The Big Green Tongue

It took a day or so until I heard it: No engines, no weed whackers, no leaf blowers. I was sitting on the front of the raft and heard gurgling, lapping, splashing and the occasional creak of an oar in the oar lock. Nothing else. Blissfully, wonderfully peaceful and silent.

The more I heard silence, the more I loved it. It took less time than it takes to read this sentence to realize that it was the sound of heaven to me. I breathed it in and looked around, hoping the giggling smile spread across my face didn't look like it felt: Caught farting.

Before the silence, however, there had been a lot of screaming.

Just before that had been an quick interchange: "When do we get to our first big rapids?" I asked Chris.

We had been floating downriver in lazy circles, like a leaf in a little pond blown by a breeze. Chris, the expedition leader and oarsman, had been telling jokes and looking around, smiling absentmindedly at the distant tree tops. He seemed sleepy, finally relaxed after loading up all the "shit" - boaters' talk for gear - that had taken several hours. His sleepiness was infectious; I contemplated tipping over in my life vest and taking a little nap in the sun. The best I could do with the vest though was flap my arms and shuffle my feet around a little bit. I accepted the ungainly puffy orange corset as fair exchange for the bliss I was feeling.

I asked the question casually, dreamily, believing we had a long while of floating and sunning ahead of us. Chris had let the raft float sideways, frontwards, and then backwards, unconcerned with guiding us in a one-way fashion.

"Now!" He took the oars in hand and looked over his shoulder and to the rear.

"Now?" We were going backwards, and now I heard it. The voice of the river had deepened, intensified. Oh. I am sitting on a cooler imitating a beachball and we are heading toward whitewater. Going backwards. Chris rowed and we remained backwards. I sort of laughed, but it came out like a squawk. Shouldn't we be going forwards? Shouldn't we be able to see where we're going?

I remembered my lesson from earlier: Stay out of the way. Also: Blow the whistle long to alert for something or another. Hmm...confined to a 14-foot raft with several hundred pounds of gear, my husband and an oarsman with an odd sense of direction, I wondered where I could go. Over the side? Too close to the rapid now for that. When was I supposed to blow the whistle?

Now we were slowly turning to our left and swinging around. I could see the rapid finally, a long jumbled series of splashes, stacks of water piling up like little hills frothing at the top, rocks sticking out of the hills and smoother glassier water here and there. It looked like there was no good way through it. The safety talk about not pointing at rocks and whistling recurred to me. There were rocks everywhere and a cliff on one side of the river. I really needed to point at something, and it became an urge so strong I could hardly overcome it. I became so conflicted between the need and the admonition that I just waved my arms around and squawked again. Now I was a large orange chicken, I thought. Squawking.

"Hang on!" Chris called out. To what? I looked around and reminded myself this was what I had come here for, prepared for, dreamed of. Whitewater fun! More squawks. I grabbed my vest but, no, that didn't really make sense. I grabbed my husband, but that made less sense somehow. If I was going to be jettisoned from the raft by a wild bucking river and I grabbed my husband on the way out, he would land on top of me and squish me. Not to death exactly, but two big orange beachball imitators like us would not make a pretty picture thrashing around in the river. We'd be left for dead. The rest of our party, frightened to approach, would look aghast and mutter a few prayers for our souls as they floated past. Maybe one would play a bagpipe. Or a banjo. Both. Dueling bagpipes and banjos.

Chris was now talking about "the big green tongue" of the river and I looked with a sudden stillness of heart at what he was aiming for. The water that had been swirling coyly and gently had gathered itself with an intention of purpose that rivaled any soccer mom driving a minivan in a crowded parking lot. The surface had become green, smooth and now moved much more rapidly into a long v-shaped stretch. It looked like green honey; it was liquid but dense and full of power. The tongue of the rapid.

The current grabbed the raft and hauled it down the tongue, which licked over and around a lot of submerged boulders, each one forming its own tongue of smooth water, pouring over the tops of them. On the far side of the rocks, each one in turn, was a hollow of backflowing whitewater that roared and splashed. We dipped up and down, up and down and each white wave dashed me with a bucket of cold water. I grabbed something to hang onto, probably my camera strap, nothing useful, and graduated from squawk to scream.

Suddenly, we were through and back into calmer water again. "What class was that rapid?" I asked with adrenaline raising my voice. I was ready to tell all my friends back home about my harrowing escape from death. "Class II or so, maybe III. That was a nice little one." Somehow disappointed not to be dead or mangled (odd huh?), I imagined bigger rapids. The classification goes up to Class V, which is where rapids take rafts and throw them up into the treetops at the river's edge. Class VI is Niagara Falls.

Instantly addicted to the sound and motion of a wildly kicking river, I straightened up and looked downriver for more. I felt my confidence return and made plans to become a river guide, outdoors woman, whitewater legend. Yeah, this was where I belonged, on a raft in the western wilderness, ready for any challenge, riding free. I spat dramatically, feeling like Annie Oakley and considered a cold beer.

Then, I looked down and saw the spittle on my knee. Yuck.

After a couple of hours of bucking bronco water interspersed with mellow pools of peace and serenity, we hauled ashore for the day and set up camp. (To be continued)