The Dutch "Golden Age"

 

Glass Chandelier in the Mauritshuis Museum, The Hague, Netherlands

The Dutch “Golden Age”

memoir

By Gregory E. Larson

           Over the years I think back to different bicycle tours and re-live the daily adventures in my mind. There was one special day on the Netherlands tour in 2017, a day that bubbles up memories like a fountain. The time spent in the Mauritshuis Museum in the city of the Hague was an unexpected treat, and is my focus in this recounting.

          I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and looked out the small, round porthole of my cabin on the barge, which was lashed to a quay at the juncture of canals and a river in Delft (pronounced Del-left by the Dutch). It was a picturesque view across the water to the church towers and buildings at the center of the city. The barge named Elodie was a moving “hotel” for me and fifteen other people who were part of our bicycle tour.

The Elodie was our moving hotel during the bicycle tour.

          After breakfast in the main cabin,  our group went up on deck in the chilly spring air to soak in the morning sun while the barge floated peacefully under the bridges and through the neighborhoods on the north side of Delft. Our captain slowed the huge craft to the side of the canal and tied it near a shop that made authentic Delft pottery. Once inside, we were given a guided tour which included facts on the history of Delftware. During the Golden Age (17th Century) in the Netherlands, the ships coming back from the orient brought Chinese glazed pottery, mostly blue and white, with scenes of nature painted on the different facets. This pottery became popular with the wealthy, and the Dutch craftsmen decided to create imitations of high quality, to satisfy the demand of the middle class.

The Defltware Studio on the north end of Delft

          A quirk of fate is that now the Chinese are imitating the Delft style, and ninety percent of the supposed Delft pottery today is manufactured in China. What goes around comes around.

          After the tour, we hopped on the bikes and pedaled to The Hague (pronounced the hawg in Dutch with the “h” gargled out of the throat).

          The Hague is a bustling city with local, national and international organizations headquartered there, including the King’s residence, the Parliament and the World Court. It was important to pay attention to our guide as we wove our way through the cobblestone streets, making sure to work around the pedestrians, streetcars and tracks, motorbikes and general traffic in the area.

          Our first destination was the Mauritshuis, a compact museum at the corner of the town square. Their mission is to show the best of Dutch paintings from the time of Rembrandt and Vermeer. I knew that Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Earring was in the collection but that was my sum total of knowledge when I walked through the lower Garden level entrance. Several people in our group bought tickets and we rode the elevator to the upper exhibit floors. After viewing the galleries on each floor, we walked down the central stairs to the next floor.

Interior Gallery on the upper floor of the Mauritshuis Museum

          The interior was traditional, with chandeliers, silk-patterned wallpaper and heavy

mouldings. To my amazement, the museum was full of Dutch Masters paintings,

including Rembrandt (Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, 1606 - 1669), Fabritius (Carel

Fabritius, 1622 - 1654), Vermeer (Johannes Vermeer, 1632 - 1675), and Steen (Jan Steen,

1626 - 1679). I enjoyed looking at the young and old Rembrandt self-portraits and

wondered what type of a mirror he used to look at himself.

Rembrandt Self-portrait 
Mauritshuis Museum

          In this period of the seventeenth century (considered the Dutch “Golden Age”), the Dutch artists flourished, casting aside the traditional portrait and religious commissions to paint detailed still-life settings of flowers, pottery, and fruit, as well as landscapes, and interior scenes with people interacting in daily life. I was astonished at how young the painters were when they died.

Girl with the Pearl Earring
by Johannes Vermeer

          I walked into the gallery where the Girl with the Pearl Earring resided. In the late morning, there were only a handful of people in the room, and after viewing the painting, they moved on to the next gallery. I stood mesmerized at the girl’s face and realized that the painting was fairly small (17.5” high x 15” wide). To my amazement, no one, other than an occasional guard, came through the room. I took the luxury of sitting on a bench, and spent several minutes peering at the painting, inspecting the brush strokes of reflective light off the pearl, and looking at the folds and colors in her blouse and head scarf. I was grateful for the time, having read about the painting when it was on loan and toured the U.S., where people had to wait in long lines for over an hour just to walk by the painting for a few seconds.

