Writings

On the Big South Fork

Caitlin Bagley

         When I found out we were to go on a canoe trip, I envisioned myself alone.  Or rather, alone in the pack, the leader rushing down gushing waters, tackling rapids as if born upon the rollicking, roiling waters.  Perhaps I’d pause once in a while to raise my paddle in triumph, to shout, “So long, suckers!” to the rest of the group miles behind me.

            Yes, I dreamed big for someone who had never really canoed before.  The curious thing about big dreams is that they tend to get smashed up incredibly fast.  After nearly a day and a half traveling down to the border of Kentucky and Tennessee, we found ourselves standing in an empty parking lot on a Thursday afternoon, having the basics of canoeing explained to us by an over-eager, slightly balding man.  Car sick, tired, and vaguely bored by this time, most of us just stood staring at him, trying to work up the energy to care about what he was saying.  After an absurdly quick summary of river safety, which amounted to keep your head above water and don’t die, the man was gone.  We smiled and laughed and told ourselves this would be great.  We were ready to spend two days on the water, and yet could that be fear behind the smiles? 

  So there we were left in an abandoned parking lot with eight boats and an array of brightly colored lifejackets and gear.  We were paired off into groups that seemed almost haphazard.  Nick shouted, “Who wants to be my partner?!”   I shouted back, “I’ll be your partner!”  And so began our river partnership.  He would be Lewis to my Clark (Or Sacagawea if we must go by gender roles alone), captain and first mate. Together we were certain that we’d beat out everyone else.  Nick had canoed when he was nine, and so had I, though my memories were restricted to eating chicken salad sandwiches by the lakeshore.  I couldn’t remember anything about the actual canoe experience.  It never occurred to us that this translated to what were in essence two nine year olds alone in a boat on the Big South Fork. 

We were the first pair to launch, and the first pair to establish our prowess at canoeing.  We were the first pair to get stuck in the banks of the river.  Everyone else was skipping about demonstrating how skilled they were, proving they were practically born on the water, and there we were—wedged into the bank of the Big South Fork, debating how to get out.

            Then there was the issue of the actual water.  On the drive down,  it had rained to flood the world.  The last person to see rains such as these was Noah and his sons.  We were certain that the river would be high with rapids that rose to such heights only fools as stupid as us would attempt such dangerous waters.  Maybe not stupid, but certainly foolish.  And once we reached our destination, I imagined that there would be a crowd of river people cheering and clapping, ticker tape and confetti floating through the air as they all gaped in wonder at our amazing water skills, skills which had not been seen on that river in many a year, perhaps never.  So maybe that was why I felt so shocked, so appalled when we got out onto that muddy, scummy water to see not the gurgling, gushing, overflowing banks of my dreams, but rather calm, smooth, unmoving brown water.  Water that was so low and still, you could barely tell in which direction it was running.  I could tell at once that I had overshot my dreams of being a river goddess.

            In the meantime, though, Nick and I were stuck on the sides of the river, clearly displaying no godlike powers of river persuasion.  Across the waters in his own boat, Randall spent a long time yelling over at us, trying to explain to us just how these crazy things called paddles worked.  At first it didn’t seem to help, all we could do was veer sideways for a bit and then go crashing into the banks once again.    Then something clicked.  I don’t know what, and I don’t know how, but finally Nick understood just what the right technique was.  I might be in the front, gently guiding us towards certain doom, but Nick had learned to overcorrect, to fix my errors without my noticing that I was ever in error.

            Now the whole class was on the waters.  I sized them up.  Chuck and Erik were clearly no problem, since they were going to be the leaders.  Randall and Amy the Elder? Please, they were going to stay in the back and sweep, I didn’t need to worry about them.  Matt and Megan?  Well, I didn’t know much about Matt, but knowing Megan, I was sure that they wouldn’t be contenders.  Vincent and Amy?  Well Vincent certainly loved to showboat and goof off, and they might be our primary contenders, but I was full of determination, moxie, and inner river goddess-ocity.  I could take them on.  There was Julie and Emily, but they were having the same sideways problem as us.  I wasn’t worried.  And then there was Jess and Hannah, our resident nature loving, organic-food cooking, lavender-oil wearing hippies.  Knowing them they would be too busy staring at butterflies and flowers to pay attention to winning.  Sure they might have some inner river goddess-ocity going on, but what they had in goddess-ocity, Nick and I more than doubled in the determination to win.  And last but not least there were Leah and Ashley.  They were nice enough sure, but just by looking at them, I could tell they didn’t have what it takes to beat us, with Leah’s creamy white skin, and Ashley’s always perfectly coiffed hair, I knew we already had them beat.  What game were we playing, who were we setting out to beat, who knows, but we just new we wanted to beat them.  So clearly, I was setting myself up for the greatest win ever.

