You would think. After so many close calls and almosts, the time in Jawbone when I was stuffed deep into the granite cleavage of the undercut rocks where an earlier trip's rescue ropes from their own catastrophe that day were tangled in an untimely noose of brilliant yellow cordage. We flipped at the top of the curler, just where the boat was supposed to/should have/could have gone sneaking to the right then down the zipline wave past the tumble of boulders where the river squeegeed itself through the siphon that, according to all the oldtimers who had been there at low water and climbed around it, repelled under the water to see, said a body could not fit through; that's why why people drowned in Jawbone. They got sucked toward the rock sucked under the surface by this drain hole to nowhere and then hoovered into a tiny cramped and very dark coffin. We kept a come-along stashed in the rocks on shore just in case and the forest service made us double guide the rafts through.
The day I drowned there I looked up when my head broke the surface to where Craig was supposed to be on shore, the kiwi guide who was posted to throw a rope in case shit hit the fan in this case the shit of my raft hitting, but he just held up his empty hands and shrugged: he had already thrown it for a passenger, who had missed the catch. Then the rock and the big bubba from Kentucky who had made the boat list to port most of the day and my shoulder sore from having to yank us around to correct his indifference to my commands tried to grab me and instead, pushed me right into that sucker and as I tried to hit it feet first and maybe kick but no, could feel the force of the river from behind and the suction of the water as it funneled through. I took one last breath and I decided.
Underneath it is usually quiet but that is only on retrospect; there may be noise but that is never what is remembered later, the time in Crystal with the rock island and no chance to gulp one final breath just the crush of water and the instantaneous knowledge like an internal GPS that I was too far left to swim for the right and safety. Down, thrash on the bottom, a boulder slamming into my pelvis, and then too dark to be good news, no motherfucking white tunnel. That time I was unconscious and when I came to Todd was there like some hunky god and my eyes were full of silt from the river being muddy and I wanted a helicopter more than anything I have ever wanted; I wanted that Park Service Bell Jet Ranger with its sexy ex-Viet Nam pilot in the orange jumpsuit and the good ol regulation forest green paint job on his ship. I wanted that chopper to land and scoop me away, away from a lifetime of drowning and close calls and jeesus I almost just died but I have to get back in the saddle and go downstream, again. No time for a break, a rinse of saline to clear my eyes, I've got miles to cover and lasagna to cook and people who paid good money to see the canyon and all the logistics and details that ensue when somebody drowns in the canyon or is injured.
The summer I flipped in the Ledge Hole there was a rumor circulating around the guiding community that I did it for money, on a dare, that a film crew paid me ten thousand dollars to stuff my tiny paddle raft, at that time the smallest boat used to guide commercial clients down the Grand Canyon, into the abyss of a giant recirculating keeper. My boss was an admitted adrenaline freak, a short cocky guy with a stable of fast cars, Porsches, a vintage Shelby Cobra, the airplane he piloted sans license; he thought we could take em down in the sports car of rafts and naturally, he could charge more for the added excitement. That summer when I flipped in the Ledge Hole, the biggest hole in the Grand Canyon in the biggest rapid in North America, Lava Falls, I did it with my left foot casually braced against the thwart in front of me, sitting up so tall and straight one guide who was watching from shore (the film crew that caught it on tape was making a commercial for some outdoor clothing company) liked to retell it and say he saw how I was in warrior pose. We ferried out from the eddy, I stood up from one last look, sat back down and then steered us smack dab into the guts of it and never called for a get down! brace brace brace! or even a beam me up Scotty. I was wearing flip flops. I still had on my baseball cap. Possibly I had missed stopping by Vulcans Anvil, leaving the river gods their due. There were people watching who closed their eyes, who ran downstream with their cameras running, who stood there with their mouths open and their fingers frozen in disbelief, forgetting to push the button on the camera.
Anybody who knew me, knew it couldn't have been on a dare. Some of the rumors said the sun was in my eyes, that a sudden gust of wind blew us off course, that I was a diabetic and blacked out; that it wasn't ten, but twenty thousand dollars. When it was all said and done two of my passengers had lost their shorts, literally, ripped from their bodies. Another guy came up and his wetsuit booties were gone from his feet. One poor shmuck couldn't stop laughing, hysterically, insanely, until later and the single malt we kept hidden from the baggage boatmen came out and then when I laid down on my boat the view of the night sky was missing the stars and in their place one never-ending rewind of the tape that had been playing in my head: I had thought I knew where I was. I wouldn't have done it any differently. I knew where I was. I wouldn't have done it any differently.