View of Delft
by Johannes Vermeer

           As I looked at the other works in the gallery, I discovered two more of Vermeer’s paintings. View of Delft (38” high x 45.6” wide) caught me by surprise. In my view was a 17^th century painting of the very spot where our Elodie barge had spent the night. The skyline and the river looked a bit more ancient and in the foreground was a barge parked to the left of where our barge had anchored.  This view of Delft did not have the city streets and paved quay – just some people in period dress standing in a field next to the river. Not many landscapes by Vermeer exist, and the sum total of his known works is barely over thirty. Almost one-tenth of his paintings resided in this room! The third Vermeer in the room was Diana and her Companions (38.8” high x 41” wide). Wow, I thought, here’s a gallery with three Vermeer paintings and I have it all to myself.

Diana and her Companions
by Johannes Vermeer

          I walked to the next gallery and turned my head to the right. I gasped and did a double-take at the small painting of The Goldfinch (13” high x 9” wide) by Fabritius. I was familiar with the painting, which was used on the cover of the recent fiction book by that title, but I had no idea that the original painting resided in the Mauritshuis.

The Goldfinch
by Carel Fabritius

          After reading more about the arts Golden Age in the Netherlands, I learned that Rembrandt was a teacher to Fabritius. The year 1654, when Fabritius completed The Goldfinch, there was a huge explosion of a gunpowder magazine in Delft. Over one hundred people died, including Fabritius, who was only 32 years of age. The Goldfinch survived the blast. It is also important to note that Fabritius was considered a mentor to Vermeer.

          Our bike group then rode to the front gate of the World Court building, known as the Peace Palace where we sat in a little park and ate lunch. It seemed ironic that a “peace” palace would have a monstrous iron fence surrounding it.

World Court - Peace Palace
The Hague, Netherlands

          Then it was on towards the north and east to the sea coast, where we rode along a bike path that snaked through the sand dunes and scrub-brush. At mid-afternoon we stopped at a bar on the beach for a beer. The therapeutic warmth of the sun relaxed our leg muscles as we sat outside and downed the beers served in fancy glasses. We climbed back on the bikes and pedaled to Lieden, a compact university town with canals throughout the city. Our guide stopped us at a bakery that made authentic Oliebollen, which are like crispy gourmet doughnut holes. Someone ordered a couple of baskets of them and we sat outside and tried the different flavors. I thought, this is excellent biker food.

Bike path near the North Sea

          We rode further and found our barge in a canal on the outskirts of downtown. My memory gets a little fuzzy after that, although I do remember that some of us went into town for dinner, and afterwards we climbed to the top of an ancient lookout tower. Finally, my weary body was feeling the effects of an epic day, so I walked back to the barge. As a coincidence, the Dutch soccer team was playing a World Cup Match, and the bars along the street were packed with people watching the game on the big-screens. It was quite memorable to hear the crowds explode when the Dutch scored a goal. I think the Europeans have a double passion for soccer as compared to our American football.

View of Lieden, Netherlands, from the top of an ancient tower

          Sleeping on a bike tour has never been a problem for me. As I started to think of all the things I had done in one day, I was off to a deep sleep in five minutes.

Images of tulips danced through my head and I was off to sleep.

Beer in the Making

The Belgian's love their flavorful beers. Here's an advertising beer wagon that I saw in Belgium in 2017.

Beer in the Making

documentary

by Gregory E. Larson

          I have great memories of tasting Dutch and Belgian beers in northern Europe, where beer is much more popular than wine. Touring beer factories has also been high on my list of places to go. When I overheard two of my cycling friends discussing the home-brewing of beer, I became intrigued. We were near the end of a ride, and had stopped with friends at an outdoor pizza and beer café.

          “We ought to make a batch of Winter Belgian Ale,” Kirk said, “That would be fun.”

          Immediately I asked them if I could witness the process to write a blog. I thought maybe I could learn something, as well as enjoy some tasty craft-style beer.

          Kirk asked, “Have you ever brewed any beer?”

          “No, I haven’t, so it would be a new experience for me.”

         “The most important rule is to have fun.”

          Dan chimed in, “The second most important rule is to keep everything clean. You don’t want to contaminate the process. Ugly things might grow and destroy the batch.”

          Kirk added, “We’ll want to do the entire process, including naming the beer and designing the labels.”

          On our next bike ride, we stopped at Martin City Coffee Co. for some coffee and a bite to eat. Five minutes after we finished, we rode our bikes around the corner and stopped at Martin City Brewing Co. As we looked over the beer offerings, we noticed one that was titled, “Abbey Belgian Dubbel.”

          I asked Kirk and Dan what was “double” in the beer and they replied in unison, “It’s double the hops.”

