At Jaws, the right side where we were at was all rock, great bones of earth rising up from the water and stair-stepping up in short climbs. Across the river, the blasted, quarried stone that made the foundation for the railroad track blended into the sandy beach, with thin bushes where they met. On the outside of the tracks, the steep wall of the gorge had been blasted out to make room. Both sides of the river are very popular with boaters, but we had it to ourselves today. We got the boat secure, at least temporarily, and the dogs were climbing around the rocks and sniffing whatever dogs sniff. Everything, I suppose. They get very excited about it. I slung a dry-bag over my shoulder and carried a Pelican case in one hand, then led Mary up the rocks. The ledges slant up and the easiest place to climb is on the upstream side. We climbed a couple of the ledges, heaving gear up ahead of us as we went. The climbs are all very easy. Before the last one I stopped and pointed out the view. “It’s just breathtaking, Joe.”
“Yes… Something magical happens for me here. Take in this view and then tell me if it isn’t totally different when we get right up there.” I pointed to a spot about 16 feet away…maybe 8 feet higher in elevation. The tree line starts there. The first ones are older pines with high limbs and roots that grip little more than rock. Further up and into their shade are a couple of mossy beds that would make questionable campsites. They are always less flat when I see them than they are in my memories. Just below the first tree we turned around.
“Oh. God,” Mary said, gripping my arm. We could now see much further up the river past the bend. It was the same downstream, but the view looking up was to die for. There were so many more details…stories…just this much further up. Someone needs to paint it. I unbuckled the straps on the dry-bag and started pulling out warm clothing. A towel came out first, and I spread it across the rock. I had clipped a coiled rope to the outside of the bag which I unfastened and threw towards the pine trees. When I had half the contents of the bag out, warm fuzzy clothes to layer up with, I uncoiled the rope, tied one end to a tree trunk, and tossed the rest of it towards the raft below. I had another rope down at the raft, and it would take both ropes to secure the raft, which was only partially beached and was rocking with the waves. You never leave a boat rocking. You’ll lose it. Properly secured, I could leave the raft floating all night, and as the water level changed it would neither drift off nor get beached. I was anticipating the river dropping quite a bit, but with the gauges down, who knew.
“I see a raft,” Mary said. Ah yes, the express trip, I thought. One company there runs two different put-in times, and the trip that doesn’t get a lunch puts on much later. This was it, people looking to go rafting fast and cheap. They were into the first of nine miles of constant paddling. Because they are “express.”
“There ought to be quite a few guides and trainees on this run,” I said.
“What?” She turned to face me.
“There might not be that many customers on this trip.” I was looking upstream. Seven rafts? “Most of these rafts will probably be trainees and trainers, and others will be guides just out having what we call a ‘fun run.’” Sure enough, I saw a handful of kayaks too. They were working out On the Rocks slowly and I got into the dry-box. Whatever was going on was happening in the box, and I couldn’t see it through the rocks. Mary was looking for a place to change, holding a pair of fleece pants in one hand. I stuck my hand into the front of her tight, wet shorts, gripping the waist band and turned her towards me. She smiled as I pulled her shorts down slowly over her round hips and then to her ankles, planting a soft kiss between her legs. I skinned out of mine too and stepped into a very comfortable, loose fitting pair of slacks. I didn’t need a shirt yet, but I did feel like I needed as much sun as I could get on my skin. We tossed our wet clothes up on the warm rocks to hang up later, and I passed Mary a flask of bourbon and packed a bowl. We smoked the entire thing while waiting for the rafts work their way down to us. I knew the guide in the first raft well. Charlie. He’s a very experienced guide and really dependable. He would be the first safety boat and took the line down the right side, stopping in the eddy to float for a minute. As if scripted, the second raft of customers hit the left side and paddled to a stop on the far bank. Both guides were getting out of their rafts now with their throw ropes. Charlie was looking around for the owners of the raft parked there, bobbing, but we were higher up than most people go. “Let’s go down a little closer,” I said. “We might be getting a show today.” Mary beamed.
“What’s up?” she asked as we climbed down. Charlie could see us now and recognized me. We climbed down two ledges, still well above the rapid, and took a perch. Charlie was set up a couple of rocks down below us. His customers were carefully picking their way along the rocks and would be sitting among us soon. It is really very funny what atrophy can do to a body. The easy walk across the rocks was like an obstacle course for them.
