River Thunder

by Will Hobbs

  As soon as the raft entered the hole it was arrested. We were surfing in place on a churning tornado of water. Though I tried to push on the oars to propel us forward, I was utterly powerless. Amid the chaos and the roar, the heavily loaded raft felt like a toy.

  Abruptly the raft was spun sideways, and the turbulence tore the oars from my hands. The downstream side of the raft lifted high in the air, just that fast. I saw Star go flying, and then I saw the raft tip past the point of no return.

  More than the sudden darkness, more than the quiet, the cold, and the violence of the water, maybe even more than the lack of air, it was realizing I was under the raft that made me panic.

  Wildly, I tried to break away and swim, but couldn’t. I was pinned under the raft. I could feel my life jacket floating me up against the gear. My lungs were already squeezed empty from rowing so hard, and I was desperate for air.

  I raised my arms and pushed myself down, but the turbulence kept thrashing my body around until I didn’t know which way was up. At last there came a break in the turbulence. I pushed myself down again, walking along the tubes with my hands, kicking furiously. Kicking and clawing, I struggled toward the light. Then up, up.

  I grabbed hold of the chicken line that ran around the outside of the raft, and tried to breathe in between the breaking waves. At least I was getting a chance to breathe.

  Suddenly I realized how cold the water was. Someone was screaming my name. It was Star, from the other side of the raft. “I’m okay,” I yelled back. I got a leg up on the spare oar lashed to the side of the raft and reached for the flip line that had been secured across the bottom. With the strength that comes only from adrenaline, I pulled myself, hand-over-hand, out of the water, then pulled Star up as well onto the bottom of the boat.

  “I couldn’t see you, Jessie! I knew you must be underneath! Are you really okay?”

  “I’m okay,” I managed, but I didn’t believe it.

  I looked downstream and saw Troy rowing out of the eddy to come catch us. Thank goodness he hadn’t flipped, too. As they neared and their faces came into view, I saw a wild mix of emotions. They were scared, awed, amazed, thrilled—glad it wasn’t them. They helped us onto their boat.

  “You shoulda seen it,” Rita yelled. “You guys got totally trashed. You stayed in the second hole for five or ten seconds before it spit you out.”

  “Felt like a whole lot longer,” I managed to say.

  Star gasped, “The Wren got her feathers wet.”

  We were shaking violently even though we were out of the water.

  “The Hired Gun blasted through!” Pug exclaimed. “That was the biggest rush I’ve had in my life. They could charge a hundred bucks a ride if they could build one of those in an amusement park.”

  “Troy was like Arnold Schwarzenegger,” Rita declared, big-eyed. “I was sure we were goners—then he made that last pull and it saved us.”

  What were they jabbering about? I could’ve died under there!

  “Stifle it, guys,” I heard Troy say. “Pull something warm out of our day sacks—even the rain tops will do. Can’t you see they’re freezing?”

  Once ashore, I sat on the sand, utterly shell-shocked. I heard Troy say gently, “Take off your life jacket, you’ll warm up faster. Are you okay, Jessie?”

  I looked in his eyes. I saw only concern, no attitude. “I’m okay,” I answered.

  Two motor rigs came along, saw our flipped boat, and pulled over to help. The little beach was suddenly crowded with tourists swarming around like ants on a gumball. People were looking at me and asking about me. “I’m okay,” I kept saying. They’d look at the overturned raft, then back at me, with doubts in their eyes written large as billboards. Their boatmen, with the help of about fifteen people, turned the raft back over in a couple of minutes. We’d strapped everything in so carefully that morning, we hadn’t lost anything but some sunscreen and my visor and sunglasses, and we had replacements for those.

  Troy thanked them in his casual manner.

  “High water,” one of the boatmen said in my direction. He was a big, burly guy with a handlebar mustache. “When we launched this morning they said we’re on 50,000 cubic feet per second now—that’s the record since the dam. Don’t feel bad. House Rock was tough, real tough. You had to be brave to even try it.”

