I spent 20 days in a raft with a silent stranger. I never expected our trip to end.

“Doug sips tea and waits for me to say something interesting,” the author writes. Courtesy of Alison Kaplan

I met Doug on a 20-day rafting trip through the Grand Canyon, where I was randomly assigned to be the only passenger on his boat. He was a former raft guide and true waterman, soft-spoken and ruggedly handsome. I was new to rafting and thought rain gear could replace a dry suit, and had signed up for the trip on a whim.

It sounds like the premise of a hit reality TV show, except none of us were cut out for reality TV. If the cameras had been rolling, many sound effects would have had to be added in post-production. Like crickets. Or maybe that sad “womp womp” trombone sound.

I’m introverted, shy around strangers and not very good at small talk, and Doug is quiet around everyone, so the first day in our shared raft was awkward. He asked me what I did for work, where I went to school and where I grew up, and I repeated the questions. We talked about our hobbies (mine was rock climbing, his was surfing) and how we ended up on this particular trip. But the conversation did not follow, and after a few discussions, we fell into silence again.

Every once in a while, he would identify a teachable moment to explain some of the intricacies of rafting: how to spot and catch an eddy, how to choose the best line, or how to choose a ferry angle. Most of the time we sat quietly and watched the canyon walls float by.

Over the next few days, the grandeur of one of the largest holes in Earth’s ground gave us plenty to see, but the long, silent stretches made me nervous. The limits of my social skills became painfully obvious when entire days passed without me being able to come up with a single interesting topic of conversation. Doug’s reluctance certainly didn’t help. But I was sure that if someone else were in my shoes, they would be able to crack his shell, or at least come up with something more interesting to say than which Pringles flavor we preferred.

When I looked at the other rafts on our trip, it seemed like everyone was deep in conversation, laughing or joking, and I wondered if Doug wished someone more exciting was sharing his boat. Sometimes someone else from our group would come and spend a few hours on our raft and would always comment on how peaceful it was. I couldn’t help but wonder if by “peaceful” they really meant “boring.”

“Is this what you do all day?” » asked a visitor. We nodded.

“Pair rowing on a slow day,” the author writes. Courtesy of Alison Kaplan

Every evening our five rafts gathered on the shore to set up camp, and I always felt relieved to find the others. I’m a group person, I’m better at joining conversations than carrying them, so spending time with 12 other people took the pressure off. It was easier to be myself in the evenings, making jokes that people laughed at, and leaning into my competitive side in whatever silly game we came up with to pass the time.

One evening, an old acquaintance laughed at one of my lines and said, “I never realized how funny you were!” » I felt validated by his comment, but also frustrated. Why did I sometimes feel like I had two personalities? In a group on the shore, I was awkward and carefree, but alone in a boat with another introvert, I was plagued by debilitating shyness.

I watched Doug interact with the rest of the group and saw that he was as quiet with them as he was with me. He seemed content with how calm and confident he was, but I wondered if he ever felt insecure like I did.

I could have changed boats at any time, but despite the inconvenience, I returned to Doug’s boat day after day. He was one of the best boaters on the trip and I trusted him not to overturn our raft in the raging rapids. So it was partly self-preservation that motivated me to stay, but I was also attracted to the challenge. Could I move past our incompatible personalities to build some sort of true friendship with this silent man? Could we ever establish enough rapport for me to discover what secrets he was hiding under his scruffy, coarse beard?

As we descended deeper into the canyon, the quiet hours began to become more comfortable. We fell into an easy rhythm and our complex code of nonverbal communication became a running joke.

Doug poured himself a cup of tea into his thermos, and when he was finished, he filled the cup and passed it to me without a word. When I reapplied sunscreen, I presented it to him as an offering, and if it was zinc, he would shake his head yes, but if it was a spray, he would shake his head no. Sometimes he would offer me the oars, but I had no idea what I was doing, so he would direct me with intermittent, concise commands, jumping to grab them just before I drove us into a rock.

From time to time, one of us would break our tacit peace pact to shout “Sheep!” ” loud enough for all the other boats to hear, gesturing wildly at an illusory bighorn sheep that was climbing up the steep canyon walls.

The most words Doug ever said to me in one day came during a long, flat stretch of river where he pulled out a ukulele and serenaded me with a concert of an album while I I was lying on the seat with my eyes closed. The final song was an uplifting rendition of Ernie’s “I Don’t Want To Live on the Moon” from “Sesame Street,” complete with a mouth trumpet solo. He sang other people’s lyrics, but I felt like I was finally getting to know him.

It took nearly two weeks of eight-hour days alone in a boat at the bottom of the Grand Canyon before I began to feel something more than a quiet friendship blossoming between us. When I realized that I had developed a crush on the stoic captain of our inflatable raft, I told myself that it was just part of the experience: that every novice rafter was doomed to develop a crush on the person who kept him alive and transported him safely to camp each evening.

What’s interesting, though, is that although we felt more comfortable together, we didn’t become more talkative. There wasn’t a sudden change where the walls came down and we realized we had so much to say, so much to share. Things seemed easy between us, but I still got to know Doug based almost entirely on my experience. He showed me who he was rather than telling me.

“We continue to enjoy sitting quietly together on boats,” the author writes. Courtesy of Alison Kaplan

At the end of the trip, I was completely seduced but I didn’t say anything to him, for fear of breaking the spell of our quiet relationship. When we finally kissed a few days later, we were still acting primarily on nonverbal cues. But when I dropped him off at his house, he smiled and said, “We should continue dating.” »

We spent a lot of time together in the weeks that followed. We talked a little, but mostly when we were together, we did things: bike riding, hiking, or playing tennis during the day, then cooking, playing cards, or reading books aloud in the evening. At first I wondered if the spark would die down when we ran out of comprehensive discussion topics, but it’s been over four years and that hasn’t happened yet.

It’s funny to think that if I had met Doug at a party, or even on a two-day trip instead of a three-week trip, I’m sure we would have written each other off immediately. If we had met on a dating app or been set up by friends, I probably would have gone back to those friends and told them how awkward it had been – that we had nothing to say and that we just hadn’t clicked. But instead, we spent all day sitting quietly together for three weeks, and the bond we formed in that boat became the healthiest, strongest relationship I’ve ever known.

I’m not necessarily saying that everyone should go through 200 hours of awkward silence on a first date before considering it a bad match. But perhaps we place too much importance on that initial spark, or we tend to equate that spark with words and the ease with which they flow from the start. None of us looked much like the people we thought we met on that first day on the Colorado River, and I’m glad we had time to realize that.

A few weeks ago, Doug and I were walking down Main Street towards the local housewares store. Doug had insisted that I accompany him in his search for the perfect medium-sized pot. He wanted stainless steel and rounded sides, with a long metal handle and a strainer built into the glass lid. I joked about his quirk about kitchen implements, and as we walked to the store, I chatted absently, working on a big idea that I hadn’t really figured out yet. He turned to me with a smile and said, “You know, sometimes you really talk a lot.”

Alison Kaplan is a writer from Bishop, California. She works as a climbing ranger in Yosemite National Park. Connect with her on Instagram: @ali_kap.

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