            I would at times discover deep pools where I could see boulders below me, the water turning darker shades of blue and green.  I watched as turtles surfaced for air, and then, perhaps startled by our swiftly approaching boats, darted back down into the water, their shells fading until I could no longer see them.  They hid beneath the shade of overhanging trees, and as we glided past, I wondered when they would poke out their heads again to see if we had gone.

            The balding man had mentioned to be on the lookout for a large island, which would mark that we had gone four miles.  We would be able to use this as a guidepost to gauge our speeds.  As we fell into our boating rhythm, I kept my eyes peeled for such an island.  This was thrown off by my increasing worry over our prospects for winning.  We let the others forge ahead, content to sit in the back and let them establish their own patterns.  We would simply abide in the back of the river, and then when the time came, we would suddenly shoot ahead, and trounce them, making them gape and stare, and perhaps bow down in worship if that wasn’t asking too much.  Instead, I quickly found that this was much easier said than done.  As mentioned, the moving sideways thing was still our greatest enemy.  Nick might be shouting, “Paddle left, Cait! Left!”  And I might even break from my daydreams from time to time to actually paddle left, but it just wasn’t working. We had been a little overzealous one might say. 

            The space between us and everyone else was growing wider, and the water was getting shallower.  Randall hung back and circled us like a vulture, shouting out to us, “Try the J-stroke!” or “You’re doing it all wrong!”  I looked back at Nick, and whispered, “What’s the J-stroke?”  Nick gave me a near desperate shrug, and then I felt the boat shudder into the sides of the banks again.  Beneath the sounds of Randall and Amy’s laughter I was fairly certain I heard Nick curse.  Could we see the rest of the group anymore?  Not really.  Julie and Emily were a bit ahead of us, having the same trouble, and farther on I could see Jess and Hannah letting their bare feet dangle over the sides of the boat, as they merrily sped ahead.  For a brief moment, we steered straight, and in that moment Julie and Emily did a fatal thing.  They went sideways into the banks, and Randall and Amy seized upon this to help them out of such narrow straights, while Nick and I, still foolishly believing we could win this game, sped ahead as fast as we could, which was apparently not fast enough.  Soon, we watched in disbelief as Julie and Emily pulled up beside us laughing and joking, their steering problems apparently solved.  They stopped to talk for a moment, but in a second they were ahead of us, making great strides on Jess and Hannah.  I pulled harder on the paddle, willing the boat to go faster.  I could see no change.

            When the four-mile island came into view, it came with the tragic sight of the whole camp, all boats beached on the shores, and campers swimming and frolicking along the shores.  What were we doing wrong?  We’d made great strides in figuring out the J-stroke.  In fact, we seemed to be doing well as far as maneuvering went.  So how come the whole camp was already beached and eating lunch?  Something was not right.

            We pulled ashore and grabbed some lunch, staring at the canoe, wondering why it had failed us so.  After all, this was clearly not our fault.  The only thing left to blame could only be the canoe.  It was probably some faulty manufacturing, something that allowed it to stay afloat, but to not do much more than that, but what could we do about it?  At this point it was near futile to try switching boats with people.  I bent to inspect it, shaking the seat bars and rims of the canoe.  I could find no obvious problem.  Perhaps it was merely a problem of praise.  I began to work up the theory that if I only praised the boat enough, it might suddenly begin to serve us better. In the meantime, we did what we could and switched paddles, working under the assumption (or was it superstition?) that the old paddles just weren’t the right fit for us.

             On the beach we had heard Vincent shouting out to his “Mister Amy” about the H.M.S.  Juggernaut.  My eyes met Nick’s.  How come they had a cool name for their boat?  We mulled over possibilities.  Nothing quite expressed the power and grace of our craft. We were kind of stumped.  Then we thought of our true naturalist mentor, the man who would be proud of our piloting of the little river worthy vessel, none other than Charles Darwin.  Thinking of the turtles we’d seen diving, of the island we’d just left, our little boat became the S.S. Beagle.

