Where Are Your Men? Rafting Western Rivers With The Ladies

by Zan Merrill, Nikki Naiser

Overview

What do a bunch of well-seasoned river gals do on river trips without their men? Everything you might imagine, and more. These stories invite you to relive experiences of women who have been running rivers for decades and find themselves back out on whitewater year after year. You'll find tales of difficult rescues and the kind of unexpected adventures western river runners love to share. Through a variety of stories, haikus, poems, and essays, this anthology goes deeper. The personal accounts explore the beauty of both the rivers and trusted friendships forged over the years. Sharing life's celebrations and tragedies, these women navigate the waters of their lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798989899319
Publisher:	Z Press
Publication date:	02/29/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	198
File size:	15 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Zan grew up hiking, fishing, and camping with her family in the Wasatch and Uinta Mountains of Utah, but she came late to rafting - she was almost fifty. She came even later to this group of women rafters. Although she fell in love with the river on her first trip down the Grand Canyon in her late twenties, she didn't see guiding as a path for her. Instead, she earned a couple of degrees and launched an interesting career in training design. Twenty years later, after a second Grand trip, she realized it was now or never if she wanted to get into rafting. She bought a boat with a couple of girlfriends and that was that. Now Zan has her own boats and gets on the river every chance she gets. She also enjoys doing textile art, writing, hiking, birding, and yoga.
Despite being raised in a non-outdoorsy family in Kentucky, Nikki immersed herself in rivers and the outdoors her entire adult life. Nikki moved west to Utah at twenty, and her first river trip was on the Green River through Desolation Canyon in 1977. She learned whitewater canoeing on the Alpine Canyon stretch of the Snake River. Moving to Seattle for a corporate career didn't stop her from exploring wild rivers, and neither did motherhood. She's paddled rivers of all character from continuous, technical whitewater to free-flowing rain forest rivers. Nikki now lives in Bozeman, Montana, where, when she's not boating, she's hiking, backpacking, biking, writing songs, or skiing.

Table of Contents

Section One: Just Us Gals

Our Ladies' Trips

What's Different About a Ladies' River Trip?

Femme Fatal

Peeing Like a Girl: An Evolutionary Tale

Women Use Finesse

Camaraderie

Even Virtuous Women Want to Tell

Paddlin' Madeline's Limerick

Coming Into My Own

Virga

Womentors: The Story of "Rafter V"

Section Two: Rites of Passage

Growing Up On Desert Rivers

Rites of Passage

Socks

Confluence

There's Been an Accident

Recovery

A Healing Journey

Section Three: Adventures and Stories

Byers Canyon

My River Adventures

Haikus

FLIP

Fifty-Five on the Gunny

River Journal-Spring Trip: Deso/Gray Canyons, Green River

Deso/Gray Adventure

I Found It!

Daisy

"We Didn't See Anything!"

A Collection

My River Life

River Time

Epilogue

Appendices

Appendix I: Glossary of Terms

Appendix II: River Etiquette

Appendix III: A Few Women's River Runner Recipes

Acknowledgements