. . . an unusually intelligent and interesting character. I loved interacting with him, as nearly everything he said was thought-provoking in some way. He was the type of person who made me think carefully before I spoke, as I knew that he would probably have a well-informed question or response. Not only was he usually the smartest person in the room, I think he made everyone around him a little bit better too. In class, or any group discussion, he had a way of listening quietly and letting the conversation play out, before delivering a comment or response that was always on point, and which often completely reframed the dialog. It was a little skill of his that I came to anticipate, enjoy, and which I still attempt to emulate. Whenever I spoke with Roman personally, I always had the sense that he was amused by the world around him, like there was humor in every situation, even the mundane. In that way, as well as his obvious sense of general curiosity towards the world, I felt that he was a kindred spirit. I feel fortunate that we crossed paths.

Don’s moving character sketch confirmed how Peggy and I had hoped Roman would turn out: informed, influential, equipped with a sense of humor. It satisfied me that even the smart kids saw him as a role model.

Don was also going pretty easy on Roman: “reframing the dialog” often meant challenging disagreement. Roman sometimes found me a bit too sentimentally liberal, for instance. But for all of us in the Dial household, the actual differences in our opinions are less of a problem than our similarities in the way we disagree: disagreements often escalate, but subside just as quickly. Nobody holds a grudge for long.

In 2012, when Roman and I walked out after searching Bhutan’s Himalaya for the Tibetan ice worm, we followed a trail that led to a remote village called Laya, perched in a picturesque valley pushed hard against the Tibetan border. At the time, Laya’s two-story stone and wood homes were off the grid and days from the road system in a wilderness where people lived.

Leaving Laya, we encountered laborers and horses ferrying power poles and spools of cable. I complained that the arrival of electricity would kill the village’s charm. Roman accused me of projecting my sentimentality onto people who deserved the convenience of electrical power. I responded it would dilute their culture. He retorted it was up to them, not us. For miles, we each stammered in frustration as emotion eclipsed logic, each of us clinging stubbornly to our side of the argument.

All fathers readily see their foibles reflected in their sons, and there, plain as day, were mine.

Chapter 13

Big Banana

Twenty-footer, Rio Alseseca, Veracruz, Mexico, January 2014.

Courtesy of Todd Tumolo

Roman dated Katelyn, another APU student, in 2012. Working with her on a project to estimate small mammal abundance near Anchorage, Roman taught her techniques he had learned during his previous field seasons up north. A year later, when his computer simulations of isopod evolution didn’t converge on a solution, he decided he needed a break.

He settled on heading east to visit college friends, followed by a bicycle tour through Kentucky’s bourbon country, then a long-term sojourn through Latin America. In October 2013, with his student loans paid off, $15,000 in savings, plans to spend Christmas with Brad, and enough Spanish to travel to South America, he told Katelyn he was breaking off their relationship. They remained close, though, and she joined him in Mexico for some packrafting and Maya ruin exploration in early January 2014. Shortly after she headed home, I met up with Roman in Veracruz, a state in eastern Mexico, to packraft with him and a handful of our Alaskan friends. We both looked forward to doing the kind of things we’d been doing together for decades.

Roman greeted me at the Veracruz airport. He was a month shy of twenty-seven. He had gone a few weeks without shaving and his new beard accentuated the lean angle of his jaw. He certainly had his mother’s good looks and the scruffiness didn’t hide them.

Roman was up for some whitewater adventure on what’s been called the “best bedrock” in North America. Kayakers come from around the world for Veracruz’s steep, polished gorges, vertical waterfalls, and tumbling cascades. We were eager to go paddling, but first we had to get something to eat.

I rented a car and we drove off into the coastal city of Veracruz looking for good Mexican food, maybe some carne asada tacos, or “street meat” as he liked to call it. He was excited. We hadn’t seen each other for months and had a lot of catching up to do. He told me what he’d been doing, where he’d been, about his travels with Katelyn across the Yucatán. His words poured out. The son of a noisy father, he tended to be quiet, so when he spoke, I wanted to hear all that he had to say. Besides, we’d soon pick up two more boating buddies, including my good friend from Alaska, Brad Meiklejohn, who’s my age. When they showed up, Roman would listen more than talk.