            Lunch finished and settling nicely in our stomachs, the professors deemed it was time to launch off again.  Off we went into the wilds of the Big South Fork in the brave Beagle, so excited were we that we even named our paddles.  Mine was David, David Oar, and Nick’s was Blushy for the fine red blushing hue of his paddle.  They seemed to serve us well.  But personally, my thoughts were not on David and Blushy.  Rather, they were on the exciting prospects of rapids.  We were told that we would be coming upon them very soon.  The rapids I was sure would be different from these low, calm waters.  No doubt they would at least have the swift moving waters, the deadly waters that with one false move, you could lose your life in.  These were what I had been waiting for.  As we meandered through the river, I kept craning my neck to see if we were getting close, to maybe hear the sounds of roaring waters.  Nothing.  It all looked the same, it all sounded the same.

            Then our first rapids came into view.  They didn’t look very much like rapids, though.  We barreled ahead, certain that though these rapids didn’t look like the ones we had imagined, we could take them on.  For a moment, things went smoothly. Then about midway through the rapids, we came to a halt.  A complete, rock sliding, wedged in between rocks that were painted green from the history of canoes which had gone sliding across the rocks stop.  Privately, I wondered what color the bottom of our canoe was.   It probably used to be green, but maybe not anymore.      

            “Shit,” muttered Nick, while I was still eagerly urging on, “Go, little boat, go! You can do it!”  The little boat failed to go.  There was no other option but to get out and drag it through the rapids, just as everyone else had done.  Of course, I still had the balding man’s words fresh in my mind, telling us to be careful of our footing in rapids, that they were extremely dangerous, you could die, blah, blah, blah.  If these rapids could kill a grown man, the world was apparently far more dangerous than I had calculated.  So while Nick was already out of the boat, getting ready to drag it, I was gingerly stepping out my little toes, frightened that the rapids, which barely went past my ankle, might suck me under to my death.

            Finally, I braved the cool waters, immediately realizing that, yeah, this wasn’t so bad at all.  So we set to work dragging it through the rapids.  When stuck in rapids I have found that there are only a few things that you can successfully do to free yourself.  One, you can use your paddles to pry and push yourself off of the rocks.  This is very rarely successful, but it is always my first option, as it doesn’t involve me getting out of the boat.  Two, you can “scoot.”  Put down your paddle, and together you and your partner must literally try and scoot the boat over the rocks with your bottoms.  I would say that while it is more successful then the first technique, it too has limited success rates. Thirdly, and finally, you can get out of the boat and guide it through the waters.  You have to hold on tight, because once you’re out of the boat the water is generally much more receptive to sweeping the boat back into the current. Then there are the rocks.  I am not the most nimble of people on flatland.  In a stony riverbed, I am reduced to the state of perhaps some baby animal learning to walk.  It is that pathetic.

            So by following method number three, Nick and I had gone through our first rapids, and though morale in the boat had not yet reached a critical state, it was not at it’s highest point either.  The rest of the day brought many more rapids, but out of them all, there were probably two that we actually made it through without having to employ at least one of those extraction techniques.  Though I must say, we had style.  How many other people could go through rapids backwards?  How many other people could scout out what seemed to be best possible route, and then end up stranded where everyone else was breezing by with ease?  After we had passed the last rapids, the water had calmed down once again, and for once, Nick and I had caught up with the rest of the group.  We were all just swirling around in the water, it was the end of the day, the sun seemed extra hot, and no one seemed willing to go much further.  I won’t deny it; we got our fair share of mockery.  Apparently our awesome water skills had not gone unnoticed by the rest of the group.

            “Hey guys, I see you finally found us!” called out Matt.  I glared at him, but it clearly made no impression.  After several minutes of just floating there on the still river, we finally asked, “What’s the hold up?”  It seemed that the professors were debating whether or not we had overshot the campsite or not.  They forged back up stream, finally sending back word that, yes, we had missed the campsite by quite a bit.  Nick and I turned the boat around and sped for it.  This time we were the third group to beach, but somehow, the glory was overshadowed by the sheer amount of fatigue we were both feeling.  Our shoulders, arms, backs, and necks, all were screeching out in pain, demanding why we had put them through such rigors.  At that point, I could not honestly remember why we were doing this.

