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Click to close A supervisor for most of his life, Webb Wright, age 1. Click to close Webb Wright takes the helm at age 15.

I'm looking back upstream, leaning on my oars, the bag of rescue rope near at hand. I'm watching as the boatload of kids - okay, most of them teens at this point, but still "kids" to me - negotiate a sharp, swift, wavy, rocky bend in the river. My son is at the oars, and I know that although this is far from a life-threatening section of whitewater, it's still as tough and technical a maneuver as he's attempted rowing a raft. And the father in me, the ever-on-guard parent I've been for the past decade and a half, knows that even in a non-lethal rapid such as this, a swim would be cold and dangerous.
But I've been working on putting that fretful father in me out to pasture lately - it's time, I've concluded, for the guide to retire. That's part of the challenge of making the natural yet resistant transition from a father of "kids" to a parent of teens. Change. Letting go. Letting them go. I'm trying.
Webb shines. He heaves on the oars firmly - I notice how his now-tall frame suddenly has strength to match. He sets up his upstream ferry perfectly, and navigates the passage smoothly. Even though he's not an expert yet, it's clear he's on his way.
As they all are, all those kids over there on that raft, learning to row their own boats - both literally and metaphorically. Those kids have been running rivers together since they were infants, and this trip on the Dolores is just another in a long line of river trips that stand like landmarks in their young lives. Of all our lives together. Even as their, and all of our, lives change.
We float through a section of river called Little Glen Canyon, named for the same soft, sheer, colorful sandstone strata as is found in Utah's Glen Canyon. Here the canyon is low and sensuous, and occasional downstream views reveal the still-white La Sals looming over the river as it swings back and forth across the canyon bottom in sharp bends and folded-back meanders. These meanders, we can see, are always and ever changing - here, a stand of old, giant, gnarled cottonwoods slowly dies, while directly across the river, a crop of young, green, vibrant trees rises to claim the new ground the river and time have offered.
The river and time . . .
My wife, Sarah, and I started running the Dolores before kids. In our younger days, when we lived in northern Colorado, we were professional river guides, but when we moved to the Four Corners we decided to branch out on our own. We acquired our first raft, and took to exploring our new home. The first trip we took was down the remote, rugged, cold, moody, and many-faced Dolores River.
That was just the start of a long love affair. We explored the Dolores as often as we could, given the limited flows leaked out of McPhee Dam. But in the relatively wet early 1990s, there were lots of opportunities. So we floated the flatwater, ran the rapids, camped on the banks and hiked the sidecanyons. We did trips in bucket boats, catarafts, duckies, and canoes. We did trips solo, in groups, and as guides on commercial expeditions.
Then the kids came. And we shared this place with them, too: Both of our kids' first three-day river trips, like some animistic baptism, were on the Dolores - ventures made with a play pen strapped to the back of our craft when each kid was only a year old. Since that first family venturing, we have logged many days and nights and memories along the Dolores - maybe not writing the chapters of our life there, given the years that can pass between boatable flows on the Dolores, but more like sticking bookmarks in those chapters, flagging portions and eras of our family's flowing life-story.
Of course, not all these voyages went smoothly. Aside from enduring the bitingly cold weather and moody water the Dolores can throw at you, it has a few times even driven us away. Like the time working a commercial river trip and we got stranded by dropping water flows above Snaggletooth Rapid, or the time on a family trip with several toddlers in which we put on in partly cloudy weather, then had to walk out to evacuate two hours later when rain, hail, lightning, and a double-digit drop in temperature roared in.
But that's the nature of the river. And that's the nature of life. And I've always had a hard time untangling the flows of each.
So here we are again - our first Dolores trip in three years because of the persistent dry spell that has settled in over the Four Corners in the past decade. And the effects of those three years is readily apparent - highlighted again by the Dolores itself, as I gaze toward that boatload of former infants, one-time toddlers, and quickly aging adolescents as they guide their own boat. And as Sarah and I float away, back to just the two of us again, on a raft on the Dolores River.
In the late evening, we camp under a copse of grand grandfather cottonwoods on a wide bend in the river in Gypsum Valley. Rounded sage hills roll away toward the unbroken darkening-blue sky. The scent of willows and water - the river's breath - hangs in the springtime air like a perfume, Eau du Silt.

Ken Wright is learning to let go in Durango. His latest book is The Monkey Wrench Dad: Dispatches from the backyard frontline (Raven's Eye Press).