Not too long ago on the banks of the San Juan River, Zan Merrill was in a large group of women river runners drinking their post-dinner wine and cocktails when a lone guy floated by. He looked up and down at their little encampment at the water’s edge and let out the question they’d all heard in one form or another for decades.
“Where are your men?”
The gals, mostly in their 60s and 70s, cracked up and told him they’d left their men at home.
Even though Merrill had had moments like that before, this one got her thinking.
“If we're that unusual, even at this date in time, that people are still asking that question, maybe we should tell some of our stories,” she said.
So she reached out to her female boating friends. Together, they created the collection “Where Are Your Men?” featuring harrowing, empowering and funny stories, journal entries and poetry inspired by their years of women-only river trips.
There’s even a piece about the joy of peeing in the river.
Merrill, who co-edited the book, described all of this as she rowed a large rubber raft down the placid section of the Colorado River from Grand Junction, where she lives, to Fruita. Two of the other writers were also onboard, Doreen Sumerlin and Martha Hut.
Though it wasn’t the most challenging stretch of water they’d ever shared, the joy of leaving the shore was the same as always. Hut, visiting from Montrose, explained that the moment your craft departs the riverbank, a sense of peace descends upon you.
“You become part of the river, part of the environment,” she said, “and all of that stuff that you left behind, what's going on in your life, it’s gone and you're just on the river. And that's it.”
You’re suddenly on “river time,” as the women call it.
Each found her way to this river magic years back. A Grand Canyon trip left Merrill awestruck, though she wouldn’t take the leap to get her own boat until two decades later when she was in her late 40s. Rafting the Grand Canyon also inspired Hut, who had spent her childhood canoeing the lakes of Tennessee. After a taste of the Colorado River, however, she quit her fancy computer job and moved to the West, where she met Sumerlin and in turn, inspired her, too.
Sumerlin said she felt drawn to the balance of being both strong and independent at the same time, “and I've learned most of my life lessons from my girlfriends on the river.”
When asked about the typical older woman boater, she replied with a smile: “Our clothes are not new. Our hats look like they've been slept in. We've got really good upper bodies — and our sunglasses are cheap.”
Unless, of course, they’re prescription, Hut added.
That got the whole group laughing.
For an urban float, the route was gorgeous, with views of towering Mount Garfield and the red-rock cliffs of Colorado National Monument, all under a giant blue sky. Even the sound of Interstate 70 rushing by didn’t detract from the serenity. In fact, it kind of put the trip in perspective, explained Merrill, who steered the group at an unhurried 4 miles per hour as trucks rumbled past going 75.
The river, any river, is its own world, and each of these women has had to work to fit into their everyday life. Merrill doesn’t like to call these choices “sacrifices” but instead “adjustments,” from maxing out vacation time back in their working days to working extra hard to stay healthy now that they’re getting on in years.
“And yeah, life doesn't stop when you're on the river,” Merrill said.
Hut has emerged from river trips to find out pets have died. After Sumerlin lost a home to a wildfire, returning to the river with friends was part of her healing. And for Merrill, the San Juan will always be associated with the death of her husband, Peter. She was in the midst of a several-day float when her brothers tracked her down to let her know that Peter had died in a car accident.
Merill said she’d be “forever grateful to them,” as well as for the women who helped her start to process the trauma, get off the river and return home.
In many ways, she was glad she learned of Peter’s loss on the river, a place she loves so much.
“I think it may have been more difficult if I'd been,” she said, pausing with realization, “Well, if I'd been home, I probably would've died in the same car accident. I would've been with him when he had his accident.”
A year or two later, when she was invited on another lady's trip down the San Juan, it was “a little disconcerting,” Merrill said, but it was also a special, communal time. Nikki Naiser, the book’s co-editor, held a meditative circle and spoke of all the love the women have for each other — and the love Merrill and her husband shared for nearly 40 years.
“It smoothed the transition for me,” Merrill said. “I think about Peter when I'm on the San Juan, but it's another great river to go down, and those memories aren't all bad.”
She and her friends also recalled scary times on the water, including flipping their boats and narrowly avoiding smashing into rocks. But mostly, they talked about the happiness they’ve found in this river life, from the alluring smell of spring mud along the riverbanks to the elation Hut felt as she neared the end of her very first Grand Canyon trip, a lifetime ago.
“I was screaming, ‘I rode the Grand Canyon! I rode the Grand Canyon!’” she sang out, before starting to laugh. “Then somebody reminded me there was still one more rapid to go.”
The women agreed that they do ponder the future, about how much longer they’ll be able to do this. Hut is pushing 80, with Sumerlin in her 60s and Merrill in her 70s.
“I think we all have those thoughts,” Merrill said, “but we all hope we can stay on the rivers for as long as we possibly can, and we do work towards that end.”
They all exercise, making sure their bodies are ready for that next trip.
“And we take care of each other when we're having setbacks,” said Sumerlin.
Hut added that there’s a lot of caring, and not just with the women, “but the guys help out too, knowing that this could be that old woman's last trip, who knows?” she said, chuckling. “But we don't want to admit yet that we can't do it anymore.”
Not too long after, an unexpected rapid interrupted the calm, and water splashed up onto the friends. As they laughed with shock, Merrill explained that this mini spot of turbulence wasn’t there when she scouted this stretch of river the week before.
“That's why we keep doing it,” she said, grinning under her sun hat. “You never know when you're going to run into a little unexpected excitement around the corner.”