          Kirk ordered it and gave his assessment. “It’s slightly sweet, good hop flavors and not too dry.”

          That’s when I also learned there is an IBS (International Bitter System) rating for each beer at a brewery. My head started to spin – not from drinking a beer but from trying to understand the whole brewing process. It sounded complicated.

          Kirk suggested we meet soon at the Brew Lab in Overland Park and taste different craft brews, then purchase the supplies to make a batch. A few days later we met at the Brew Lab and we each ordered a “flight” of four different beer tastings (4 oz. each) and shared how each tasted.

          “Ales are the easiest to home brew,” Kirk said, “I brought this Belgian Dark Ale recipe from my brew notebook. We could do a variation on it.” Dan agreed.

          Next, we gathered the items for the brew recipe. I followed Dan (the expert) around as he selected two different barley grains (one of them was roasted barley) and two types of Amber Malt Extract (carmelized), two types of hops (Willamette and Cascade) and some dextrose (sugar). Last, but not least, we started looking at the yeasts. One of them was Belgian Abbey Yeast. It wasn’t the yeast listed on the recipe, but we agreed that since we found the Abbey Belgian Dubbel in Martin City, this might get us close to the elusive “perfect” batch that every brewer seeks.

          Kirk said, “Next week we’ll spend a couple of hours mixing the batch, then we’ll let it set and ferment about a week and we’ll transfer it to a carboy (giant glass container). If you don’t allow enough time for fermenting, it may continue to ferment too much in the bottle.”

          “That’s not a good thing,” said Dan. “Exploding bottles.”

          The following week, at Bell Street Brewing (Kirk’s house in the kitchen) we mixed the batch. Kirk and Dan had been through the process umpteen times (56 batches, to be exact), so everything was planned to the smallest detail. Kirk lowered the barley bag into 160°F water.  Once the barley flavor transferred into the water, he pulled the bag and we added the two containers of malt extract. Then the three of us sat around for the next hour and drank beer while the malt extract boiled. The most difficult job was checking the pot every ten minutes to make sure the malt didn’t stick to the container. The flavoring hops were added and ten minutes before the end of the boil, they added the bittering hops and a small amount of Irish Moss to clarify the liquid. Seemed like hocus-pocus mumbo-jumbo to me, but Kirk and Dan said it was important.

          “Now we have to cool the wort (pronounced vert) down from 160°F to 90°F as quickly as possible.”

          We carried the wort down to his work room where he had a water-cooled, spiral-copper, heat-exchanger tube placed in a special five-gallon plastic container. We poured the wort into the container and set it in a large sink, then packed twenty pounds of ice around it. Watching the ice melt and the temperature drop reminded me of making homemade ice cream with my dad. Within ten minutes we hit the 90° mark on the thermometer so we pulled the container out of the sink and vigorously stirred in the Belgian Abbey yeast. Once the foaming ceased, Kirk tested the specific gravity and put the lid on the container. There was a relief valve that fit on top of the lid. As the fermenting process started, the valve would show the bubbles of the fermenting process.

View of the spiral copper heat-exchanger

          We finished our store-bought beers and agreed to get back together to do the bottling process.

          “The specific gravity reading of the liquid has to drop for 1.045 to 1.012,” said Kirk, “That’s when it’s time to bottle the beer.” A week later, he transferred the fermenting wort into the glass carboy. At that point in time, the liquid has become young beer.

          Two weeks later we met again to bottle the beer. Kirk invited some additional cycling friends to watch the finishing process. It turned out to be a bit of a party, with favorite beers, snacks, and shared stories of days past. It seems the older we get the more stories we have to share, and the beer unlocks the door in our mind where the stories flow out.

          But – work was at hand during this fun gathering. Dan added the dextrose and brought it to a boil to add to the fermented wort. While he was working on that, Kirk set me up with inspecting bottles and cleaning them. First, I had to look into each bottle and point it toward the light. If there were any smudges in the bottom, it became a reject. Clean, clean, clean, I kept telling myself.

          Next, I began work at the bottle cleaning station and drying tree. Placing each bottle upside down on a tube, I pushed the bottle down twice to pump the PBW (powdered brewery wash which is a patented alkali cleaner) into the bottle, and then put it on the drying tree.

Glass carboy, bottle cleaning station and drying tree

          It was a warm autumn afternoon and the garage door was open. We all sat around, drank beer and told stories while I continued the bottle cleaning process.

