Why Am I Like This?

Regardless of how deeply I scrunch into my sleeping bag, it is impossible not to hear the river. Filtered by goose-down, the muffled rush is somehow more sinister, and my head pops up like a dull-witted prairie dog in the path of a buffalo stampede. The Middle Fork of the Salmon River is really ripping this year. And it's raining. Most of the commercial trips have canceled. All of the other private trips have scrubbed as well. The twisted, punctured bones of a couple of 30-foot sweep boats are somewhere downriver. So what am I doing here? Why, indeed, am I like this?

Earlier this afternoon we assembled at Boundary Creek from all over the West. Some good boaters with decades of experience. But the river was going like a banshee, and maybe going higher. We rigged our boats in a hailstorm, a quixotic mix of ice and sun. Gallows humor haunted the conversation. We repeated oft told tales of past disasters, large and small, we laughed, we jested, we performed for Cynthia, the permit holder, and abject novice. "Just how high was it," someone wondered, "when the Brokaw party crashed?" No one knew.

Morning is clear, warm. Yet even Tom, the little general, seems distracted, subdued. I learn that during the night one of our number has surreptitiously escaped. He must have pushed his truck well beyond the perimeters of our camp before firing the ignition and beginning his thousand-mile retreat. Or else, the white-noise of the river simply swallowed the disturbance, conspiring to keep the rest of us on-the-menu.

We have a flip. An injury. Johnny is forced to evacuate his teenaged daughter not quite five miles from the put-in at Boundary Creek. My passenger, fortunately, is a rowing-fool and takes on Johnny's boat and his son, who wants to continue despite his fear. A ritual develops between me and the boy. Each night he asks, "David, what do we have tomorrow? Any big rapids?"

"No," I lie, "tomorrow's easy." The boy has been here before and he knows the river. Still, he wants some reassurance. I think it comforts us both....

So, why am I like this? It's a good question with an elusive answer. For me, the eternal, bedlam clash of water and rock is both baptism and communion. The insistent tug of gravity is bewitching, irresistible, addictive. 'Call me Ishmael,' for I am spellbound in the presence of moving water. Why Am I Like This? The adrenaline, the perception of risk is certainly a part of the attraction of whitewater boating. In point of fact, however, everything else, all of the other components, may be far more important.

The crazy flood-stage run on the Middle Fork is not completely representative. I recall another, calmer, saner descent just as vividly. The water was a translucent, living green, the Idaho weather idyllic. We watched a family of otters at work. That is, the adults faced the daunting task of teaching their pups to eddy-hop against the current. The lessons were punctuated with the almost continual chirping protests of the babies. Otters can be serious. The session lasted until the light was nearly gone but they got the hang of it.

Moving water evokes my purest sense of reflection, my moments of greatest clarity. Witness my merely mortal form rowing the Salt River canyon, toiling against a headwind. A miniature cyclone, or dust devil, grows to ominous proportions at the mouth of a side-canyon. As it slips over the river's surface it exchanges its sediment load for a full measure of suspended water. The waterspout spots my boat and charges like a determined, demented assassin. Other boats are blown willy-nilly, yet I settle into the very eye of the beast. Sunlight, bent and refracted by the rotating water, separates into prismatic bands. For several seconds I am inside the rainbow. Literally. It is noiseless, windless, dry. Simple magic. River magic. That evening at camp I announce my decision to take, henceforth, the Indian name Dances-With-Wind. Several companions suggest profane variations on the 'Wind' theme and I concede that perhaps the name change is not in my best interests. The experience could be no more profound had I been abducted by space aliens.

River trips beget small miracles on a fairly regular basis. Ask almost anyone. A sudden downpour in the sandstone cleft of Slickrock Canyon on the Dolores finds us sheltering under a large overhang amid the artwork of the Ancients. As absorbed as midwives, we attend the birthing of a score of ephemeral waterfalls from the opposite rim. The ghosting pass of a remnant grizzly on the Selway...and a black bear cub vacating a ponderosa in the middle of our camp with all the speed and purpose of a furry little fireman. Same trip.

The Flathead river in Montana is a glacial myth of a hue so surreal that one tends to disbelieve the sugar-coated Livingston Mountains as well. Snow and Christmas carols on the Salmon on the evening of the first day of summer. Somber, brooding stone ruins on the San Juan that whisper on the breath of evening in lost, archaic tongues, just beyond the scope of our understanding. On the Snake river in the Tetons, we watch a russet moose calf nursing with so much determination and force that the stoic gaze of its mother speaks more eloquently than mere words. A bridge exists between our disparate species--if only for a moment. And then a lion materializes and vanishes before our eyes as effectively as any character in a Star Trek rerun.

My wife and I wed on a twilight beach at the entrance to a great cathedral canyon called Santa Elena. One side is Texas, the other Mexico. Other cultures, in more romantic times, would have called this place Avalon or Eden or Valhalla. In Hell's Canyon, not so very long ago, a jetboat operator mistimed his high-powered attempt to ascend Granite Creek Falls in direct line with our own descent. Scant seconds and an abundance of grace saw us safely into camp that day. I will forever carry the image of my wife talking and laughing with trip-mates in the lemon light of sunset. A beautiful sight. A gift. We read aloud from the journals of John Wesley Powell on the Green and Colorado rivers and try to camp in the shadows of their camps. Without fail, someone solemnly kisses the Tiger Wall on the Yampa--in return for safe passage through Warm Springs Rapid not far below.

These small ceremonies are important to us. A part of our religion, our system of beliefs. And people are a large part of the equation. I am endlessly intrigued by group dynamics. The cooperation and conflict mirror life in the largest possible sense. People disappoint. They inspire. Warriors emerge. Friendships cut across class and tribal lines. Bonds are forged rooted in our interdependence that will endure. A week spent in Cataract Canyon one September stands as metaphor for the whole issue of camaraderie. No one had pitched a tent until the very last night when a fragmented low pressure system delivered rain and thunder and lightning. I refused to bother with a shelter and stayed awake in the warm rain, enjoying the storm. Two other tentless fugitives wandered over and we shared a flask of bourbon. I stared from one to the other of these good friends, in the intermittent illumination, realizing that they could not be more polarized. A hulking former superjock and a skinny introspective Rasputin. An odd couple to say the least. Only on the river. Or in a war zone.

I have this capacity to forget things. Like the five days of dawn to dusk gale-force winds in Desolation Canyon that caused us to add 48 hours to our planned itinerary. What I recollect instead, is the motor-rig that blithely passed us a hundred yards from our intended camp, damning us to row grimly into the gathering, gusty nightfall. We were rewarded with the experience of an emergency camp we affectionately called the 'La Brea Tar Pits.' Great story. Especially veiled by the gentle benediction of time.

Lost amid these reveries, some sacred, some not, the great "Why am I like this?" dilemma seems redundant, irrelevant. But its season will come again. When courage falters, my whiny, strident little inner-voice will demand a response, affirming that the question will always remain. Revived, perhaps, on the occasion of my next unplanned swim, spin, and rinse cycle--or in that electric moment when the boat is committed to the big drop at Rainie Falls. Just give me a minute. Allow me to dry off a bit, get my pulse rate down to normal, rediscover my sense of humor. I really do have a pretty good answer.

--David Regela is a frequent contributor to Paddler magazine. His stories have appeared in Sports Illustrated among other national publications.