“Training and fun runs!” I said to Mary, sitting down heavily with a large, satisfied smile. I held my flask up to Charlie, but he smiled and shook his head like I was a cold-blooded tempter. We both knew that he couldn’t take a swig while working, and we both knew that I drink very good bourbon. “Ya see, these boys are safeties.” I gestured, overly, back and forth at Charlie and the guide across the river. “If someone comes out of these other boats, the safeties will throw their ropes out to ‘em and reel ‘em in.” Charlie stood quietly, grinning while I spooned out my southern accent. His wasn’t a choice. “Now here ya are,” I continued, “See over there? See? That boy still has his crew sittin’ in the raft. That tells a man somethin’.” I rubbed my chin whiskers. “Yeah. That boat might need to be what we call a chase boat.” Mary looked at me, curiously amused. “Ya see, we only get one throw with these ropes.” Charlie was going along with me, waving his rope for emphasis. “So why would he need to be a chase boat AND a safety? I bet he’d rather let his customers walk around while he covered the rapid from the bank with his rope. I bet it’s a trust issue… Anyway, if a raft flips those good folks yonder might just have to all paddle out together to save the swimmers. Ya can’t save them all with only one rope.” Charlie shook his head no. “And ya cain’t…I mean, hell’s bells, ya CAIN’T let ‘em swim the next rapid yonder.”
“That’s what ya call bein’ negligent.” Charlie interjected.
“That’s right. That’s right. Cain’t be negligent.” I paused for a moment before continuing, “Yeah, I’d imagine he would rather let his customers get out of the raft, but just feels that he can’t. Now, if all the next boats was jus’ trainees and guides? Shit, ain’t nobody paddlin’ out to save a buncha so-called ‘professionals.’ Naw. So I’m thinkin’ there may just be a problem child in that bunch comin’ at us.” Charlie’s head went down as he giggled silently.
“A whut?” Mary asked, invoking some powerful southern dialect herself.
“A problem child!” I whispered, eyes wide. “Hey! Hey guide! Ya got a problem child in that stick?”
“Yeah!” Charlie yelled back. “We have a girl from the French Broad guiding a six load on this trip. First run since her check-out.” I screwed my face up like I had just bit straight into a lemon. Sometimes these outfitters break in new guides in pretty hard ways. “She just flipped at On the Rocks. That’s why it’s taken so long. Crew’s shook up.”
“Oh God!” I said. “Nice day for it.” The southern accent was gone. “And this is going to be an express trip?” Charlie laughed.
“Hey man,” he said, “I forgot your name.”
“Steve! It’s Steve,” I shot back and climbed down for a handshake. “And yours? I’m really good with names so I probably never asked.”
“It’s Amos,” he said, shaking my hand and smiling. “Really nice meeting you. I’ve heard a lot about you. And you? Ma’am?”
“I’m Mary,” she replied. Charlie nodded and looked away quickly. I caught that.
“You know, Mary, they say that Amos is the best guide on this river.”
I heard someone in Charlie’s crew behind me say, “Amos? I thought his name was Charlie.”
“The hell you say. We all know that Steve here is the best guide on the river.”
“You men are silly,” Mary said, not entertained.
“Who’s got the safety across the river?” I asked, squinting. He looked familiar. But then again, almost everyone out there has a beard.
“That’s Shaggy.”
“The fuck you say,” I mouthed, wordlessly. “How did you get him to come out to work for you guys?” Shaggy and I clocked a lot of miles together on the Nolichucky. He is the strongest, smoothest, most fearless man I know. The stories…
“He’s just merc-ing,” Charlie replied, using the industry term for an independent contractor. Some guides are just too independent to be “company men,” or “women,” as it were. A ‘merc,’ or mercenary, is a guide that is called in for a single trip when an outfitter doesn’t have the staff on-hand to cover the trip, or very often it is when a guide is borrowed from another outfitter’s staff – often a very inexperienced guide. But clearly there seemed to be enough guides on this trip, so I just assumed that some of these customers were Shaggy’s personal clients and he was farming them out to an outfitter rather than making it an “illegal” pirate trip. I do that a lot. Government issued permits make it illegal for river guides to run their own river trips for hire. We are the ones training guides, and running all the commercial trips, but we aren’t qualified enough to actually take money. Apparently we are too dangerous for that.
I was about to explain that to Mary, but she asked, “What’s a Shaggy?” Charlie and I both pointed across the river.
