Like water, memories pool. In our mind’s eye they surface occasionally in churning eddies of emotion. They swell almost imperceptibly, and crash like waves in a turbulent, violent thunder that dissipates as quickly as it rolled in from the horizon.
Maybe that’s why time spent on the water, balancing and harnessing its power, means so much. Perhaps that’s why lazy floats and wild river rides stay with us long after our shorts have dried and our life jackets hang among cobwebs in the garage. Or why one undesired moment under a river’s swirling surface can stretch into a lung-burning eternity.
In the following pages, we present the stories of three women who explore their own lives’ journeys through a lens of muddied water. With millions of paddle strokes, they’ve experienced it as a life-forming current, a strengthening force, and a longed-after love. We hope these stories will inspire you to grab a paddle, find life’s rapids, and run with them.
Dancing With the River Gods Again
By Pam Houston
Each year, I swear, will be my last one on the river. Every September, as I roll up my boats for the last time and dry out my life jackets, as I count my bangs and bruises, and count my broken oar blades, and count my lucky stars, I think I’ve finally gotten it out of my system. I load my boats into my truck and take a long last look at the ribbon of water that has carried me more or less safely for the last five days, and the last 10 years. I say an elaborate and heartfelt thank you to the river gods, and I promise never to tempt them again.
Last fall I went so far as to put an ad in the paper: “One 16-foot inflatable raft for sale, good condition.”
Well, pretty good condition. Except for the patch on the floor that covers the hole I punctured on the first day of a 14-day Tatshenshini trip, overloaded as we were with rain gear and food. The glacial water was so swift and silvery I couldn’t see the rocks, and the air was so cold and damp we never did get the patch to stick right.
Then there’s that little tear in the right rear tube where the oar handle caught the rubber last time the boat turned upside down. It happened in the hole they call Satan’s Gut, in Cataract Canyon of the Colorado at highwater. One minute I was rowing like mad, thinking I had read the water just right, and the next minute all I could see and breathe and taste was water. My friend J.J. and I were two tiny life-jacketed corks, gasping and tumbling, holding our breath and praying to whoever it is you pray to when there’s 70,000 cubic feet per second of water pushing you over rocks as big as aircraft carriers, down pour-offs as steep and high as a bungee jump platform, the upside-down boat useless and too far upriver to reach.
Those are the only two patches, although the frame doesn’t sit on the boat quite straight since I crashed into “the Wall” at the end of the Snaggletooth series on the Dolores. Other than that, the problems are strictly cosmetic: there are a few little scratches where Martin held onto the side with his fingernails after he got knocked out of the boat in Powerhouse Rapid on the Middle Fork of the Salmon. There’s the scuff mark on the bottom from the time Donald and I came down the fish ladder by mistake at low water on the Rogue.
I have pictures of us coming down that fish ladder, bumping and spinning, the oars useless in my hands and the biggest smiles imaginable on our faces. I have pictures of Martin too, hauled back in the boat, laughing and shaking off like a dog because Pistol Creek rapid was just around the corner and there was plenty of water to bail before we all had to get serious again. I have pictures of the night after we hit the Wall on the Dolores, of Oliver starting off five hours of spontaneous singing, our voices raised in unmistakably happy-to-be-alive tones.
I have a picture in my mind of getting pulled out of the water in Cataract, gasping for air and looking frantically around for J.J., and then seeing her, safe and also gasping, and knowing in that moment we would always, always, be friends. I have a picture in my mind of the full moon over the Tatshenshini’s glaciers, and the sound of the ice calving as we slept, and didn’t sleep, in the long twilight hours of the Alaskan summer night. I remember our fear of the grizzly bears whose footprints surrounded our tents each morning—and also our wonder.
I awake from the reverie and suddenly it’s April. The snow is melting and the trees are blossoming and I hear myself thinking, “It’s starting to feel like river time again.” Lucky for me no one wanted to buy a boat in what is actually only fair condition, a boat filled up with so many memories it hardly needs air. I drag it out of the shed and stick a little more glue under the patches. It’s time to dance with the river gods again.
The Lesson
By Paula Matarrese
It started with a free kayak—or, rather, a kayak I earned with points from heavy-handed credit card use. As I paged through the rewards booklet, I considered luggage, cookware, and other shiny toys as prizes for the hard-earned, road-warrior points I’d accumulated during a year of business travel. Then, a bright blue, two-person kayak caught my eye on the last page.