  I nodded my gratitude for his consolation. I didn’t tell him this, but what I was thinking was, I have no business being here.

  We camped right there, even though it was not marked as a camp on the mile-by-mile map. The other three told Star and me not to lift a finger. I’m not sure we had the strength to. The wind came up practically gale force and blew sand over everything. Star was fighting to set our tent up in the hot blasts. I wondered how she was finding the energy.

  If we didn’t get the tent up, the sand would blow in our faces all night. I made a feeble attempt at helping her, but when we got it set up, the tent pegs couldn’t hold it in the sand. I held on to the dome while she collected four big stones and some tie-down straps from the raft. “Sometimes,” Star said, “even the easy stuff isn’t easy. Are you doing okay, Jessie?”

  “I’m okay,” I assured her. I wanted to go home, bad.

  The others were cooking dinner. Rita’s voice was carrying as usual. I heard her say, “No way I’d want to be one of the drivers. Too much responsibility.”

  I went down to the very end of the beach and around some boulders to a little sand spit. Once I was alone, I quit trying to manage. All my fear came to the surface. I started shaking. Knowing my confidence was gone, that was the scariest part. I couldn’t stop crying.

  Star came to console me, as I knew she would. I said, “Oh, Star, I’m in way over my head. This was a big mistake. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “Maybe you’re out of balance, Jessie.” She was serious. “Maybe your mind and your body aren’t working together.…”

  “It’s the water, Star! It’s just so overwhelming! Weren’t you afraid?”

  “Of course I was, but then, I wasn’t caught underneath. I’m sure we can rise above this. If we’ve been putting out positive energy, it’ll come back to us. It’s the law of karma.”

  “What goes around, comes around?”

  “I guess you could say it like that.”

  I chuckled ruefully.

  “There’s one thing I know for sure. You can’t let fear take hold. You have to keep believing in yourself. I believe in you, Jessie. I really believe you can do this.”

  “Thank you, sister,” I told her.

  “And please don’t say, ‘Visualize whirled peas!’ That’s exactly what we got!”

  After supper I walked downstream along some ledges where there was no sand blowing around. I sat and watched the hypnotic action of the water swirling underneath the ledges, and I watched the bats come out. Blasts of hot air coming off the superheated cliffs alternated with the first cool downdrafts of the oncoming night.

  I heard someone coming—it was Troy.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Beat with a stick,” I told him.

  “Well, you look mah-velous.”

  “I’m sure. I’m just trying to settle down—flatten out my brain waves.”

  “Good idea. I just wanted to lend a little encouragement, that’s all.”

  “Sure.”

  “Just let me know if I can help.”

  It seemed he was almost comfortable with my situation. I was needy, and he was providing solace.

  Quit being so small, I reprimanded myself. Give him a chance.

  “I just wanted to let you know we’ve set up the solar showers on a tripod—used three oars. We even rigged a curtain with one of the tarps. The water’s nice and hot.”

  “I’d love a hot shower.”

  He said almost gallantly, “You deserve one.”

  Chapter

  9

  I woke up feeling like fighting back.

  I thought about my big mountain bike race
last spring, my spectacular crash, and how fast I got back up on the bike.

  I thought about skiing, about those downhill racers and their spectacular crashes. Those guys all get back up and come flying down the mountain again. They love it too much to quit.

  Well, I love the water, and I love to row. The point is to get back on the raft and somehow get really good at this. Row like that woman who led Canyon Magic through House Rock. It can be done, I told myself.

  At breakfast I barely spoke, I was visualizing so hard. Everybody could tell I was in a trance; they left me alone. As Star and I rigged the raft, I was already rowing in my mind. By the time we pushed off, I’d psyched myself back into a full measure of determination, if not confidence. As we raced through Boulder Narrows, I was riding the swells, crashing through the tops of breaking waves, spinning off the boils, walking the thin, snaking path of the current within inches of the monstrous eddies.

  When it was going right, it was a dance. And, yes, it was going right again. I was dancing with the violent beauty of the Colorado at high water.