“Best guide on the river,” we said at the same time. Charlie had his throw bag open and was pulling a bit of rope out of it. The rafts were coming in. He told us that there were two other customer boats and one raft of guides doing a “fun run.” That raft came in first, leading the way for the new guide. The entire crew was experienced guides, just out here to play, and they were showing the new guide the line around the meat. They did a wonderful job of tucking her in, spinning in the eddy below to face her, ready to assist, as she came through. Solid. And she did great. God, was she tiny. The next customer boat was right behind her, sorta ready to help clean up, but crashing right into the meat of the hole. It was pretty glorious. The last two rafts were trainees. It looked like one had a guide training and the other was only trainees.
“You got turkey boats out already?” I asked.
“You wanna train?” Charlie replied.
“Ha!” The first one came in right down the middle. The trainee guiding was sitting in the rear on the right side wearing a bright orange customer flotation vest. The guide training was sitting on the left side one seat up, shouting over the water. Instructing. Stuff. He looked pretty freaked out. Or stressed. Or probably both. The rest of them were paddling like champs, loving life as they hit Jaws right in the middle. Water sprayed into the back of the raft, and a large column exploded off the bow shooting upward too. For real, the trainee took his paddle out of the water. The raft tried to turn, but the trainer saved it with a few desperate strokes. They came over the boil cheering.
Turkey boats don’t have guides. They are all trainees, and so they can be pretty entertaining. These guys had an old floppy raft, well past retirement age. It looked like two of the trainees were arguing, or struggling to understand each other in this life. That isn’t unusual to see. They came in a little right of the line and the kid guiding had a left hand angle, calling for strokes and trying to get to the biggest part of the hit. Holy shit. I was already on my feet.
“Yes!” I yelled. The raft slammed Jaws diagonally. The front of the raft never cleared the boil line. It stopped, buried there while the rest of the raft swung into the weaker part of the hydraulic on the right side. Then the raft just hovered for a moment while the front twisted and the first three trainees came out. The left side went back in as the raft tracked across to the middle. Another swimmer. One trainee was holding the chicken strap on the high side, and the other was hugging the thwart in the middle. The raft popped up to the top of the boil and lay back down. Then started sliding back upstream, back into the tongue. The next hit was huge. The raft went vertical and the kid on the right side held onto the strap, dangling high over the water. He closed the coffin, as we say, pulling the boat the rest of the way over, up-side down. I was yelling things. I have no idea what, but I was pretty excited. And then the raft stayed in the hole. Oh God, I was about to die. Too much goodness. Trainees swimming left. Trainees swimming right. And a raft stuck surfing on its own in the middle.
“That thing is doin’ a helluva job, ain’t it Joe?” Charlie yelled. I slipped down from behind.
“Yeah! Look at it go!” The raft was getting tossed around nicely. Great little show. The other training raft ferried out from the side, the crew paddling carefully. The trainer was up front now. It took a couple of tries, but they got close enough that the guide was able to jump out onto the surfing, recirculating raft. He had a rope in one hand and as much raft as he could hold in the other. The other end of the rope was being held by trainees from his raft, and when the rope went tight, they easily pulled him and the raft out of the hole. They drug it to the big eddy on the right side where we were and then forced the three swimmers that made it to the left side to swim across. I was thoroughly entertained.
A few minutes later our friends peeled out. They had a lot of river yet to run and the most difficult rapid was coming up soon. I waved across the river to Shaggy. He gave me a small salute back. “Tell Shaggy that I’m still using that Sawyer key to open my beers on the river.”
“Aintcha s’posed to drink outta cans out here?” Charlie asked.
“We break a rule out here every once in a while, don’t we?” But I didn’t mean to go that far with him. History…
“You guys camping at Lost Cove?” he asked.
“No,” I said, “we’re going to camp right here.”
“Nice. Is it flat enough up there?”
“It isn’t flat. Whether or not it is flat enough will be decided tonight, won’t it Mary?”
“It looks fine to me. I’ve camped in worse places,” she replied. “It was nice to meet you.”
“Yeah, same here. Y’all oughtta stop by the outpost tomorrow on your way through,” he said. I studied him a moment then shook his hand.
“I s’pect you might be seein’ us ‘round three,” I replied.
“Or come by Sammy’s. He’s cooking a big dinner tomorrow night. We’re all coming over.” I smiled knowingly at Mary. He was the last boat to push off and he turned as he coasted out. “Watch out for those bears tonight!”
“Thanks!” I replied.
I heard one of his customers as him, “What is your real name?” Made me smile.
“You,” Mary said.
“What?” I was finally tying the raft to the bowline.
“You like seeing people suffer.”
