Boatin' with a Friend
on a Rising River
April 18, 1997
Creek
Damn, nothing has gone as planned, sigh, as usual. An ambulance run at 3:30 in the morning. And damned if it hasn’t started to rain steadily, for the first time in over a month. Had to drive Tina’s big ol’ Chevy back to school, after the run and switch to the little school bus to get home and now the fire I laid in the heat stove won’t start and I’m supposed to meet Peter in fifteen minutes to boat and of course, I’m gonna be late. Truck wouldn’t start cause the battery cables are loose and in the rain they just hate cooperating.
Parked behind Peter’s Volvo at the top of the trail to the School House wave and carried down that piss-poor-path, then across the broken bedrock to put in on the edge of the river.
Coming down the trail, with my boat balanced on my shoulder, thinking about the light, steady, warm rain, the rising river and meeting a friend to mess about on the river with.
“Hey, meet you at School House and we’ll goof around on the wave for awhile.” One of us said to the other.
As I put-in on the bedrock shelves at the
river’s edge, Peter’s across the river already out of his boat and emptying
the water out. He’s been here awhile. He whistles as I adjust myself to
the torture chamber called a RPM Max... love the boat, hate the pain...
and shakes his head as he points to the washed-out wave. Even though light,
the rain has been steady and the river has come up too much and with it went
the shape that would have offered us hours of squirting, spinning and
general thrashing about. So much for destination boating today.
It occurs to me how different this must
seem to others... this is just an everyday. “Hey, ya wanna?.. kinda quick
call.” Arrive from different directions, on rain and cloud shrouded
mountain roads... walk the narrow, poison oak fringed trail, skirting the
embankment washed-out by flood and down the rain slick bedrock to the Salmon
River, three months after the flood. This ain’t vacation weather. You
wouldn’t drive through this to get here today. This is about Peter, me and
the river, rain just makes everything shiny, going with the flow. No
disappointment with the rising river, just our relief that we’re finally
getting some spring rain and deciding to check things out around
Two old dogs and a young Rush Sturges, 2003 Jr. World
the next
bend in the river.
Freestyle Kayak Champion. photo
Betty Ann Hanauer Yondering.
A little talk, a few whistles and hoots of pleasure and mutual encouragement. Relishing the river-after-the-flood feeling. We both know the river’s old self and are delighted when we discover changes.
We’ve done this thing a hundred times before. Just a couple of months ago we’d almost died running the South Fork five days after the peak of the ’97 flood. The unbelievably high water made the rapid at the mouth of Mc Neal Creek a maze of pick up sized, death holes, doing their relentless best to suck us back into their thundering, inescapable maws.
One Christmas eve, we didn’t make it down to the lodge from Knownothing Creek, until well after dark. Nobody freaked out, “It’s just Peter and Creek,” they said. We made the miles of the main stem by the light of a hazy, near-full moon.
This was much the same as the other days we’ve shared, each in our own zone. Surf some, splat a wall, spin and squirt to Crapo Creek, looking for play. No shuttle, just stash the boats and paddles and walk back to the lodge in the growing dusk, still dressed for the river. River runners walking, life vests, dry-tops, helmets, spray-skirts and booties, a quiet road in the growing dark and rain, but somehow not at all out of place. If you were inside right now you’d never go out, except to get more wood for the fire.
Soaking wet, sharing space, experience, silence and thoughts. What are friends for, anyway?