That’s cool, I remember thinking. I stopped for a second and envisioned kayaking with my husband on a northern Wisconsin lake. I lingered there for a minute, fingering the glossy photo, turning the possibility over in my mind. I had just enough points to make the purchase, but I had never kayaked before. I had no knowledge about this make and style of boat, and I hadn’t a clue how to actually get the thing to a lake in order to use it. Still, the prospect of owning a kayak intrigued me. The following day I picked up the phone and dialed the number.
The kayak arrived one week later, special delivery due to its size. As I motioned the delivery men into my backyard, I realized how big and heavy of a thing I had purchased. “What are you going to do with that?” my husband asked.
Since I’d bought the boat on a whim and without him knowing, I had to admit: I didn’t know. I felt embarrassed by my impulsivity. But then, Big Blue, as she came to be known, started to grow on us. She was there during morning coffee and also at dinner, looming large on the outside patio next to the kitchen table. Our eagerness gained momentum. We started imagining leisurely summer days on the water and investigating car racks, PFDs, and the loot we’d need to turn our kayak trip into a reality. I started to believe that maybe this wasn’t such a foolish purchase after all.
But then a phone conversation with my husband one evening while I was away on business curbed our enthusiasm. During a softball game, he’d had trouble with his right leg. I joked about getting older, but his voice was terse. “No, this is different,” he said. “Something is wrong.” From my hotel room, I could hear the fear in his voice. A momentary shiver hit my spine, but I pushed it aside to respond encouragingly, telling him we’d visit the family doctor.
One referral led to another, and we finally got a diagnosis from a neurologist: ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. This degenerative neuromuscular disease is fatal, and there is no cure. Disbelief alternated with fits of numbness, anger, and panic. We stored Big Blue, along with many other life plans, in the garage, and we shifted our focus to the much bigger challenge now ahead of us.
On a late-summer morning a year and a half later, I sat, a new widow, surrounded by an early-morning crispness that hinted at fall. I had just endured yet another sleepless night roaming my house in search of a new life. Emptiness, rage, and sadness ebbed and flowed within. I rose to open the door to the garage, and I nearly suffocated from the visages of my old life: tools, a truck, and other items that belonged to a man who’d died. Nothing fit with my new life except perhaps one thing. Peeking out from a tarp was a pointy blue nose. “I’m here,” she said. Within days I’d found a kayak lesson for “all levels” just 15 minutes from my house. I bit my lip with anxiety and signed up.
Soon after, on a fall day, I sat in a half-circle of people. The instructor was predictably mid-30s and wiry, with a sandy beard and rugged good looks seasoned by sun and wind exposure. He turned the floor to the group, asking each of us to give an introduction. Almost every person was part of a couple or had plans for future travel. As the intros continued, murmurs arose, people squirmed and fidgeted, and the instructor’s face glazed over with a look that said, “I’ve heard it all before.”
Then came my turn. My mouth opened, but I couldn’t think of a single reason why I was there. Suddenly, I blurted it out: “My husband died two weeks ago. I bought a tandem kayak for us, but we never got to use it.” The instructor squinted in disbelief, and the half-circle snapped back to life. People looked at me, I felt my face turning red, and I resisted the urge to cry. “So I have no experience,” I croaked.
I immediately regretted what I’d said and my decision to sign up for the lesson. I had placed an unfair burden on a group of strangers. But words can’t be erased. I had changed the mood of the group, and now I was the spoiler of fun, the group outcast, as the one who’d dared to venture out a mere two weeks after my husband’s death.
Mercifully, we carried on with the lesson, going over PFDs, foot pedal adjustments, paddle techniques, and wet exits. When we broke for lunch, I still felt embarrassed by my earlier revelation, so I steered clear of the group. But then, as I ate, the only other single person from the crowd approached. I couldn’t remember his name or his story, but he was definitely heading my way.
“That was mighty brave of you,” he said.
I had no idea what he meant.
“Coming here after you husband died,” he continued, “that takes a lot of courage.”
I was too stunned to say anything.
“I lost my Betty a while back,” he said. “Cancer. You have to get out and force yourself to do things even if it’s alone. Even if you don’t want to.”
I stared, silent. My pain was too new to understand his words, but I was grateful for that moment, the water, the beautiful sunny day, and this man—a comrade in loss and sadness who had chosen to carry on.
That first kayak lesson was seven years ago. I’ve since taken other lessons and purchased a sleek, sultry fiberglass single kayak. I’ve spent more money on equipment than I care to remember. I’ve moved to another city and changed careers twice. I’ve kayaked rivers and lakes and learned to Eskimo roll. Along the way, I’ve found kayaking buddies and even a new husband with a single kayak of his own. I’ve also learned that good can come from bad and that courage can be defined many different ways.