“What?” I asked in disbelief. “It was just a wee bit of carnage,” I smiled at her. “Totally harmless.” I had a few more packs in my arms now, about to climb back up to the top. I was still feeling electrified. “It was fun, right?” I asked, smiling.
“Absolutely! But you, sir, have a little bit of the devil in you. I’m wondering if I ought to trust you so much.”
“I’d be more worried about the bears.” We unloaded the raft and made a nice late snack. I changed into shorts and lay a mattress down so I could get some sun to get into my skin. It had grown quite a bit warmer in the afternoon, but we wouldn’t have much more direct sunlight. It’s strange being in heaven like this. Once I have everything, there is only the restlessness vibrating underneath, like the roar of the river in the background. I have to contend with it. And it is something. I think I can see how the universe began in moments like those. Every time I find heaven I eventually feel the need to rush off.
I like to think that space and time are connected and that there is no past like we conceive of – rather, every event that ever happened is still happening back there in that place that we passed through, and that all the way back, the birth of the universe is still happening…at that place that is the beginning. I like to think of the place of beginning as a great mind, an absolute mind, in which all matter and all thought are united and merged. Maybe still. It helps me to think that all material came from one source, and so I am connected as well. I think eternities went by in that sort of bliss, which must eventually be a sort of pain, agony even, that such a mind would desire this splitting up into pieces…to move into that scattering of an entire divine Self into boundless oblivion. How long have I swam in the currents of space for the impossible chance of finding my other half? And what about her? Is there not one great ache? I am not that great mind, but the imprint of it must be in all things that came of it…from it. In me. In her. Therefore that pain is all ours. Mine. Hers. Everyone. It helps me to sit with it. It helps me to think I know what it is that causes me to be restless. I’d rather not fill that space up and miss the connection. In these moments I think that maybe the grasping and arching to soak up the moment are perhaps wrong. That even the search is wrong. That I should simply sit with it.
“Mary.”
“Yes, Joe?” She was behind me.
“If we had a child together in the future, could we name it Jesus?”
“Lame.”
“How about a dog? If we had a dog? ‘Jesus is humping my leg, man.’ Just imagine…it’s like a gift we’d be giving our friends. Who gets a chance to say that in this life?”
“You’re an idiot.”
“’Mary will be back later, guys. She took Jesus to get him neutered. Big day.’”
“You’re going to Hell, Joe.”
“You can only get him neutered once, you know?”
“Stop.”
“And ya can’t take it back. Seriously though, imagine being out with a bunch of friends and losing him in the woods, everyone walking around calling for Jesus. ‘Jeeeeeeesuuuus!!’” She didn’t say anything. “‘Jesus, come ba-aaaaack!’ Or, ‘Hey, watch it guys. Jesus doesn’t like kids.’” I heard Mary snicker. “ ‘Jesus is licking his…’”
“Ok! Stop!” She was laughing.
“But there is so much more.”
“Oh God. Well, I can’t take any more.”
“Jesus and cats?”
“No!”
“OK.”
“No, Joe!”
“What??? OK…” I heard a page turn behind me, like maybe she was reading a book.
“No more,” she said softly.
I whispered, “I think Jesus has fleas!” and started laughing. Mary pounced on my back.
The dogs returned from another adventure. I always feel relief when they come back. They seemed like they were feeling settled with the place. I love seeing them live like this. Bright eyes. Big dog smiles. Most times I feel that I offer little more than a safe prison for them. For instance, I hated leaving them in the bus while we biked, and it made no sense to Mary, but I knew that if we wanted to have two dogs in the raft with us that afternoon, we would need to leave them locked up for our bike ride. Mollie is a bear-chasing hound, and turning her loose in that much wilderness means one thing for her – a huge adventure. Ellie was a wonderful companion that I could take anywhere until I got Mollie, but then the Beagle/Labrador mix became very competitive. Of course, she has also been happier than I have ever seen her. There is a give and take with everything, I suppose. It would be getting dark soon and I had a few things that I wanted to do. Mary was exploring the boulders that make up the river bank below us. In some nooks there were tiny, sandy beaches. Others contained piles of small, smooth rocks. River slicks. I told her that if she looked through those piles carefully she might find some very old glass. Mary liked to make jewelry and I told her that I thought her wire wrapping would look good on some river glass. After traveling untold miles through creeks and rivers, being pushed down, out of the mountains by hundreds of floods, the broken glass gets smoothed and rounded like the river slicks. My favorite river glass is the old green kind. She seemed ridiculously happy with the challenge.