A Wilderness Cocoon
Lower Solitude Campsite on the Rogue River, a designated national Wild and Scenic River that flows through the Klamath Mountains in Southwest Oregon. Click to enlarge.
Bonding with the river, bonding with each other.
There were 27 of us; 21 paddlers and our 6 guides with Northwest Rafting Co. We were exploring the Rogue River in southwest Oregon as it muscles its way through wilderness.
Part of our group of singles, couples and kids. We blended nicely together over four days on the river. Click to enlarge.
Kayaking and rafting our way 38 miles over 4 days between canyon walls of rock or steep forested mountainside, we bounced through one big rapid after another.
The Rogue begins at 5,300-feet elevation in the western Cascades as a gurgling small stream flowing from springs on the west side of a volcanic mountain that blew its top 7,700 years ago. That eruption created a caldera that over the centuries filled with snowmelt and rain, creating an astonishingly beautiful lake, now Crater Lake National Park.
Before breakfast a couple of mornings we practiced yoga together, with the river as a very special prop. Click to enlarge.
True to its origins on a volcanic mountain, the Rogue flows robustly 215 miles to the sea, having cut its way through the western Cascade and Klamath mountains over the centuries. The dull roar of its rapids is a near-constant companion.
Our group - couples, parents and a few children, a pair of old college buddies, solo paddlers like me and two others - were strangers when we met. We exchanged names, launched and, paddling either in inflatable kayaks or rafts of six or more, started to get to know each other.
Camaraderie is often a dynamic of group river travel in wild or near-wild country. In canoes, kayaks or rafts, camping along the river at night, eating together, out of reach of cell service, wi-fi and other people, paddlers become a sort of nomadic, mini-society, however ephemeral.
I pitched my tent one evening beside a sizable colony of showy milkweed in full bloom. We paddled through a riverscape of wilderness forest and abundant late-spring wildflowers.Click to enlarge.
At the end of the day, our camp chairs in a circle, or, floating along in a stretch of flatwater in one of the rafts, we learned who did what for a living, who lived where, what brought us to this river. Some of us even practiced yoga together while the guides prepared breakfast.
The section of the Rogue we paddled courses through the Klamath Mountains and was among the first eight federally designated Wild and Scenic Rivers in 1968, deservedly so. Back then, so many other American rivers were a polluted mess. Populations of birds like bald eagles had crashed so dramatically in the U. S. there was concern the species could disappear. We saw three eagles in our first three hours on the river.
A chilly rain on two days left a few of us shivering once or twice. At lunch beside the river we huddled in the rain, checked on each other. Our rain - it was in fact our rain because here we were far from almost anybody else and it was pouring. Us, only us, and the rain. Somehow, spirits remained high.
We bounced through one rapid after another, the guides briefing us on the best path to take in white water. Here is guide Katie Blanchard rowing. The yellow inflatable kayaks are called “duckies.” Click to enlarge.
The rain came while the West is enduring a historic drought. In the cities and farms we left behind, they celebrated the rain. Two weeks after we finished our trip an extraordinary heat wave sent temperatures in parts of southern Oregon over 110 degrees. Then, sadly, the fires erupted, doing enormous damage in the area.
If we were truthful, the cool, wet weather was not the weather we wanted, but anyway we told each other that it was much needed and we said it would make us really appreciate the next sunny day. It did.
The river itself drew us close, reminded us of what really matters. Spruce, fir, oaks and wildflowers were abundant in the river corridor. There was almost no suggestion of the bustle of small cities and towns not all that far away. I pitched my tent one night between the river and a beautiful colony of showy milkweed, its big deep pink and white blossoms at their peak.
We were playing in a wilderness cocoon. The smell of the forest was a constant and welcome fragrance.
Blossom Bar Rapids on the Rogue River. Some steep and sudden drops in this rapid make it a good idea to scout before plunging in. Click to enlarge.
Our first afternoon we saw the eagles, osprey, and mergansers with young. The next day we saw three American dippers, a species that may not be showy - it is a sooty gray all over - but makes up for it in charm. It loves canyon walls beside a river and, though no bigger than a robin, can walk submerged in quick-moving rivers pursuing insect larvae. Swallows soared back and forth over the water, snapping up insects. Graphic examples of the kinds of life healthy rivers support.
The Rogue’s name came from French Canadian trappers who, in the early years of the 19th Century, considered the native Americans in the area “coquins,” or, translated into English, rogues. Surely the indigenous people had similar impressions of them. In any event, in my view the Rogue deserved a better name.
The view upstream from Lower Solitude Campsite, a beautiful scene even on a rainy morning.Click to enlarge.
For the trappers, traveling a river like the Rogue in big canoes loaded with gear and pelts could be extremely dangerous. We wore life jackets on the water, had a safety lesson before we left and paddled in modern, very stable rafts. Even our kayaks were forgiving, bouncing off rocks, pretty nimble in quick water.
Nonetheless, respect the river is or should be a paddler’s mantra.
Our first day at mid-day we came to Rainie Falls, where the river drops off steeply and abruptly, a very tricky patch of water even for a big raft. Fortunately for those of us in a kayak that day there was a safer if still difficult alternative - a side channel called the Fish Ladder Rapid - narrow, steep, with a series of sharp turns and drops that require instantaneous paddle adjustments by the kayaker. It is a class III rapid - watch out. We took our time, the guides making sure us kayakers were well spaced, briefed on what to expect. Respect the river.
Lower Whiskey Campsite, Rogue River. Oregon. My home for the night in the foreground. Click to enlarge.
Cody Terrell, the trip leader, already downstream, waited at the bottom of the rapid and took photos as we kayakers shot through.
I didn’t flip, nor did my fellow paddlers. After, we huddled together in an eddy below the rapids, our wildwater baptism behind us.
Respecting the river of course goes beyond shooting a rapid. The surrounding land and how it is treated determines just how natural, how appealing a river can be.
Our guides reminded us that not only would all trash be taken from every campsite and every lunch stop, we should scan the ground in our campsites for micro trash, the tiny reminders of our presence. The string from a tea bag, a shirt button, perhaps a tiny piece of a cracker. Little things, and hardly the solution to the big river issues, but still a practice that matters. Respect the river.
The Rogue has two Wild and Scenic stretches now, one far upriver, the other, where we paddled, the original 84-mile section of river known as the lower Wild and Scenic section. Thankfully, to this day it remains wild and scenic.
Those rapids that challenged us during the day soothed us at night. We fell asleep to the melodic dull roar of river over rock, nature’s lullaby.
I awoke our last morning on the river at Lower Solitude Campsite to another sound - the patter of light rain on the tent. I got up, walked to the river a short while later and looked upstream.
Perhaps 75-feet above the river, the mountainside forest was thick with fog, the river dark, flowing powerfully, seemingly unfazed by the rain. There was a message in that moment, I realized, delivered by the river: This is nature. Don’t complain about the rain. Enjoy the moment, this scenery.
Rivers do that; they work their spiritual magic as surely as a Chopin nocturne or a fire in the hearth on a snowy day. It is one reason we love them.
At Foster Bar, where we finished our trip early afternoon, it was still raining, The parking area was flooded, a large bathroom and changing room was wet and clammy.
And then, not unlike the Rogue ultimately spreading its plume of fresh water into the sea, our group said good bye to each other and dispersed, fanning out into the society from which we came.
I had not paddled through Class 3 rapids in a long time, but managed to negotiate my way through Fish Ladder Rapids, a side channel on the Rogue, without incident.