          Kirk readied the beer with the siphon tube and we began to fill the beer into the fifty bottles. As I filled each bottle with the siphon tube, I passed them over to Kirk, who used a bottle capper to set each cap in place. Voila! With the caps on, the fermentation would continue in the bottles for two to three weeks.

* * * *

In late October two bike groups merged on a Saturday ride. All of a sudden Kirk, Dan and I realized we were pedaling beside each other. Executive decisions needed to be made. Kirk said, “The beer is almost ready for tasting. We need to come up with a name so I can design the labels.”

We agreed the name should have something to do with the pandemic and the election close at hand. We’d been throwing around names for several weeks to no avail. Suddenly we realized the bike groups would soon split and Kirk would ride towards home. The pressure was on to come up with the name.

          I blurted out “Unmasked! What do you think?” They both agreed and Kirk sped off for home. Funny how the mind can struggle for weeks to solve a problem and suddenly the solution just comes out of nowhere. Maybe we should solve more problems while pedaling. My hope was the beer would be as good as the effort and the name.

           Finally, it was time to taste the beer. Kirk thought it was a bit early, but we wanted to make sure it wasn’t a bad batch. I stopped by late one afternoon and we opened a bottle. The flavor was good, but there wasn’t much foam or carbonation.

          “Maybe we tasted it too soon,” he said. “I think it will continue to improve over the next several days. Let’s think about Friday or Sunday to do the real taste. The weather is going to hold through Sunday, so we can sit out on the driveway for the tasting party.

          The Chiefs were beginning the second half of their Sunday game against the Panthers as I drove over to Kirk’s house. The streets seemed ghostly empty with so many people at home watching the game.  Once I arrived, Kirk turned on the radio of his car in the garage and dialed in the football game. I kept one ear towards the radio and began putting glue on the labels, then fixed them to the bottles. The label looked great with masks all around a bottle marked UNMASKED. In small letters were the words, post-election Belgian Black Ale.

The "Unmasked" label design

          The moment of truth came when we opened one of the larger bottles. Kirk poured it into a large plastic cup. Fizz! There was a good foam head, too. He poured some more in cups for us all to taste and said, “Let’s inaugurate it!”

          I took a sip. The taste was very good. Nice hops, and a bit of smoky, somewhat toasty taste. Dan said that came from the roasted barley we used. We quickly labeled the bottles and sat back to listen to the end of the football game, while other friends stopped by to have a taste.

Dan and Greg adding the "Unmasked" beer labels

          “TOUCHDOWN, KANSAS CITY!” The announcer made sure everyone knew the Chiefs had scored. More homemade beer flowed and the game continued with the Chiefs squeaking out a win to put their record at 8-1.

          At the end of the warm, autumn afternoon, we split up the bottles and I brought home two six-packs and two large bottles. I’m going to savor and share them with friends and family. I’ll have one or two on those cold days when I can sit by the fire and watch the football game and sip the UNMASKED homemade beer.

Preserve Your Memories

Porto Ercole - End point for Bike Across Italy in 2005

 

Preserve Your Memories

by Gregory E. Larson

          Simon and Garfunkel's words from a song titled "Old Friends" rattles in my brain from time to time: . . . preserve your memories. They're all that's left you.          

          When I first listened to those words at the age of sixteen, they saddened me because I was full of youth and I didn’t want to hear about people that had grown old. Now my age puts me in that category, and those lyrics fill me with joy because I am full of memories. Yes, they are both sad and good memories, but I tend to lean toward the good ones, in part, just to keep my sanity.

          There’s the milestone memories – graduations, weddings, birthdays and holidays - happy squeals that filled the air on Christmas morning, or feeling the tears roll down the cheek when the sixteen-year-old child backs out of the driveway and begins their first trip of driving to school.

          What memories boil up when you let your mind wander? The ones that are most prominent to me are experiences – not so much the ones from a career or raising a family, but scenes from journeys and adventures. What wonderous times those were, with majestic landscapes and unusual destinations.

          I love to watch a mountain stream jump and fall as it makes its course over rocks and logs. To take a deep breath of mountain air on a cool, sunny morning is about as good as it gets, or to listen to the coyotes yip to each other at sunset so they can find their way and keep warm through the night. When I was younger, there was a satisfaction in backpacking with the minimal amount of gear to take me where most people couldn’t go. I remember all the bike tours across states and countries, of feeling the exhaustion and satisfaction from dipping the bike wheel into a river or an ocean, as a way to stamp the official completion of a tour.