            As if by magic, within an hour or so, the tents were set up on our sandy beach, dinner was nearly ready, and a happy little fire was beginning to crackle away, as some people began to ease their aching muscles by swimming in the cool waters, and some were tucked away in corners writing in their journals.  The evening went by swiftly with bottles of Wild Turkey, and cans of beer being tossed around.  Though everyone was tired, we were all in all, happy, and when darkness fell I crawled into the girls’ tent and promptly fell into what might be seen as a light coma.

            In what seemed like maybe minutes, but was in all probability several long hours, filtered bright green light woke me up.  I lay there in my sleeping bag, trying to figure out just what the situation was.  Amy the Elder was curled to my left, lightly snoring.  Emily, to my right, was huddled underneath what appeared to be a sheet of tinfoil, the end result of a sodden sleeping bag from yesterday’s adventures.  Vaguely I remember thinking, “I should have given her some of my sleeping bag.”  I wondered what time it was.  The sunlight seemed absurdly bright, but I couldn’t hear anyone moving about in the camp.  I tried to go back to sleep, but that green light kept on bursting into my dreams, my thoughts, like a silent alarm in the back of my head.  Groggy, I groaned and packed up my things, and got out of the tent, where all I could see was Randall walking around by the shore and the sleeping bodies of the group scattered around the camp. Eventually the camp began to stir.  I saw Nick come down from his tent and get breakfast.  I said hello, and noticed that he was rather groggy looking, but other than that, he looked ready for the day’s adventures.  I would find out later that this was a vast miscalculation on my part.

            The water the second day was higher, moving faster and swifter, which I thought boded well for once.  I still wanted to win badly, but my shoulders were still sore and I couldn’t quite muster the energy to go about winning.  As Vincent and Amy passed us, no doubt  singing some loud song, Nick gave me the devastating news.

            “Aww man,” groaned Nick, “I feel terrible today.”

            “Yeah, I know, my shoulders are still really sore,” I chimed in.

            “Well, yeah, that too, but man, I got really sick last night.  I had to crawl out of the tent and go puke.”

            “Did you drink a lot last night?”

            “Nah, it wasn’t even the alcohol, I didn’t drink that much, I think it must’ve been the rice or something.  I puked up almost all of dinner last night.”

            “I’m so sorry Nick.  I hope you feel better soon,” I said, genuinely wishing he would, since if he wasn’t feeling good, and even I was no longer harboring the spirit to win, our chances at winning were pretty much shot.  As we paddled down the river, I thought over this.  What was the point of this winning anyway?  After all, it wasn’t as if we would get some grand prize for beating out all the others, or that anyone else in the group would particularly care (well maybe Vincent).  We weren’t here to earn street cred among the river rats; we were just here to float down a river, to see what we could see.  As I came to accept this new turn of events, listening to the sounds of the David and Blushy lifting out of the water, trailing droplets of clean water back into the river, the next rapids came into view.  The water was high and white; you could just tell that underneath those waters lay a thousand tiny pebbles tossing back and forth, with huge mammoth boulders underneath that kicked the water into such frothy madness.  My heart began to beat faster, my eyes widened, and a smile came to my lips.

            Though we were both tired and mentally no longer in it for the win, we came at that rapid as if it were our destiny.  Ahead of us Julie and Emily were having a go at the rapids.  Swiftly we snuck up upon them, and for a moment it was joy.  The canoe seemed to move of its own accord, following a path no man could have dreamed up, there was speed and there was joy, and then there were the solid rocks we slammed against.  We came to a halt.  We tried to get David and Blushy to shove us away, but they must have been tired and sick too, then we tried to scoot, but we only really succeeded in moving a few inches.  So we did the only thing left to us, we got out.  The water came past my knees, and this time I could actually feel the current tugging at my legs.  Vaguely I wondered if I shouldn’t have taken off my lifejacket when it got hot and sweaty.  I was at an awkward position, with large rocks blocking me in to my right, and the canoe right up against my leg to the left.  Beneath me were more oddly shaped and slimy, mossy rocks.  I kept on slipping and having to cling to the boat, which was not the best balance keeper.

            We pulled the boat off of the rocks, and immediately the river was ready to surge it away and suck it out from our hands.  Nick climbed back into the boat, but what was I doing?  I have recounted the scene in my mind so many times, but try as I might, I can’t remember what foolish deeds I was busy doing at that moment.  I guess I didn’t realize Nick was already in the boat, and I let go for a second to steady myself, assuming he was still holding onto the boat.  When I had righted myself, I looked up and my heart sunk. A half formed “wait” came to my mouth, sounding more like, “Whaaa!”

