my pals to join me.

Enough ancient history. Let me now get back to that first morning, early morning, along the banks of the San Juan, where, before long, the gloaming’s first robin had been joined by the sweet song of a Spotted Towhee, which signaled to me that it was time to get up and boil a small pot of water. By the time I was drinking my first cup of tea, most of the gang had arisen and were, likewise, preparing their morning hot beverages prior to our getting down to the tedious business of shuttling vehicles and preparing our boats for launch.

Having set the stage for the actual paddling portion of our trip, I now wind down Part 1 of this story. Next month, I will conclude my river diary by compressing 27 miles of the San Juan River into about 1700 woefully inadequate words. For now, however, imagine if you will the unique sensation that comes from pushing off from shore and heading downstream and into the great unknown.