          Part of my psyche hearkens back to Dad, who’s words I can still hear, “Nothing is worth doing, unless you do it well.” The deeper I explored his advice, I learned that experiences were best when I immersed myself in learning everything I could learn or when I trained as much as possible in both mind and body for an upcoming event or journey. It made for a rich experience, even when the outcome was not how I envisioned it. There were fleeting moments when I experienced the temporary nirvana of thinking I’d attained a level of competency, if only temporary, of the best of the best, of campers, hikers, bikers, writers, painters, and musicians.

          After embracing the wonderful memories, I have a deep sense of gratitude that I was able to experience so much in my life. Sure, there’s more to experience, but I am so grateful for my time on earth, grateful that my creator gave me the tools to see the wonders of the universe and to give me the opportunity to navigate life.

          Now that I’m older, I have just as much fun when swapping the tales and yarns of biking or camping adventures with those around me, sitting on the patio with a beer in hand, reliving the details and watching the story play out before my eyes. If I lean back and meditate, and let the beer do its magic, it’s as if I were there in the story, feeling, smelling, and hearing everything around me.

          Sometimes I think I should make a list of top ten physical places where I’ve stood in my life. It would be hard to pare down the list. I’d have thirty places, or more, that I thought should make the top ten. Maybe I need to go back to the Aolean Islands off the north shore of Sicily, rent a small adobe house on a hillside, sit on the veranda, look out over the Mediterranean Sea and make my lists with the reasons why they are worthy of making the cut. I’d have a big bottle of some Italian wine, some fresh mozzarella cheese, a loaf of bread, some olive oil and capers. It would be time to lean back and take a nap and to dream of all the places that have meant so much to me.

         I could do that for many days. Let’s see . . . there could be a list of the top ten adventures, the top ten eateries, the top ten . . . time to take another nap.

          Here are a few pictures from places that are high on the list of memories:

Rooftop Tour of Notre Dame, Paris - 2007

Moraine Lake - Canadian Rockies, Alberta, Canada 2011

Harbor in Tenby, Wales - 2008

Weminuche Wilderness - San Juan Mountains, Colorado - 2003

Lac d'Annecy, French Alps - 2018

Hilltop town in southern Sicily - 2012

 

Epic Journey - Rafting the Grand Canyon

Mile Zero on the Grand Canyon

Epic Journey – Rafting the Grand Canyon

travel memoir

by Gregory E. larson

 

          Foreword: It’s been about a month since I returned from the rafting trip through the Grand Canyon. I’ve started some paintings and have been thinking on how to write about such an epic experience. Rather than do a full journal of the trip, I’ve decided to share a handful of experiences that crystalize the memories of being in a remote but magical place. Looking back on the trip, it was just the antidote for plodding through months of the pandemic blahs.

 

As our two massive rafts pulled out onto the Colorado River at Lee’s Ferry, a big surprise enveloped me. One-hundred-degree-days were forecast for the week so I was ready for a hot ride. The raft started the turn to go downstream and a cool breeze wafted over the vessel. I realized that the fifty-degree water temperature from the outflow of Glen Canyon Dam upstream created a thin, cool layer of air on the river. Granted, when the wind began to blow or the sun hit us hard in the afternoon, the air layer didn’t help all that much, but many times during the week that cool layer of air was a welcome relief.

The other first impression was realizing the size of the big rafts. When fully loaded with people and supplies for a week, each raft held 14 guests, 2 crew members, and a few tons of supplies, food, and personal gear. The rear third of the raft was where the crew sat next to an open well where the small outboard motor was controlled by the captain. Our captain was Rachel, and though she was small in stature, she was a giant on the river as far as I was concerned. She knew how to eek out every move of the raft as she navigated the rapids and made our ride a safe one, but exciting and fun.

During the pandemic, the group was smaller, just ten people to each raft, so we had plenty of room to sit while we cruised down the river. As we began riding the rapids it seemed like we were on top of a humpback whale that bobbed and weaved in the rough water. Each raft had a set of large pontoons on each side. The design allowed the raft to flex in the rapids while taking the big standing waves. Chunks of water and wave flew over the raft and thoroughly doused us, while mini-geysers at the flex joints shot upward to spray anyone in proximity to the openings. Mesh bags of water, soda, and beer were tethered to the raft, and were easily pulled out whenever we wanted to quench our thirst.