I grew up under the tutelage of a wise and kind grandfather who believed the best way for me to learn how to swim was to be tossed backward onto the crest of an incoming ocean wave, the idea being the momentum of the wave would roll me toward shore and by riding the blossoming white froth I would learn the feel of swimming. Granted, he was there to observe the gasping o of my surprise, the enthusiastic if not flailing glee as I jetted toward him, arms and legs stretched and flapping like some waterborne pint-sized angel. By age four I was unafraid of water and as the family story goes on a particularly tiresome drive to Key West down the Seven Mile Bridge I continually demanded to be let out of the car to take a swim. So in my case Papa was right, because I became a fearless and proficient swimmer, received my girl scout's swimmer's badge, competed on the high school swim team, and spent college summers perched atop a lifeguard's stand twirling the lanyard of my whistle.
The admission of my early swimming lessons would amaze and shock my friends who had learned to swim via the local Y, or at the club pool coached by certified swim instructors in speedos and early season tans. They got little stickers shaped like minnows, or dolphins, whales for the level 9's, the big kids who could leap from the high dive all by themselves. I got to have my sinuses reamed by jets of salt water and to feel the calloused hands of a farmer heft me backwards, raggedy ann style, once more for good measure.
Either way we learned to swim and this as anyone who can swim knows, offers immeasurable freedom the way nothing else in childhood can; not even learning to ride a bike without training wheels comes close. All those afternoons belly-flopping into the seamless blue of a pool, bee-lining with the graceful urgency of seals toward some target on the bottom, scooting our feet along the cold and pebbled sand of the summer lake until tippie-toe we kicked free and floated, were the testing grounds of a belief system: we knew what to do when Geoffrey the oaf who liked our big sister would push us under, we knew what to do when our nose would fill up and our eyes would burn and the sand of the ocean filled our suit as we tumbled toward shore. Knowing how to swim was the first lesson in self rescue and once we had it, we had it: after that, kindergarten, high school, the world! it would all be cake.
Self rescue is not blind faith. It is not how Sally swirled on her back in the wild current, a Van Gogh of brilliant blues and greens beneath the Chilean sky, her eyes wide open but no longer willing to see: to see the ropes, my friend Lynn's kayak straining toward her its red sleakness a knife slicing the water, to see that in the wilderness of the unknown the only guide that matters is one's self. Life is a hardship. People say, the popular feel-good quotes, the Oprah-esque mantra etc, is that Life is Good. Life is Beautiful. Shame on you if you do not see this, if your eyes are closed or full of dust and full of everything you wish you had not seen. I say, this is bullshit. Life is not good, nor is it beautiful. Get this woman medication you are thinking. Life is good, I heard it on NPR, in that U2 song, I have the tee-shirt, it's posted on my Facebook page! Life is a hardship, a rough ride from the get-go, a long unfurling river of falling down and stumbling and tsunamis and things that sneak up on us from behind. You might ask yourself, this is not my beautiful house, how did I get here, this is not my beautiful wife and you are getting close to the truth of it, the hardship of being hurled one last time for good measure into the next wave: the way the paper of the envelope sounds as you rip it and dare yourself to go there, to see the hole left behind that was your stock portfolio, the note pinned to the door from the mortgage company, the guy in the cubicle packing his box, the refugee camp in the news, the word genocide, a slum in India bigger than Des Moines. Life is beautiful, life is good. You can only know that when it is peeled away, when the whetstone that is change burnishes the day into a different sheen, when you have stood on the wing, reached for the rope, when you accept what is and then choose what if.
What is beautiful is landing the plane on the water. What is beautiful is selling the big screen the Humvee that thing in the corner you had to have it! and do not hardly remember owning and moving on, weightless, into the current. What is beautiful is realizing that there is no such thing as a guarantee, the perfect insurance plan, the perfect investment strategy, the predictable cell that will not morph and cluster and grow; that the engines are gone, your feet are against the rock and someone told you it can't be done this way that life is about what you own, the size of the house you live in (no cardboard, no tar paper shacks, no corrugated scrap, isn't that in the Great CC and R's in the sky?) what you drive, your nest egg. What is beautiful is that you do it anyway, you slip out of the lifejacket, let it go because it is not going to save you this time. You wedge your shoulders into the rock, feel your skin as it peels away, angle your neck just so, give it a try one more time for good measure and you decide: today.
