John Jay Dewell

The Legend of Nogar Avocado
for My Friend, John Dewell
By Tayanna Flach as told to Malan White
Our friendship with John started on a Grand Canyon rafting trip about 16 years ago. John was one of the Kayakers. Since kayakers don't have much room for gear, John's only food assignment for the trip was to bring the avocados that would be stuffed with krab salad so we could have avocado boats for lunch.
The trip was 16 days long. Avocado Boats were for the day 13 lunch. Thinking ahead, John bought the hardest avocado's he could find. He didn't want them to ripen too quickly for such a far off lunch. The only problem was that this trip was in mid-March and it was cold!
John started checked the ripeness days before it was time for the avocado boats. They were still as hard as rocks. John got his avocado's out of the dry box and lovingly set them out in the cold March sun every chance he got. He put them in his sleeping bag at night hoping his warmth would help ripen them. The scheduled lunch came and went. The avocado's were too hard to eat. Terry Anderson had to trade assigned lunches with someone that was hosting a lunch even later in the trip. This gave John a few more days to lovingly tend and snuggle his avocado's so they would ripen.
Krab salad can last only so long even with proper refrigeration. Finally the day came when the salad needed to be eaten or it would spoil. Some of the avocado's were no longer rock hard, but only some. We ate the salad with the edible parts of the avocados.
Terry Anderson was the trip leader for this Grand. Terry thinks of everything. He brought and gave cigars to everyone, smokers and non-smokers alike. Turns out that John liked the cigars quite a bit. After he finished his own cigars, he went to the non-smokers offering to barter anything he could spare for their cigars. I got a roll of 35 mm camera film for one of mine. You remember when camera's needed film, right?
There came a time when all the surplus cigars were smoked. This was only on day 7 of the 16-day trip. John wanted more cigars badly. He made the rounds to everyone and asked if they had any more cigars to trade. No one did. When we got to Phantom Ranch, John hurried to the little store and asked if they had any cigars. For those that don't know, Phantom Ranch is the small resort in the bottom of the canyon. Sadly there were no cigars to be had.
There are many burros that haul tourists from the top to the bottom of Grand Canyon and vice versa. Burro prices were posted on the stores menu. Being an artist, I have an overactive imagination. I pictured John renting their fastest donkey and spurring it to the top of the South Rim as fast as it could go. John and I shared a laugh over my imagery, then he asked the cashier for his fastest donkey. John asked the cashier if Grand Canyon Village (at the top) had cigars. There was not enough time to check before we needed to be back in our boats. Sadly John was sans cigars for the remainder of the trip. He was reborn that day, and his new name was Nogar Avocado because he had no cigars or edible avocados.
We became close on that trip. One night Tim Martin's dutch oven brownies weren't cool enough to eat until midnight. Everyone but John and I said they would eat their brownies for breakfast the next morning and went to bed. We stayed up late talking and laughing. We started getting hungry. The big dutch oven of warm brownies just smelled too good. We couldn't resist and ate almost all of the brownies intended for 16 people by ourselves.
During this trip, I often spoke of my love for backcountry skiing and asked John if he would like to go with me and my husband Malan. I followed through with my promise to invite him when Winter came to the Wasatch. John became our back-country ski buddy for years. It took John a while to build up the endurance to ski up mountains instead of just down. Several times he pushed himself to the point of throwing up. John never gave up. He kept backcountry skiing in the Winters and bicycling the rest of the year until he became one of the strongest of our group.
John was a wonderful outdoor adventure partner and a great friend. We will always remember the good times we shared and the friendship we had. We miss you. Rest in peace my friend!

MAY THE THOUGHT OF KNOWING THAT FAMILY AND FRIENDS SHARE IN YOUR GRIEF BRING YOU A MEASURE OF COMFORT.PLEASE READ PROV 17:17