  The river was so fast. We ran through North Canyon Rapid and Mile 21 Rapid, and suddenly we were in the heart of the Roaring Twenties. The river was jammed with raft parties and we were able to scout Mile 24½ Rapid with boatmen from all over the country—in their twenties, thirties, and forties, a few even older. They were juiced on adrenaline and more than impressed with the power of the high water, raving that they’d never seen anything like it and probably never would again. There was talk about Lake Powell, how it was still rising. People were speculating about how much water the Bureau might have to dump to protect the dam.

  I made like a fly on the wall as they pointed out barely submerged rocks and waves and holes. I listened carefully as they discussed the nuances of what the water was doing at every conceivable location in the rapid. The exciting part was, I understood. I could really see what they were talking about. And I loved the jargon: rooster tails, curlers, reversals, haystacks, suckholes, all of it.

  As we watched more than a dozen boats run, we saw two of them flip—saw the drama of people in the water before they disappeared around the bend. We heard the critiques. “Boatman error” was the consensus. Getting out of position; making a move a little too late.

  It was big, big water, with waves taller than the rafts going over them. Mile 24½ Rapid was on a sharp turn to the left. I knew I’d have to pull early and with every ounce of strength I had.

  When the time came, Troy and I both pulled it off. What a feeling, to bring a heavy boat through heavy water, then look back up from safety and see the rapid above you like a churning white staircase.

  We’d been the last of the big flotilla to run. As we approached the next one, Mile 25 Rapid, we could see the group in front of us disappearing into it without scouting. Troy was inclined to “read and run,” too. I told him I wasn’t comfortable doing that since I couldn’t see what was around the corner. like 24½, the rapid was on a sharp bend. “I gotta scout it from the shore,” I maintained.

  When the two of us scrambled through the boulders and reached a spot where we could see the whole thing, my eyes were immediately drawn to a huge hole in the middle of the rapid. It would come up as soon as I rounded the bend. There was no way I was going to be able to Schwarzenegger the raft around that hole. If we dropped into it, it was going to be a certain flip, and that’s what I told Troy.

  Troy kept trying to talk me through it, telling me I could do it if I followed him stroke for stroke. I just knew I couldn’t. I saw another group about a half mile below, dealing with a flipped boat. That’s exactly what was going to happen to me.

  My only recourse was to consider the Canyon Magic trick. I studied the water; I really thought I understood what it was doing. I visualized taking advantage of the speed of the current to help me make the cut I’d need to make to avoid that hole. In my mind I took every stroke of a stern-first run. I began to believe I had more than half a chance of pulling it off.

  I thought better of talking to Troy about it—I didn’t think he’d be receptive. But he asked what I was going to do. He was so invested in coaching me. I said, “I’m thinking of that stern-first approach.”

  He looked doubtful.

  I said, “See that boulder just down from the top of the rapid, the farthest one out from our side? I’m going to try to cut downstream of that boulder, just catching that shoulder of the hole underneath it. If I can hit that spot at just the right speed, at just the right angle, I’ll be good.”

  He shook his head. “And if you run into the rock? Or the hole just below it?”

  “I know, I’d have to hit it just right. I think it’s my best shot, Troy. I want to try it.”

  “I just don’t think this is any time to get fancy, rowing backwards, looking over your shoulder … I’ll end up picking you off the rocks. I really don’t want you to do that.”

  He was way intense. It surprised me how much emotional investment he was putting into this. “Think about it,” he insisted, and left me to do just that. He walked back to the boats.

  I felt abandoned. For another five minutes I looked hard at the rapid. I visualized it both ways. I still thought I couldn’t do it his way. For a minute I thought about giving up trying the alternative, just to please him. “That’s ridiculous,” I heard myself say out loud.

  When we got out on the river, I didn’t even tell Star what I was going to do. I wasn’t going to let anything break my concentration. Rowing hard, Troy disappeared around the bend and down into the rapid. I kept my eyes on that boulder barely sticking up out of the water, high in the rapid at the beginning of the turn. I was focusing so hard I could’ve exploded.