            “Hold on to the boat, Cait!” called Nick, as I watched him sweep away from me.  Some other more helpful comments came to mind, but it didn’t seem wise to shout them at my only available savior.   Exceedingly aware of my position, I desperately tried to follow him across the deep, swift waters, over the mossy boulders.  I slipped and wobbled dangerously, nearly falling in the river.  I stopped and looked around me.  I was directly in the middle of the river, and either side to the banks looked just as treacherous.  All I could do was plead with my eyes, as I looked towards Nick, begging him in my mind to come back.  I am certain I looked like the scared little baby I felt like.  Now several yards away, Nick’s face held the same astonishment I had initially felt.  I watched as he paddled upstream, knowing he wasn’t that far away, but still feeling as though I was only moments away from watching the whole group leave me behind to fend for myself in the middle of such rapids.  Suddenly the boat was close by, and I grasped at it with both hands, drawing it closer.  I scrambled back in, not even trying for poise and grace.

            “Thanks,” I huffed.

            “Whoo, that was a close one,” said Nick

            “You’re telling me!” I exclaimed as I picked up David and began to paddle again, trying to get back into my normal frame of mind, inwardly thinking, “God, don’t be such a baby!”  We paddled onwards, back into smoother, calmer waters.  In a few minutes I would be laughing about it, not caring about how silly the whole situation was, but at the moment I was burning up at my own stupidity, my own fear.  If I’d known that just a few miles down the river I would go on to do something even more incredibly stupid, I wouldn’t have cared, I wouldn’t have even let it faze me, but that was miles away, and no where near my thoughts at the moment.

            We stopped for lunch shortly afterwards.  Nick was still feeling cruddy, I was still slightly embarrassed about being caught in the rapids, and the rest of the group seemed quite merry, if slightly sun burnt and tired.  We all dispersed upon the rocky shore with our hunks of bread and cheese, lying flat upon the rocks like lizards soaking up the sun.  A few people wandered off into the trees to take hikes and explore.  All I could do was wander around the shores of the water, feeling the silt and ooze wrap around my toes, while warm waters moved by, carrying small darters and minnows into the shallows.  Then after the bread was gone, with the water drunk, the time had come to set off again.  Nick and I must have been on our A game for once; who knew it would come when we were both sick and distraught?  First in the canoes, first to set off, I could have sworn that there were others behind us when we left.  Then suddenly we were a mile down the river, and we looked about ourselves to realize we were the only ones there.  We stopped.  Something was wrong here.

            Across the way in the treetops I watched as a blue heron flew up into the air and gracefully floated down a ways.  Nick and I looked at each other, and then paddled into the shade of overhanging trees.

            “Do you think we weren’t supposed to leave yet?” asked Nick, looking off towards the bushes.

            “I don’t know I mean, you know, like everyone else was getting into their boats when we left, you know, so they should be here by now.”

            “Yeah, I don’t know what the hold up is,” muttered Nick, still eyeing the bushes.

            From a distance we heard a shout.  It sounded like Chuck.  Nick answered back, cupping his hands to his mouth and crying out loud.  The sound seemed to echo about us, loud and menacing.  We heard Chuck answer back, but then nothing, just the silence of the trees.

            “Do you think someone’s hurt?” asked Nick.

            “Maybe, I don’t know. What do they want? Do they want us to turn back or something?”

            “Well I’m just staying here until they call back again.”

            I shrugged, as I looked back up the river, craning my eyes to try and catch a glimpse of the rest of the group.  In the distance I could swear I saw a paddle waving in the air.  I lifted mine and waved it too, as Nick broke into my thoughts saying, “I’m gonna go take a leak.  I’ll be right back.”

            When we had been alone at first, I had liked it because for once I didn’t feel any competition, yes, we were leading the pack, but this time it didn’t matter so much.  Maybe it was the isolation, the time to look around my surroundings and notice the herons and turtles, instead of being so intensely focused on strokes and paddles, speed and rapids.  While I waited for Nick to come back to the boat, I watched the rapids just ahead of us, somewhere beyond them, somewhere close was where we would portage and then the day would be over.  We’d get in the van and drive back home, towards camp.  I couldn’t decide if I was happy about it or not.  I was tired though, so I was mostly just eager to get out of the water.  Then came Leah and Ashley, leading the groups.

