IRU Board Member, Phil Gordon, shares his story and love for rivers
The Colorado River in Grand Canyon National Park runs 277 miles from Lee’s Ferry to Pearce Ferry.
Phil Gordon’s love of rivers began with his first whitewater trip. In the early 1980s, Phil was a lawyer and represented a river guide in a dispute over permits on the Snake River. When his client asked if Phil would accept river trips as payment for some legal fees, he saw an opportunity to take his family out for an adventure. Soon, he and his family were running Hells Canyon. It changed the trajectory of his life.
It was only a matter of time before Phil provided legal representation for several guiding and outfitting companies – on the condition that they would let him guide some trips for the company. For several years, he was both a river guide and lawyer, and even was a partner in a guiding company.
However, it was in 1988 when Phil ran the Grand Canyon when he had his first deeply transformative river experience.
“Anybody who has done the Grand Canyon knows what I'm talking about,” said Phil. “It's like nothing you've ever seen or experienced before in your life, because it's not only great and sometimes incredibly scary whitewater, it's fabulous scenery. I adopted the Navajo (Dine) prayer ‘Beauty in front of me. Beauty behind me. Beauty on all sides of me. I walk in beauty.’ I would float in beauty. It is astonishing all the time.”
Phil was enchanted by the incredible fossils, canyons, and rock formations, such as the Vishnu Schist geological formations, Nautiloid Canyon, and Redwall Cavern. “One of them is called Elves Chasm, which is so magical. You are transformed by being there. And it's just one thing after another. Astonishing.”
Phil’s love for rivers and involvement in the guiding community led him involved with Idaho Rivers United, which he began supporting in 1992. His love for conservation stems from the connection and depth he experiences when on the river - and from the novel Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse. “That book came back to haunt me and became essential to my understanding of what I wanted to do with my life.”
“One of the finest things a human can do with their time is spending time on rivers. I read the book Siddhartha by Herman Hesse when I was much younger…In the book, a very rich Indian nobleman lives a profligate and dissolute life, and eventually decides that his life isn’t very good, and decides to become a mendicant beggar, traveling with other beggars throughout the land. Toward the end of his life, he decides he wants to live by a river, because he had once gone with a ferryman named Vasudeva, and it changed him. So he decided he would go live with Vasudeva and spend his days on the river.”
“That’s how I ended up buying my house at the river. So that I, like Siddhartha, could spend the rest of my days right by a river. I’ve never regretted that for one second. There's an enduring, undying, fantastic magic in rivers that just lights you up and it's so incredibly beneficial. No matter how you relate to it, whatever your relationship is to rivers, you benefit from it.”