  As I pivoted the raft downstream, I caught just a glimpse of Star’s surprise. I smiled a fierce smile. I was already scooting downstream, looking over my shoulder and pulling with the current. It was all timing now. As long as I didn’t row myself onto that rock or right into the hole … I let up for a second, then started to pull hard again, keeping that forty-five-degree angle.

  The sensation of speed, all the speed I was building up, was entirely new and exhilarating. It felt like the boat was an arrow in flight, not the dead horse I’d formerly been pulling. I smacked through the shoulder of that wave boiling off the hole, exactly where I was aiming.

  I looked around for a second, saw I was well out of reach of the big problem in the rapid. The boat-eating hole in the center of the river was thirty feet or more to my right. Pushing on one oar while pulling on the other, I pivoted the raft back around to let it ride through the rest of the rapid bow first. Star was going crazy, like I’d just run Lava Falls or something. It wasn’t Lava, but it felt pretty good. What a sensation, feeling that boat scoot, when I’d made the cut at the top and found myself speeding downstream with the current like I was flying.

  Star bailed out three buckets, that was all. What a feeling!

  Troy didn’t say a thing about it when we bumped boats a few minutes later. He’d seen it, he had to have seen it. “Good going,” that’s all he said, and he said it flatly.

  Good grief, I thought, would he rather have seen me flip? Coach gets mad when the quarterback improvises instead of running the play that came in from the bench?

  For a few minutes, I let a small, dark mental cloud form. All I could think about was Troy, how he was blowing it, and how unnecessary that was, not to mention unfair. Then I gave myself a mental slap. Don’t make so much of it, especially when he’s been trying so hard.

  We floated on through the cave-pocked cliffs of stunning redwall limestone, past Vasey’s Paradise and countless other fountains spouting from the cliffs. Wherever the water gushed, the cliffs were festooned with hanging gardens of mosses, red monkey flowers, and maidenhair ferns.

  Think about what you’re seeing, Jessie. Remember, you came for the Canyon, not for Troy.

  We floated past Redwall Cavern, the immense cave on the left, and we floated under the Triple Alcoves on the righ
t. No more rapids today, only a cavalcade of wonders.

  Star and I administered hydrotherapy to each other with the bail bucket. According to the guidebook, the water was forty-five degrees. For a minute after being soaked, I was freezing. After that, until my T-shirt dried out, I felt just right.

  Everybody was going in for hydrotherapy in one form or another, including jumping overboard, except for Troy. Rita kept threatening to douse him but he kept declining. Finally she conducted a vote, reminding him that everything was going to be democratic on this trip. He said “hydro” didn’t apply. We outvoted him four to one, and Rita promptly let fly with five gallons of freezing water at his bare chest.

  Troy didn’t have fun with it, that was the disappointing part. He gritted his teeth and said, “I just don’t like that, okay?”

  Rita said, “Well, you aren’t drinking enough water, either. The ranger said you should drink a liter an hour in the middle of the day. If you start to feel thirsty, you’re already dehydrated. Don’t you feel thirsty, Troy?”

  He said calmly, “I don’t need a mother on this trip. Okay, Rita? Just give me a little space, okay?”

  “Okay, already,” she agreed. “But think about it.”

  Pug, I noticed, was looking a little uncomfortable, like a kid wanting to leave a room when his father’s getting angry. A raft is an extremely small room. The Big Fella brought out his fishing rod instead and right away caught one, which for all of us seemed a welcome end to an unsettling little episode.

  Mile 36 Rapid was rated a mere 3, according to the guide, but what an awesome 3 it was going to be if the River Thunder reverberating upstream was any indication. Until we drew close, it was impossible to tell what was making all the noise. Troy, in the lead, stood up to scout it, sat down, and began to pull hard to the left. It was too late to get to shore for a better look. Mile 36 was going to be a read and run.