            “Hey, what was the hold up?” I asked as Nick came back towards the boat.

            “Oh, some people had to go to the bathroom is all” Leah called back.

            “That’s it?!” I cried, as we fell in behind Leah and Ashley’s canoe.

            After the rapids, which we sailed through with great ease and unusual poise for our typical style, we had entered the land of the giant boulders.  Giant rocks that towered over us, and stretched on deeper into the water littered the river, like glacial droppings.  At one point Nick and I thought it would be swifter to go in between some rocks than go through the rapids, and we ended up sliding through a golden water filled slot canyon, we were so closely wedged in that at one point I could have easily set down my paddle and braced the walls with my arms.  I remember the rocks were sandstone, and as my fingers trailed over the surface, tiny bits of grain would fleck off onto my fingertips.

            We had come to the final rapid.  Before I go into this, it is important that you understand just how big this rapid was. There were at least three large boulders strategically placed to create a narrow shoot of gushing, swift and crushing white, frothy, foamy waters.  And they just magically appeared, too; there was no forewarning, there was only a brief moment before when Nick realized what we were coming up upon, and called out, “Cait! I need you to paddle right, really hard.”

            I looked up from my daydreams of leaping off the boat and diving down into the cool waters below me.  My eyes froze in terror.  There before me was what I had been dreaming of this whole time.  There was a rapid built for a skilled and talented canoeist one who truly had been born upon rollicking and roiling waters.  I only had time to register the rapids and feel my guts turn before we shot forth into the plumes of white spray that tossed the boat back and forth, narrowly missing the monumental boulders to each side of us.  Soaked to the skin, though not cold, we had made it out alive; we had survived the thing that we had been told would be our toughest challenge.  I let out a great, “Wooooo!” before Nick shouted back, “LEFT, CAIT, LEFT!”  My eyes darted around and my clumsy hands tried to shift the paddle to the other hand, but I was too slow.

            Too late. Though we were out of the shoot, the current had swept us aside into the banks.  We pushed hard against the current and tried to get off the bank.  Instead, we managed to shove off onto the only two rocks in the middle of deep swift waters.  And we managed to get wedged in tightly.  We shoved with our paddles, we scooted, but like hell were we going to try and get out of the boat and shove it off.  My stomach sank after the scooting didn’t work, and I looked back at Nick who was reflecting my same thoughts.  At the bottom of the boat I could see we had taken on a lot of water.  It was currently sloshing around our feet, soaking into the bags like muddy slush.

            “Um, maybe we should put our lifejackets on,” said Nick looking at the lifejackets we had thrown into the bottom of the boat after lunch when it had gotten to hot and unbearable to wear them all the time.  We both reached for the now wet jackets and tied them on, as we took everything we could find, dumping out our water bottles, Nick’s Pringles can, everything just to start bailing our flooded boat.  As I dumped my second bottle of water out into the river, something struck me.  We were alone.  Frightfully, terrifyingly alone.  Randall and Amy the elder had passed us up awhile ago, warning that the rapid and portage were coming soon, and Vincent and Amy the Younger had been stranded, but had seemed to recover nicely and were now gone.  I might have been frightened coming into the rapid, but now I was truly worried.  We were stuck in a sinking boat, alone and there was no good safe place to swim towards.  I tightened the belt around my life jacket just a little bit more.

            Eventually, I quit trying to help Nick dump out water from the boat.  It was tilting more and more towards him, so that his feet were practically covered, and all I could scoop up was just barely a few inches of water.  This was a bad thing, because I felt useless, and I really, really wanted to help, considering we were in such a tight spot.  So while Nick was bailing out water, I began to squirm around and fidget, like a small child, trying to find something that would be helpful to do.  Apparently, sticking your leg out and kicking and shoving the rocks on which you are lodged, is not helpful.  Or rather, it helped for a moment as we began to slide off the rock, and then the weight shifted drastically, as the right side of the boat began to lift up into the air on what appeared to be a 45 degree angle.  Immediately I stopped, and scrambled to the right side of the boat, trying to counter balance the weight and bring it back down.  It sunk back down a little, but I was still perched quite precariously high, while Nick was nearly leaning face down into the watery grave that was surely awaiting him and maybe me too.

            “Sorry,” I squeaked out.

            “It’s alright,” he said, but I had trouble believing him.