Our friends arrived the next afternoon and we headed inland to paddle warm whitewater. We did a day trip down a limey creek that issued full of life from a hillside spring to twist and turn through open woods and pastures where Brahma bulls laid in the shade. Packrafts have come far since Dick Griffith unrolled his pool toy in the first Wilderness Classic. Three decades on, they look more like fat little kayaks than small round life rafts and increasingly imaginative boaters paddle them down whitewater creeks and rivers normally kayaked or never run previously at all. Many experts can even “Eskimo-roll” their packrafts: if a rogue wave or turbulence flips the boat, the paddler rights it and paddles onward, all while still in the boat.

After the lime springs creek, we drove to a town called Jalcomulco, where we hoped to find a local who’d shuttle us to the put-in of the “Grand Canyon” of the Rio Antigua. Unfortunately, all of Jalcomulco’s boating community were busy protesting a proposed dam that would flood the Antigua’s canyons. We’d have to drive ourselves and leave the rental car at the put-in during our overnight trip downstream.

We enjoyed our paddle down the clear, moderate Class III waters set deep in lush, green gorges. We camped in the woods on the river’s banks and warmed up the selection of Mexican foods that Roman had picked out for us to eat around our crackling campfire. Tenting with him was familiar and we fell into an easy routine.

A second full day of bigger water brought us back to the town of Jalcomulco, where we spent the night, then drove to retrieve our car the next day. Returning to the rental parked at the canyon put-in, I was puzzled to see the Volkswagen sagging with a door wide open. Pulling closer it was apparent that all four wheels were gone. So were the battery, the carburetor, the radio and CD player, and the few items we’d left in the trunk, including Roman’s empty backpack. Roman would eventually replace his pack with one he’d buy in Mexico after the rest of us left; until then, he borrowed Brad Meiklejohn’s. As with any theft, we felt violated, frustrated, and hurt. The episode cost us a day or two but soon we were off to Tlapacoyan, the center of the Veracruz whitewater scene. Adrenaline has a way of washing away unpleasant feelings.

The highlight of our two weeks paddling packrafts on rocky streams was an exciting descent of the Rio Alseseca’s “Big Banana,” a steep creek rushing through the jungle.

Even though our friends from Alaska, Todd Tumolo and Gerard Ganey, had completed the committing run down the river before we arrived, I was nervous for Roman. He hadn’t been on the likes of the Alseseca for more than a year, and while we had worked our way up to the Big Banana’s challenging Class IV waterfalls on easier runs over the previous ten days, I was still concerned for his safety. He was, after all, my son.

Ganey, Todd, and other friends all said the Big Banana was the best whitewater run in the state of Veracruz. It sounded thrilling and relatively safe to me. We could easily walk around its biggest, most dangerous waterfalls, thirty and forty feet tall. But I wanted Roman to feel good about it and have fun, too.

Despite our collective experience and our three friends’ run the week before, our descent of the Big Banana nearly ended in its first hundred yards. Ganey, an expert paddler, decided to try a short, messy cascade that poured through a jumble of boulders. The rest of us had already walked past the hazard because it didn’t look very “clean.” Clean rapids don’t trap and potentially drown a swimmer like “chossy” ones can. We positioned ourselves below the drop with safety ropes.

Ganey paddled smoothly into the rapid’s entrance, maneuvered off the lip and prepared for his landing. But instead of plopping smoothly down, he was grabbed by the rapid’s rocky edge and flipped out of his boat. Almost immediately, a whirlpool sucked Ganey underwater into a sieve of boulders where the river’s hydraulics brought him back to the surface, only to shove him under again in a recirculating current.

The chossy drop wouldn’t let him go. He cycled around and around, fighting for air and his life. I threw him a rope but the Alseseca swallowed him again before he could find it. Fortunately, Todd’s throw line followed mine and Ganey grabbed it the next time he resurfaced. Todd dragged him, exhausted, from the current. We all breathed a sigh of relief.

Watching Ganey there, splayed on a rock heaving for air, an unease informed my judgment. Although a practicing scientist and college professor, I’ve learned the hard way never to ignore intuition, either mine or others’, especially when it involves my offspring.

How about the other rapids downstream? How safe are they? I wondered. We were able to walk around this drop, but if we would later be forced to paddle dangerous cascades like the one that grabbed Ganey, then I was ready to pack up and head right out on the dusty trail we’d followed in.