For a couple of old scouts, my brother and I were in our element sleeping under the stars, becoming one with the river and the sand (literally) with a mixture of sunscreen, water, and sand stuck to our skin and our gear for most of the week. The dirtier I got the more I would repeat, “I love it!” I was beginning to feel like a river rat. Several times a day we had the opportunity to take a refreshing dip in the river or stand underneath a creek’s waterfall.

Approaching Redwall Cavern

Redwall Cavern was one of our stops that stands out in my memory. Early on the second day we floated around a bend where the cliffs were close to the river and the morning shadows lingered in the canyon. I noticed a big hole at the bottom of the cliff with a sand bar jutting out into the river. At first, it didn’t seem like such a special place until we pulled closer. By the time we beached on the sandbar, the size of the cavern, which was carved out in the bend of the river, was almost too big to grasp. I estimated about three football fields could have easily fit beneath the sandstone roof of the pocket cave. Some of the group began playing with frisbees and bocci balls. I just wandered around, allowing my brain to absorb such a unique place. As I looked upriver, I noticed the river shone with morning reflections of the sun which radiated from the western walls of the canyon. Redwall cliffs and the Redwall Cavern made me realize that everything in the Grand Canyon is super-sized. I tried to imagine a raging river that was high enough to fill the cavern in times long ago.

Early morning inside the Redwall Cavern

Our camp that evening was on a sandbar near the Nankoweap Granary, which was a small grain storage space constructed with rocks and mud by ancient Pueblan natives. They created several rectangular openings into the storage space under a cliff, located several hundred feet above the river. When the guides offered to lead a hike to the granary, I was ready to go. They said it would be a strenuous forty-five-minute hike, with the last twenty minutes being on a path of irregular stone stairs which would lead us to the base of the cliff. We climbed about ten minutes on the stairs when I began to slow down and decided to stop to catch my breath. Most of the hikers were thirty years old or younger, and I realized my age was finally creating limits on my endurance.  I had to stop a couple of more times before I made it to the granary, but I didn’t mind stopping because the view was spectacular. This one view down the Colorado River seemed to sum up the entirety of how I felt about the canyon. The steps and the granary were in the deep shade of the afternoon, but the view which spread before me included the massive Colorado River which changed in color as it snaked along and around the sandbars while the red cliffs created giant walls on either side of the immediate river canyon. The distant cliffs were veiled with pink and blue shadows in the hot, dry air. The walls with changing textures and colors were a feast for the eyes. I felt like I was in a giant heavenly room. Included with the timeless view was the dead silence that flowed through time like an invisible blanket woven over millions of years. What did the natives think as they worked at surviving in the harsh environment? Did they take the time to feel the beauty of their surroundings? What did the canyon look like in the environment above the river area?

After snapping a few photos while above the river, I thought the view was special. Once the trip was over and I was home in my painting studio, I decided to make a watercolor painting of Nankoweap Overlook – Grand Canyon. Now the view is permanently etched in my brain. 

Nankoweap Overlook - Grand Canyon

2020 Watercolor by Gregory E. Larson

When I made it to the granary, I told our guide that I was turning around to take the downward hike at my own pace, knowing that going down would put more pressure on the quadriceps than a usual walk. My energy and leg muscles were spent by the time I made it back to camp, but I knew it was worth it. I had the photos to prove it.

Nankoweap Granary at base of redwall cliffs

That night I heard something that will also remain etched in my memory. I happened to be awake for a few minutes in the middle of the night. From a distance of what was probably several miles I heard a deep ka-whump, followed by a rumble, rumble. To me, it sounded like a Howitzer cannon doing target practice at Fort Riley in Kansas, but I quickly realized I’d heard the timeless falling of some huge pieces of rock or canyon wall. There were no storms that night nor did I hear any jets. It had to be some massive rocks somewhere among the other billions of rocks, succumbing to gravity’s pull.

My brother, Dan, was able to identify and point out numerous birds in the canyon. One of my favorites was the Canyon Wren which had its own mockingbird-like call. The wren was loud, and each morning it seemed as though it was demanding that we get up and get moving. We also saw a California Condor, a Peregrine Falcon, as well as numerous swifts and swallows that lived along the canyon walls. At evening and during twilight the bats weaved and dodged above the river. As we floated during the day, we saw numerous Rocky Mountain Sheep at water’s edge or high on the cliffs.

