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I
put her arm in a cardboard splint and planned to send her out at the
frst opportunity, but she refused to leave the party. After the ten-day
trip, she few to Miami, where her arm was x-rayed and placed in a
plaster cast. Her husband Charles wrote me that the arm was indeed
broken but did not need to be reset.
When
1972 rolled around, we were all shocked at river guide Jack Brennan’s
passing. And this was followed up with the bad news that Harry Aleson
was seriously ill and had entered the hospital at Prescott, Arizona. I
drove down to see him and Harry died soon after. Those were sad days
for all of us, as we had developed such a tight bond with each other.
She
directed my eyes with her walking stick and I saw a delightful
pictograph that I had never seen before. We happily discussed her great
discovery for a little while and then, mounting knothead,, I headed
down canyon to set up camp. Edna waited there for other party members
to catch up so that they’d not miss her discovery. So, now, whenever I
pass that same site, I always look up and wave at “Edna’s Kokopelli.”
In
February 1973, Edna dropped me a note that she heard that the Sierra
Club was to take a trip into Grand Gulch in April. Edna wrote, “Ye
Gods—poor Gulch will be worn out—It’s mine!”
By
1979 her health diminished. Sugar diabetes hampered her activities and
it was more diffcult for her to get around. From time to time she did
get to drive about, but it was a growing problem. She had taken her
last trip with me.
In
February 1984, Edna entered the hospital for the removal of a colon
tumor. She refused chemotherapy treatments and bemoaned the fact that
she couldn’t take any more trips. While recuperating, she wrote: “It’s
mighty hard to refrain from getting behind that wheel and rolling down
the road on a sunny day.”
She
wrote to me once, “When you’re looking at Broken Bow, think of me.”
When I last visited it a couple or so years ago, I did think of her and
her wonderful arch. She died about that same time, expressing to the
end her great love for the canyons.
Edna & Ken
She
came to know most of the boatmen guides and wranglers who worked with
me during the 1960s and 70s. Besides myself, there were river guides
Jack Brennan, Harry Aleson, Brad Dimock, Cliff Rayle, Bob Shelton and
Den Lehman. Among the wranglers and guides were Reeves Baker, Mac
LeFevre, Bill Adams, Owen Severance, Vaughn Short, and Pete Steele.
And, of course, our infamous pilot, Bill Wells, the Flying Bishop of
Hanksville, must be included. We were all essentially her students. As
an intrepid de facto guide, on meeting at the motels, Edna would often
pull out some of her slides from her camper, set up her projector and
show pictures of other trips she had taken to the guests. She helped
greatly to entice the people to go on them and kept my business alive.
On one occasion, she even came to Green River, where I lived in my
small warehouse, and she helped me get my records up to date.
And
she was a great companion on the trips. Though all of us had different
occupations, we had great camaraderie among us all as we all pretty
much shared the same interests and activities. When she wasn’t
traveling with me, she made frequent trips with her friends: Sam
Carter, Eunice Tjaden, Virginia Kavenaugh, Dorothy Mitchell, Delcie
Vun-canan, Charles and Wilma Murray, Janet Tibbetts, Bea Rizzolo, Tad
Nichols, and a host of others. In April of 1973, she backpacked alone
into Grand Gulch and I carried some of her supplies and dropped off
“food pack #1” to her. Then her husband Charles came down with my group
and Edna rejoined us. On our way out of the canyon, I dropped off “food
pack #2” to her. She and her friend Delcie Vuncannon were to explore
the lower Grand Gulch. Shortly after that, the two backpacked into
Horseshoe Canyon.
Not
only did Edna and I share the love of the great outdoors, we had a
great time sharing the canyon experiences. In just a few years, we
took in numerous canyons and rivers. We took trips into Kanab Canyon, a
weeklong Labyrinth Canyon river trip, and a number of repeated trips
into various sections of the Escalante Canyon. We took a Peru trip to
the Maya ruins at Cusco and Macho Picchu. After one trip, she informed
me that she had sugar diabetes. She wrote me: “That probably explains
why I seemed to be trying to drink the Coyote Gulch and the Escalante
dry.” In the future she planned her diet more closely and she brought
some of her own “water-packed food”—which the mules enjoyed packing.
We
took varied wilderness trips to the Waterpocket Fold, Horseshoe Canyon,
the San Juan River, Paria Canyon, The Big Bend country on the Rio
Grande, Powell Plateau in Grand Canyon, Havasu Canyon, Desolation
Canyon on the Green River, and the Hole-in-the-Rock. Then we took a
backpacking trip, with inner tubes tied to our packs, through the Black
Box of the San Rafael River. A later letter read, “I’m so grateful to
have gotten into & through the San Rafael.” That was some kind of
trip. Whenever I’m driving past the Swell, I always grin—and sometimes
give a “yippee!” now that it’s in the past & I survived; a couple
of times there, I wasn’t so sure I would.
In
January 1970, she went with me to Mexico to run the Usamacinta River.
And on that trip she fell at one of the Maya ruins and broke her arm.
With the help of a local mortician,
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