Leaving the River (rogue river part VII)

The fifth day on the river is our last and we have mixed emotions.  One emotion is:  I stink!  You spend time on a river and pretty soon you smell like one.  Actually, much worse than this one did. 

I showered once at Horseshoe Bend.  We had set up an area discrete from the main camp area; it was a gravel-covered bench about 50 feet above the river's surface, set back maybe 50 also from the bank.  A long rapid tumbled downstream and created a rushing zen backdrop.  It was totally private from our camp, out of earshot and obscured from view by a large rock outcrop.

Obviously, the usual way to shower is to take off all your clothes, rinse, soap up, rinse again and you're done.  There had been no rafts on the river for an hour or two, definitely none during the time it took to get the sun shower bag hung on the rock and prepare my supplies.  Off go the clothes and I begin to soap up.  I should have bet money:  Round the bend come three rafts and I am standing there not dressed.  Definitely naked.  In the middle of nowhere. I am now the most interesting scenery they've seen for a while.  Can't a bear turn up on the opposite bank and distract them? Shit! (River speak for:  Where did they come from?)  Well, what are my choices now?  Dance?  Wave? Scream? Not much I can do; I turn away and pretend I shower every day on large exposed river bends.  La dee dah.  Ho hum.  Right.  They have the good sense to keep to their rafts and float away.  Chalk another one up to my excellent luck. 

Two days after the showering-naked-on-a-river-bank incident, I am stinking ripe again.  I have no intention of going home except that I want to smell better than this.  A hot shower beckons me back to civilization; all else repels me.

On this our fifth and final day of meandering and doodling on pools, bobbing up and down on riffles, we have settled into new ways of moving.  We have aches, blisters, welts and bruises, but we are still singing.  Last night, we camped on a bend by a slow-moving pool.  Downstream we hear but don't see another camping group.  Upstream, we had floated past a group of men already camped.  At just past twilight, our group begins to howl at the moon.  There's no TV; what else do you think of doing when the moon comes up?  The two neighboring unseen groups hear our howls and echo them.  Howling goes on for a while and gradually fades out.  Everyone is satisfied.  All bears and wildlife, aside from we humans, are long gone, probably holding their ears and shaking their heads.  But, we're satisfied, feel a little wilder, attuned to a different sense of time.  We sleep like rocks.

Next morning, I see Tom up on a ledge above the kitchen area with his tent over his head, shaking out the dirt, singing, "It's not unusual to be in LOVE with anyone!"  His coffee has worked wonders.  He's channeling Tom Jones and seems full of himself.  An actor in LA, Tom has performed on stage as well and can mimic a poodle's bark and his Russian landlady's accent with stunning accuracy. I wonder if he'll be pounding his chest and swinging on vines next. 

Debi dances by, a grin bigger than the bright sun lights up the universe.  She's listening to ACDC on her iPod and packing her dry bag between sashays to and from the boats, hauling her gear and humming. 

Stewart, one of our oarsmen, hands out fake flower leis.  We are a happy mob of stinking river floaters and love the river like the mother that she is.  We load into the four rafts, one ducky and two kayaks and ease into the slow current, looking back at the river bank.  It looks empty, bereft in a way.  I think it's my sense of nostalgia already taking hold, changing reality into a sepia-toned reminiscence.  I feel like sobbing into a beer for a moment, yielding to the melodramatic possibility of perhaps never coming this way again.  That would be a tragedy.

We vow to return, to return to all rivers, any river that will take us back.

The river has a last very technical rapid to throw at us - the most challenging for our oarsmen.  They scout it and cinch down our gear more carefully, then check their life insurance policies.  Well, I remember I have one anyway. When they are satisfied about the route between some gigantic snaggling horrors of boulders, we shout and commit ourselves, plunging headlong on the sloshing roller coaster.  The giant green tongue licks us forward a bit to the right, Chris hauls hard on the oars to get us immediately left, we wheel right again and the raft bucks.  The crests of waves slap the boat and dash water in our faces. I hang on to whatever I can grab, hold my breath and scream at the same time, amazed that it's possible.  I think about my whistle, forget all over again what the signals are.  I imagine myself underwater, trying to blow one long or three short, and I see the dinosaur-sized rocks standing guard left and right, crazy big water piling up against them.  The swishing roar is intoxicating.  In a minute that stretches out all the way to this very moment, the river's wild heartbeat thunders in my ears and she sings her wild song, the same one we'd howled the night before.

A few more riffles separated by long drifts through deep green pools define the rest of the day.  Finally, we've reached the take-out and work commences again.  All the "shit," as we've all come to call it, is hauled out and loaded up for the long drive back to Merlin, upriver.  The day is hot and the river seems more distant even though she's right at our feet.  I feel her rhythm and pace, know her destination, see her flowing away from us, on and on, a wild thing. 

Smiles, promises, good-byes and we're gone, cast to the four winds, driving to our separate jobs and ordinary life again. I feel torn away and adrift in a different way, far less free, stinking and tired.  Happy, grateful. 

The Rogue water is flowing still, and moves me yet.  Our stretch of five days, more or less, is an interchange of time for energy; it charges up my soul as it has not been charged for a long while.  Pray for rain and for the river.  She needs our understanding and care.  In turn, she gives back a hundredfold to every one of us who knows her and, in ways we do not or choose not to acknowledge, she caresses us all.