Traveling down the 'Great Unknown'

I didn’t photograph or video going through the big rapids because my camera isn’t waterproof. We felt safe on the giant rafts, but there were times when Rachel would shout out, “Make sure your life jacket is buckled and grab a rope in each hand. Put your feet against the pontoon.” If she was especially nervous about a an upcoming rapid she would say, “This next rapid has a different personality every time I run it, so if we spin around or hit a wall or rock, just keep hanging on and smile and say ‘we’re having fun!’” There were two or three big rapids that I’ll always remember. The front of the raft would hit a big standing wave and huge quantities of water would splash over the entire raft. I remember one of the rapids was bucking us like a big bronco, and there was a cliff that seemed an arm’s reach away while we flew through the crashing waves. I looked at my brother and shouted, “THIS is what I signed up for!” We’d all yell and hoot while our world splashed and crashed around us.

Lava Falls was the last big rapid of the trip. I took a photo just as we exited the rapids and then Rachel said, “If you thought that was enough, here comes Son of Lava!” We shot through more rapids along the cliffs.

Looking back at Lava Falls

Every camp had its own personality. Some had noisy rapids nearby and others were silent, as deep water in the river crept by the campsite. At some locations the air was still and hot, and others had windstorms with blowing sand during the night. At one of the campsites nicknamed Furnace Flats by the guides, I decided to sleep on top of the sheet and sleeping bag. During the night it kept getting cooler and cooler. Finally, I unzipped the sleeping bag and slid inside. By morning I was shivering. The temperature seemed below fifty degrees when the crew yelled, “Good Morning, coffee is ready.”

After 190 miles and seven days, our guides gave us instructions on what we were to do when we got off the raft to board the helicopter which shuttled us to a dude ranch. It was like a scene from M*A*S*H. The helicopter landed before we got out of the rafts. The rotors kept turning while each group of five people scurried with their luggage, moving single-file up to the door of the chopper. Once the crew stowed our luggage, it seemed like an instant and we lifted up above the remaining group, with the rafts and the river looking smaller by the second as our pilot turned the helicopter up and over the canyon walls. Immediately we saw upper parts of the canyon that weren’t visible to us during the week at river’s level. In seven minutes, we were dropped off at the dude ranch for a shower and lunch. We were now official River Rats, but it was time to wash off as much sand as possible, knowing that it will probably take months and years to get all of the sand out of the clothing, gear, and bags. But we can’t wash out the memories of spending a week with the river and the rocks. Those will always be with us.

Our chopper lands to take us out of the canyon

More Pictures:

Loading gear in the early morning

The sacred Little Colorado River merges into the Big Colorado River

Looking down on Furnace Flats campsite from nearby hilltop

Rapids at Hiker's suspension bridge near South Rim and Phantom Ranch

Early morning at the 'Silent Canyon' campsite

Part of our group taking a daytime shower at a side creek waterfall

Floating through canyons of 1.6 billion-year-old schist rock

Small Town, U.S.A.

Neon Sign in Abilene, Kansas
2020 original watercolor by
Gregory E. Larson

Small Town, U.S.A

memoir by

Gregory E. Larson

          The watercolor above is a sign in downtown Abilene, Kansas. To me, it exudes the late 1950s and early 1960s feeling of small towns in the Midwest.

          Thriving small-town U.S.A did exist at one time. I remember it. Maybe you remember it, too. For a small boy in the late ’50s it was a part of the idyllic summer week spent each year with my grandparents in Emporia, Kansas. After a long two-hour drive from the suburbs of Wichita, we would finally make the turn onto Garfield Avenue. My grandparents would take me downtown when they did errands, but I also spent a lot of time to myself, exploring the house, yard, and neighborhood. The time went by quickly while I was there. 
          As I painted the watercolor, the memories of times spent in Emporia returned . . .

          It was one of those summer days when the heat comes on quickly. The ceiling fans in the large Ben Franklin store in downtown Emporia were circulating what little cool air was left in the building. I grabbed the tiny race car from the bin and held it up for inspection. It had real rubber tires that were smooth as silk. It would be perfect for playing on the porch railing at Granddad and Grandma’s house on the tree-lined street. Granddad offered to buy it for me since the twenty-five cents was out of my price range. I had to use my money sparingly if I wanted to go to the Dairy Queen each afternoon for a nickel cone. On another trip to the same store, Grandad bought me an old wooden top the size of a yo-yo. He taught me how to wind up the cord and release the top with a snap of the wrist to watch it spin on the concrete pavement.