For seven years Big Blue followed me through my new life—from one garage to another. She stayed in my wake, but she never touched water. For most of those years, I had no use for a two-person kayak. Finally, it became clear: Big Blue needed a home, and it wasn’t mine.
Within 24 hours of placing an ad, a family with four excited boys came for her. It took six of us to hoist her onto their truck’s roof and strap her in place. I realized at that moment, as I watched the truck pull away, that although I never paddled her, she’d served me well.
Riverboy Knew
By Becca Katz
Riverboy understood canoes. He was in touch with their distinctive personalities, knowing precisely how they would respond to his silent paddle strokes, the tilt of his hips, the lean of his chest. On the water, he and his craft moved effortlessly. The canoe fused to his lower body. Together they were an aquatic centaur.
Riverboy was like that with people, too. He knew just what to say to illicit the best from me. The first time I ever felt graceful was with him. When we met, I was an awkward 13-year-old girl, paddle in hand, with a big yellow life jacket half covering my swimsuit. Water dripped from my matted ponytail and landed next to my soggy tennis shoes. He looked at me, his scraggly ponytail bleached blond from the sun, his baggy, ripped canvas shorts hanging on his exposed hip bones and touching down just past his knees, his blue eyes sparkling against his tanned complexion. He smiled and looked right past my braces and baby fat to the paddler hiding inside—a strong, elegant, water-moving force.
“Let’s get some canoes on the water. Can you grab that end?” he asked.
The Grummans, as he called them, were 17 feet long, aluminum, and painted safety orange. On the bows’ starboard sides, he’d stenciled the names of past canoe leaders in John Deere green. They deserved and commanded respect.
As did he. In the early-morning quiet, Riverboy would paddle. He’d playfully spin, dip, and glide, effortlessly tracing the sunrise’s reflection upon the lake’s smooth surface. I used to sit on the waterfront steps and watch him perform his paddling dance.
I remember looking at the rows of clunky aluminum hulls and hearing them, noisy in the water. There was a constant sloshing sound of waves hitting the chines or crashing against the bows. These boats dent easily. They creak when you portage them. They soak up water and hold it until they’re waterlogged. Their best quality is a pronounced keel that tracks straight and true, conducive for beginner paddlers. Being 13 made me feel like a Grumman.
There were also wood and canvas canoes that occupied special racks in the boathouse, shielded from the sun’s damaging UV light. Sometimes Riverboy would open up the rickety garage doors to show us the delicate-skinned creatures. They looked so sleek, resting with their hulls toward the boathouse ceiling, their smooth, deep orange bellies exposed to the air.
“Canoes should only touch three things,” said Riverboy, holding up three fingers and waiting for my trained response. He ran his hands along the side of one of the canoes, caressing it.
“Air, water, and hands,” I replied obediently. To him, a canoe was something to respect unconditionally.
Every day I would go down to the boathouse, with or without a paddling partner, secretly hoping that no one else would show up. Usually, I got my wish. “Really lean out over the gunwale,” he said. “Even farther. Now scull your paddle back and forth like you’re spreading peanut butter on bread.”
Riverboy had turned around to face me in the canoe and both of our bodies were stretched over the lake, weight pressing against our paddles, like human outriggers. He explained the physics: “A canoe is like a bowl. The curvier it is from bow to stern, the more easily it will spin.”
Paddling solo, kneeling against the stern thwart, I’d try a sweep stroke on the right, spinning the canoe. Then I’d track straight, modifying a standard stroke with an extra draw at the beginning and a little J at the end. Sometimes I’d dig in to spin circles or to slip sideways like a puck on ice. We spent the summer fine-tuning my skills, turning me from unstable paddler into confident canoeist.
We compared the cumbersome feel of the Grummans to the smoothness and grace of wood and canvas. When I first met the more responsive canoes, they possessed a composure I envied. Their simplicity, their balance, the grain of the wood on exposed ribs—everything about these canoes was perfect. They would glide along the water without any resistance, confident in their chosen path.
As I learned the personality of the different canoes, I knew exactly how each would respond to a small twist of my wrist. Paddling the wood and canvas boats made me want to disown the Grummans, to turn my back on their clunkiness. I wanted to slip through the water on wood and canvas, listening to the loons, watching the smooth, ephemeral traces of my journey across the lake.
But ignoring the Grummans wasn’t the answer. Like Riverboy, I learned how to talk to them, persuade them, and comfort them all. Riverboy taught me that a canoe is only as elegant as she who paddles it.