            Finally, most of the water was gone, but we were still tilting quite a bit.  I looked back at the rocks which had betrayed us so.  Why, out of all the possibilities in the world, had we landed on the most dangerous place in the river?  How much time had passed?  It seemed like forever, my little heart still beating out the seconds, minutes in rapid succession.  My eyes wide, I tried to make an exit plan, as if like an airline stewardess I could somehow save this doomed ship by simply directing Nick and myself off of the boat.  You know, “Keep your arms and legs clear of the aisles while the boat is in motion, follow the lights in the event of an emergency, ensure oxygen is flowing through the mask before helping others.”  The only problem, though, was that we were in a canoe.  I thought of how it had been at least five years, maybe more since I had last gone swimming.  I wondered if I would remember how to swim once the boat sank and whether it would weigh me down too much to try and save my pack.  Was it too much for me to think of the Titanic with Nick and me playing the roles of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet?  I mean my name was Cait.  Alright, maybe I was being a bit dramatic, but I was fairly certain that any minute now I would find myself in the water, and like a cat with its back arched and hair raised, I did not want to be in that water.

            The water now bailed, I looked down from my perch to Nick, and asked, “Alright, what should we do now?”  Nick stared at the swirling waters before us, and at the rough rocks below us.  I wondered what he was thinking, I knew my own thoughts had taken a dark turn, but had he given up hope as well?  Finally, a plan was formed.

            “Okay, here’s what I’m thinking.  Why don’t you try and rock the boat some more, while I try and shove off of these rocks with my paddle, but have yours ready too, in case we actually get out into the waters, because they’re still going to be moving swiftly and I don’t want to get stuck again.”

            I couldn’t think of anything better, and so with a shrug, I pulled my paddle closer and began to gently rock the boat, hoping I wouldn’t rock us too far and into the water.  I heard Nick’s paddle clacking against the rocks, and a faint scraping sound coming from the hull of our boat.  Haltingly, gratingly, we were moving!  One more shove, and then –a slide the boat righted itself, our packs shifting back to the bottom of the boat, and me sliding (ever so ungracefully) back down to the center of my seat.  Lifting my paddle, I began to stroke, and I had never been happier to be back on the water.

            But our stay on the water was quickly coming to its end.  As we rounded the bend, I saw Vincent standing waist deep in the waters, guiding the last stragglers of the group into the shores where we would begin the portage.  A portage, my friend, might be fine for some.  How should I know, I’ve only done the one.  Let me caution you however, this one was brutal.  It began with emptying our boats of every ounce of baggage we’d been carrying for the last two days.  The baggage wasn’t the hard part, this I carried with ease over the short half-mile trail.  A trail which had I been in a better mood, not soured by the twists of fate and rapids, I would have paused to contemplate and enjoy.  Instead, I found myself straddling a canoe on my shoulders, trying to climb up a craggy, rocky mountainside.  Busting my toes on sudden and unexpected rocks and tree roots, climbing over fallen trees when all I could see was what fell immediately below my feet.  And I mentioned, didn’t I, that there was a friggin’ canoe on my back?!

            Where Nick had wandered off to, I don’t know.  But standing on the shores of the river, it had become clear that no one else was coming to get boats.  Leah, Julie, Ashley, and I stood around wondering just what we were supposed to do.  We pushed a boat around a bit, toeing it and twisting it, trying to decide just how we were going to lift it.  Finally, it came down to this.  Leah hoisted the front of the boat over the top of her shoulders, with Julie and Ashley taking the middle lifting with their arms, I took the back, balancing it upon my shoulders.  Hannah guided us.  I have trouble understanding how two people could manage such a heavy load, never mind just one person.  Still, it was a bit disconcerting to see that we were the only group of four carrying one boat.  I mean, were we just weaklings or something?  Probably.

            Hannah slowly guided us up the trail, as one of us would ever so often begin to scream, “Screw the rock, Hannah, just move faster!”  But much as we would plead for her to go faster, it wasn’t as if we were moving very fast ourselves.  If you’ve ever seen those Chinese dragons with the many people inside, you have an impression of what we looked like.  Except we had an inflexible canoe on our shoulders, and we had never practiced walking like this a day in our lives.  By the time we had made it over the mountain top, and summarily dumped the boat onto the nearest flat space, I was certain their was a matching set of black bruises on my shoulders.  I would later discover to my disappointment that my shoulders bore no mark of any trauma whatsoever, but that was for a future time, when boats had long been forgotten.