          The scariest memory of downtown was when Mom said, “We need to go to Doc James and have him look at your teeth. Being just five years old at the time, I had never ventured inside a dentist’s office. I was a bit suspect of making the visit, since I didn’t like the doctor’s offices in Wichita, A trip there usually meant that I got some type of shot.

          Doc James’ office was on the second floor of the building at the main intersection downtown. There was a big long stairway to climb and the hallway and dentist office seemed dark to me. We entered the office and they guided me to the inner sanctum where I had to climb up into a big chair that looked like the ones in the barber shops. Immediately I started looking at the drill which was run by some big-arm contraption with cords on it. Doc took some picky-looking tools from the porcelain tray and had me open my mouth. After poking around and saying, “Uh-huh,” a few times he turned to my mom and said, “Your boy has a small cavity in one of his molars. It is so tiny that I can give him a filling without using Novocain.”

          I started feeling clammy all over. Oh no! He’s going to start that drill contraption. This could be serious.

          It didn’t turn out so bad. The sounds scared me more than anything. I didn’t like his big fingers in my mouth and there was some nasty-tasting stuff he spread on my gums to numb them.

          I just hoped Mom wouldn’t stop me from getting ice-cream cones and eating all the Life-saver candy that Granddad gave me when we went fishing.

          I thought life was pretty good when I visited my grandparents in Emporia. It was a fun neighborhood to explore. They lived just one block away from the busiest highway through town, which was on Sixth Street. When I walked down the sidewalk with my brothers or cousins, we’d pass a hair salon, liquor store, root-beer stand, and a mom-and-pop grocery store. The next block towards town had a Cities Service filling station that was owned by my grandparent’s neighbor, Mr. Feltner.

          Trips to the filling station were top-notch. I thrilled at watching the cars being raised on the lifts where the workmen pried off hubcaps and used the lug wrenches to remove the wheels. It was a guy’s kind of place where the smell of grease, oil, and gasoline mixed with the rubber tires and brake dust – just the thing to make an impression on a small boy. I always wanted to quench my thirst with a bottle of pop from the big machine, but that rarely happened. My grandparents were thrifty folks. Sometimes before we went fishing, we’d buy minnows at the gas station. They were in a tank where Mr. Feltner would scoop them out with a a small net and put them in our minnow bucket. We didn’t buy worms at the gas station. That was too extravagant. Grandad would turn over a couple of shovels of topsoil in the lower back yard and let us pick them out and place them in coffee can full of dirt.

          The fishing trips to the lakes and creeks in the Flint Hills lasted the better part of a day with a picnic lunch included. Granddad always tried to find the spots where the crappie were thick. I’d throw out the line and watch the worm and the bobber plop into the water. Many times the fish would immediately begin tugging on the worm. Those were excellent places to learn how to set a hook on a fish. Otherwise, I’d have to reel in the line and the hook would be picked clean.

          The size of Emporia was perfect. Everything was within a five-minute drive. No suburbs existed there in the ’50s. The small towns were much different than my existence in the new part of Wichita where the neighborhoods had scant grass, tiny trees, and long, thirty-minute rides in the car just to get downtown.

           I loved the old neighborhoods in Emporia with the big elms and other assorted climbing trees. I thought I was in heaven when I ran barefoot in the shade through the thick bluegrass.

          At noon every day the steam whistle sounded in the Santa Fe train yard. I knew it was time to go inside where Grandma would fix me a peanut butter sandwich and put it on the colorful Fiesta-ware plate. 
          One summer, my grandparents took me to the downtown theater to see the Disney movie Pollyanna. I was fascinated with the children in the movie, and while watching it I realized I was having as much or more fun during the time at my grandparents than the kids were having in the movie. I remember Grandma laughed and laughed when the movie showed an old lady playing the drums in the band at the church bazaar.

          Fridays were a bit sad at the end of the week when my mom came to get me. It was good to see Mom, but I always made sure I took one more trip to the Dairy Queen in the early afternoon before she arrived. I’d splurge and spend a dime to get the cone dipped into the butterscotch. I’d hurry as fast as I could without endangering the cone, running to the back yard of my grandparents where I climbed to my favorite spot in the red-bud tree, savoring the melting cone during the last minutes of the summertime vacation away from the big city.

          Yes, that was when small-town U.S.A. was heaven on earth, as far as I was concerned.