Grand Canyon Boating in Verse: I, #1

By Bruce Cline

This is volume I of fun, insightful, and inspiring verse about one of the most exciting adventures possible — whitewater trips on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. Long time rafting guide and instructor Bruce Cline, a veteran of twelve non-commercial trips through the Grand Canyon, including ten solos, offers readers a seat-of-the-pants perspective on the exhilarating, sometimes frightening, always challenging, and thoroughly enjoyable adventure of tackling and surviving world class whitewater in a majestically beautiful and often challenging environment. The poems in this first of three volumes will surely pique the interest of the curious, provide insights into the experience of negotiating sometimes treacherous rapids, underscore the uniqueness of this amazing wilderness, and affirm the memories of veteran boaters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bruce Cline
• Release date: Apr 8, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224356911

Bruce Cline

Bruce is a longtime whitewater boater, having started rafting in college rafting on northern New Mexico's Wild and Scenic Rio Chama and Colorado's Arkansas River. While still an undergraduate student, he and a partner started a small rafting outfitting company specializing in one- , two-, and three-day paddle trips. He has since completed 12 Grand Canyon trips, including 10 solos. Bruce has an undergraduate degree in Fine Art (sculpture) and a graduate degree in law, both from the University of New Mexico.

Book preview

A Lost Strap; A Lost Marriage

A Meeting of Some Sort

A Perfect Run

A Portrait

A Raft, A Kayak, and A Dory

A Rapid is Like a Poem

A Tourist’s Observation

A Trilobite

Abandoned: A Lament

Aging to Perfection

Airborne Aggravation

Aloneliness

An Intimate Misunderstanding

An Old Stone Bench

At Lees Ferry Ramp in Winter

Autonomous Robotic Movements

Avoiding Fights and Ugly Squabbles

Banned For Life

Basic Chemistry

BETA New Rating System

Blind Faith

Blue Heron, Soloist

Boating with Watty Piper

Bureaucratic Overkill

Bureaucratic Rafter

Buried like Dust

Call Me Judgmental

Camping with Maya Angelou

Canyon Campus Overload

Canyon Contradictions

Canyon Creases

Canyon Porn

Coming Off the River

Compassion, Winter 2001

Content Analysis

Corrosive Beauty

Corrosive Elements

COVID Fun on a Layover Day

Critical Shortage

Cuddly Canyon

Dangerous Pollutants

Desert Catwalk

Destructive Flooding

Detritus Diatribe

Directions

Divided Weather

Divine Mistake?

Driving Me Crazy on the Way to GC

Dropped Off in the Desert

Eating Sashimi

Escaped

Eyes Above

First Date

First Descent

Floating Below Lees Ferry

Frame of Mind

Futility

Future Travel into the Past

Gargantuan Menace

Getting a Permit

Getting High in Church

Glen Canyon Variations

God’s Photo Album

God’s Quilt

Golf Balls

Grand Canyon 2069—150th anniversary Part 1

Grand Canyon 2069—150th anniversary Part 2

Grand Canyon - Again

Grand Canyon Alone

Grand Canyon Boating Suggested Guidelines & Etiquette

Grand Canyon Books That Should Only Be Sold Together

Great Friends

Happy Birthday

He Must Have Been an Expert

Heaven

Her Photos

High Flow Event

I Forgot to Thank You

I’ll Go with Bob

I’m Beginning to Believe They Mean It

Illiteracy in Blacktail Canyon

illiteracy

Impaired Vision

Impermanence

In the City, Resting in an Eddy

Incident Report, August 9, 1869

Incurable

Inimitable

Ink Trails – A Warning

Instantly Aloft

Intelligent Design

Invasive Species

Is That All?

I’ve Been to the Louvre

John Hance

Good to The Last Drop

Like Me

Literate Cargo

Living Nightmare

A Lost Strap; A Lost Marriage

At water’s edge, partly covered with sand

lay a strap: a four-footer.

Abandoned, surely by accident.

No one just leaves a strap,

at least not one with a working buckle.

What was left unstrapped?

What was made insecure?

Was property at risk? Or lives?

The conclusion on the counselor’s notes:

"Two lives ruined by loss of a dry bag,

left unsecured after misplacing a single strap.

It was a cascade of losses:

at first it was just a strap, but in quick succession,

a dry bag, a camera, a memory card,

irreplaceable photos, memories,

trust, their relationship, and ultimately their marriage."

A Meeting of Some Sort

As I drifted on by,

they were all sitting around

fidgeting and talking among themselves.

One was pointing,

but at what I’m not sure.

Briefly, a couple glanced my way.

Regardless, I wasn’t near enough

to hear what any of them were saying.

I’m guessing they were

having a meeting of some sort.

They all seemed pretty animated

about whatever it was they were talking about.

I had other things I had to do