Ok, I'm pregnant, so the heat/cold thing seems to be taking an awful lot of my consciousness despite the fact that this is easily the mildest summer I've ever felt here. But there is plenty of other contrast in the summer as well - the rush and hurry of getting to swim team, doing a shuttle, leading the children to sleep before the dragon scales show all the way through their skin. And the ultimate contrast, life and death.
A death occurred on the river this summer and it amazes me how it brings back into stark focus what exactly it is we do, what a great leap of faith it is. The death on the river was a tragic accident, no one to be blamed, no one to be punished, plenty to be learned by all. A passenger fell out of a boat in a place where daily tens of people fall out of their boats. I have swum this particular rapid a couple of times, and know people who have done it in rafts, duckies, tubes, riverboards, kayaks and pool toys. We took our children on it early this summer for their first time. They loved it. The man who died was rafting with a good organization who were running the river with excellent safety procedures in place. No one to blame.
And yet he died. And every day we offer people the opportunity to raft this same rapid, to trust us, our equipment, our guides, their judgement. And we can never promise them safety because, as we tell our children, you alone are responsible for your body. We can control only so much, and then we give it up to faith. And hope.
When the accident happened, Tom went and studied the pictures to find out exactly what happened. He went to the rapid at low water to see what the rocks looked like. He brought our crew to the rapid to show them where and why and how and to remind them that it is a matter of life and death, this guiding job. And he mourned.
I was reminded why this occupation is a perfect one for him: because he cares about it so much, believes in it so much, and takes on the responsibility of it completely. And because he loves the magic it creates for people who choose to raft it, and he loves the people who choose that magic. He's never been bored on the South Fork and I'd trust him to guide me on any river he deemed runnable. He finds the fun, the joy, the beauty, the adventure in it every single day. I know there is not another company owner or manager who chooses to guide the river every possible chance just to be a part of that joy. He gives it that respect, and he also gives it it's due as a place where tragedy can happen. Every summer he falls in love with the river and every summer I fall in love with that part of him again as well.
Sometimes I forget that I used to be a guide, that I spent four solid summers constantly on the water taking boat after boat of passengers down. This unwieldy pregnant body seems in contrast to the one people entrusted their lives and their children's lives to. I forget until a passenger comes back, telling a story about the last time they were on the river and I realize I was their guide and we laugh that there's been a picture of me and them in the middle of a rapid on their mantle for the last seven years. I have to remind myself to own that part of my past, to let it be a part of the mom I am now. We don't have many pictures of us on the river: it's something so normal, so common an occurrence. We don't take pictures of ourselves going to work or to school, doing the everyday things.
On days off that used to be rare but are all to plentiful in this summer of recession, we choose the river: blowing up a raft (loosening the life vest straps another inch each week) and going through the motions to travel three miles on water with our children and friends on Class II riffles. We are always different at the end than we were at the beginning, always glad we made the effort, took the time.
Because there is an inexplicable magic to a river. And it takes my breath away each and every day I spend in it, next to it, on it. The kids and I do shuttles three or four times a week and it's inevitable that we wind up in the river each time. Usually we plan for it, wearing swimsuits to take-out and following the winding down of summer through the waning depth of the reservoir, each day a steeper and longer climb down to the water. Sometimes it's a surprise on a morning shuttle: its still cool when we leave the house and by the time the boats are blown up and the safety talk is happening, we're at least partially immersed.
Camp Lotus is our favorite, of course, our second home. The kids have learned to swim on the shallow banks there, moving gradually into the current whose power they know to respect. At the end of a day I show up on it's banks tired and hot and all too often grouchy and am rebirthed instantly each time I jump in as it washes away the heat, the exhaustion, the stress and leaves me cooled down and blissed out and back in the moment. The joy floods back into my consciousness and I am grateful and awestruck at what an amazing place I live in, how lucky my children are to have these summers of raw bliss, of endless fun with friends making sand castles, imagining and playing out great characters and stories, and swimming in water that is theirs only for a moment before rushing on.
"Night and day the river flows. If time is the mind of space, the River is the soul of the desert. Brave boatmen come, they go, they die, the voyage flows on forever. We are all canyoneers. We are all passengers on this little mossy ship, this delicate dory sailing round the sun that humans call the earth. Joy, shipmates, joy." Edward Abbey, The Hidden Canyon - A River Journey