            At the moment however, launching the boats for the last time hardly seemed worth the effort.  The sun was heavy upon our backs, and everything was disorganized and scattered.  Nick, now leaning heavy against death’s doorframe, was barely cognizant of the world around him, and I was probably moments away from throwing a full on, spoiled child, hissing tantrum.

            “Come on, let’s get out of here!” I urged Nick as he stared at the boat and asked, “Are you sure this is our boat?  Where’s our stuff?”

            “It doesn’t matter anymore, we’re only a few minutes away from the parking lot.  They said to just take whatever boat was closest,” I said perhaps a little too sharply, wiping the sweat from my brow and staring ahead.  Nick shrugged and got in, while I pushed us off and hopped in, now a true professional at the launching process, no wobbly legs and drifting away boats for me.

            Drifting towards the end, past little girls splashing in the water as their parents watched on shore, past the last of the giant boulders, blue herons in the sky, my temper eased up.  I wanted to say something, to apologize, to be humble and good, to slip back into character.  I opened and closed my mouth a few times, like one of the blubbering fish swimming below me, and then from behind I heard Nick speak, “I’m sorry I haven’t been very talkative today, I’m really not feeling well.”

            “Oh no problem, I was just gonna say the same thing, I mean, I know I’m not very talkative even in the best of times.”

            Nick croaked out a laugh and said, “That’s true!”

            We fell back into silence, and watched as the others pulled onto the shores of our final destination, a craggy shore with a cement boat dock.  Our journey was over, and what had we accomplished?  We lost.  We were so certain that we’d be the ones splashing in joy, high fiving with our paddles, and showing off to the group.  But there we were last to pull in:  grumpy, sick, and dying.  Utter failure it would seem.  As I trailed my hand into the cool water, and passed it again through my hair, letting the water drip and slide across my forehead, I was all right with it.  In fact, I might have even been bordering on happy.  I mean, what was the point of our utter dementia and paralyzing pursuit of glory?  Here we were among this group of friends who had now become more like family than strangers to us.  Randall’s canoe teaching had become more like the gentle reproval of a father, Vincent’s ostentatious personality had transformed into that of an annoying, but lovable younger brother, and Julie and Emily were now like the two coolest older sisters that you had always wanted growing up.   A breeze passed across my face, pulling beads of water downwards.  They weren’t tears of defeat.  They were beads of hard won sweat and perspiration, the joy of the past two days rolling down my reddened face.  I turned back to look at Nick, “We’re here, Nick! I can’t believe it’s finally over . . .”

            Nick looked at me and his smile faded into the sunlight.  Climbing out and standing ankle deep in the water, I thought of the past two days.  Who says we lost anyway?  Did we not save ourselves countless times, did we not take heed of the turtles diving to the depths and of the fish swimming in their watery homes, did we not build a friendship where previously there had only been passing nods as we walked by on the sidewalk?  Screw winning.  We had just gone down the Big South Fork, and we’d made it out alive. Anyone who wanted to argue with us and tell us that we hadn’t won could \ take their complaints to someone who cared.  I let the sun shine down on me, felt the water pull on my ankles, and looking over my shoulder at where I’d been for last two days, I bid it farewell.  I doubted I’d be back, but I hoped that I’d taken as much as I’d given.  We dragged the canoe back on land, we shoved our packs into the van, and like the morning fog on the river, we all dispersed into the wind.  As I fell to the curbside in the shade of the van, I saw Nick collapsing into a deep sleep, and I wondered if he was feeling the same remorse as me.

            I stared at the asphalt and pavement before me like a stranger in a foreign land.  I could tell that I’d been away.  I pulled a swig from my water bottle and gazed at the fallen leaves and dirt at my feet, my mind blank and playing static, I suddenly sucked in my breath.  There by my foot! There was a little toad hopping along.  I cupped him into my palm and gazed at his warty and leathered brown skin as if to save my very soul.  I looked about for someone to show, but they were all busy doing something else, something more important, and so I let him go in the grass, whispering, “There you go little guy, be good!”  He took no moments to gather his wits, just kept on hopping towards the forest, the blades of grass creating his own vernal wonderland.  He never looked back, and I didn’t mind.  I just lay back into the grass myself, staring at those pale white clouds against the baby blue sky, and I dreamed of the way the water will run when all you want is for it to move faster and faster, to destinations unknown and to the glory known only to gods and dreamers.  I dreamed.