Rogue River Rafting With Ferron Mayfield

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Ferron Mayfield scratched his goatee and tried to think of a good river story, while hoisting one of his 23 rafts into the shed as the season wound down last week.

It's part of the Southern tradition — hanging out on the porch and spinning a good yarn, said the 53-year-old Alabama native, in his melodious drawl.

For 30 years, Mayfield's front porch has been his raft or drift boat, since he left a government job in water treatment to seek adventure out West.

"You've got the podium, and you're the captain," said Mayfield, who operates Ferron's Fun Trips with his wife, Sue Orris. "We're in the entertainment business."

"He knows a lot of history of the river and the characters who lived on it, and he tells it in a way very few people can," said Margaret Bradford, friend of the couple. "And he has that drawl."

Mayfield said people in the South had to talk slowly because it was so hot and humid, as he launched into a story (shortened here for space purposes):

It was 110 degrees on the lower Rogue, he was rowing the baggage raft, wearing a red sweatshirt with a hood (he doesn't trust sunscreen) that he'd wet down to stay cool.

A bedraggled hummingbird stopped and licked his sleeve to hydrate, then "fluttered up and stuck his tongue right up my big nose," Mayfield said. "I think he thought I was a big red flower."
Mayfield said his mom told the best stories back in Childersburg, Ala., where Ferron had four brothers and sisters.

Older brother Darryl heard about the Rogue River when he ran into some Grants Pass folks while watching daredevil Evel Knievel's attempt to jump the Snake River in 1974.

"They said, 'People pay you to take them down the river,'" Mayfield said. "What a novel concept for a country boy from Alabama."

Darryl came out first, and Ferron followed, working summers before moving for good in 1977 and working for Bryce Whitmore and Wilderness Waterways.

"It was serf labor in the early days," he said. "The outfitters liked to pay you at the end of the season. If you loved the river enough you put up with it."

He spent his life savings, $2,000, on a mining claim as he and a few cohorts mined gold in the winter on Galice Creek, before, "The government persuaded me to give it up."
"The feds claimed we were just dirty squatters. I knew that wasn't true."

Mayfield said at a guides convention in Eugene in 1981, a BLM employee "was kind enough to explain it to this country boy."

"We've got all the money and lawyers in the world and we're out to get your ass," Mayfield recalled him saying.

"It turns out I was playin' without payin'. So I gave up gold mining."

Mayfield, divorced from his first wife, fell in love with Orris after they'd worked together for a few summers on the river. Orris, head of Rogue Community College's counseling department, handles the books and other business details for the business.

"I'd be lost without her," Mayfield said. "We're an odd couple. She's the Jewish girl from Boston, and I'm the country bumpkin from Alabama."

"Most people don't realize how intelligent he is," Orris said of Mayfield, an avid reader and world traveler. "He's amazing. He's a true Southern gentleman. We would get off exhausting days on the river and he'd help people carry bags to the campsite."

Above all, they have fun. Just listen to their answering machine:

"This is Ferron and Sue, and Ferron's Fun Trips. We're out having fun."

Ferron and Sue also sleep above the boat shed, in an outdoor bedroom.

Mayfield often takes his dogs Junior and Pupeye down the river, and customers are allowed to bring pets. That landed him a spot on the TV show "Animal Planet" a few years back.

He even took a cat and some kittens for a family on a half-day trip. Turns out the cats were the children's security blanket, following their mother's recent death from cancer.

Another family brought a parrot a few weeks ago.

"It added a real pirate theme to the thing," Mayfield said.

Every time Mayfield goes by Rainie Falls, he throws a flower in the river for Darryl, who drowned there in 1982. Darryl took off his lifejacket and dove in after a loose gear bag below the Middle Chute, Mayfield said. He was 37. Mayfield still uses his brother's drift boat. Mayfield was fishing in Alaska at the time of Darryl's death, earning enough money to put a down payment on his property.

Ferron Mayfield, the quintessential free spirit, can reflect on 30 years of fun on the Rogue River.

"America is more of a free country than people take advantage of," he said. "A lot of people do what's easy, or what their parents did. Others do stuff they're fascinated with. You end up working a lot of your life. It's best to at least halfway enjoy your work."