“This is a trip of extremes,” the lead guide said during orientation at Lee’s Ferry. “You will be cold, you will be hot. You will be wet or dry and you will suffer. . .And, you’ll see amazing things.” I don’t recall any vacation with that type of introduction.
In a perfect world, which never existed, there would’ve been beginner rapids to increase your confidence that you could handle the trip. But really, all you do is hold on, right? That’s what you’re thinking, you just hold on as you go through the rapids.
I knew there was something different coming when the assistant, a petite young woman who looked 15, came around the raft checking our grips.
“A big rapid coming, hold on,” we were warned. The water was rough and we were getting a little wet when suddenly the nose of the boat teetered on the edge of an abyss. Is there a hole there or does the water slip away? We hung suspended there for a long time, but you know it was maybe two seconds. We dropped and kept dropping into a hole defined by a wall of water. . . I remember space; I remember the wall of water building in front of us, then above us and even higher above us. There was no splash of water. Just this wall of water that stood above the rim of the hole suspended in air is if waiting for us to arrive at the perfect spot. It held back all of the splashes of water that really wanted to get to us as if to say to them “Not yet, just wait.” The wall had momentum and I gave it a personality. It was going to hit us full force and then stay in my mind’s eye forever.
I yelled Chelsea’s name because the wave would hit her too and for a nanosecond I believed she would be swept off the back of the boat. The boat dropped, but we (the passengers) stayed suspended momentarily until the ropes we held went with the raft, and then the thunderous wall of water hit us full force. There was no protection from someone else. It was like doing a vertical belly flop. Two opposing forces collided in midair. We all did a full frontal into the wall of water. We were flattened and Ed was shoved against me by the force created as the wall of water went through us one way and the boat pulled us downward then forward.
My hand stayed wrapped on the strap but my body was someplace else. The flexibility in my hand was used to the max. My hand collapsed and I had a moment wondering if I’d broken it. We came out the other side of the rapid sputtering, gasping checking ourselves and each other. Was my hand in one piece? Was my wife there? Was everyone in the boat? Yes to all questions.
“Are you okay” I asked Ed and he responded. “Yeah, are you?” I looked at him again 10-15 seconds later. “You lost one of your glass lenses.” It was true one of the lenses was completely gone from his glasses. We were both shook from the experience and shaking from the cold. We retreated to the back of the boat.
I turned to the guide. “I was holding onto the strap with my right hand and then the rope at my feet. I felt myself being swept away. What else could I do?”
“Use your other hand to hold onto another strap,” he said quickly. My mind wasn’t working well. I tried to apply what he said. I have one hand on the one strap and the other on the other rope, and he wanted me to use my third hand? The guy smiled as he saw my mind working to make sense of his recommendation. He was amused, I was not, but I didn’t know him well enough to reprimand him or express my anger. Instead I asked.
“Do we have a lot of rapids like that?”
“You paid for white water rafting,” he said easily. I wanted to dislike him but he held my life in his hands. And, it’s hard to argue with someone who is stating the obvious. He was right. I paid for this. The fears about getting there in the midst of a pandemic were replaced with the reality that I was really white water rafting. I needed a new strategy but there was only one reality. There was only one way out of the canyon and that was via the river and through the rapids – a 270 mile trek downstream and seven nights of sleeping under the stars.
I think it’s better when the guide says, “Hold on!” I don’t need to know the other things. Life is like a river – there is quiet and there are rapids. Enjoy the quiet, be with friends, hold on in the rapids, push through the WOW’s – the walls of water that wash through us, and know that we were meant to do this journey.
