I have one of those lives, suspect from the get-go at say, a job interview. Forget casual conversation, the park while the kiddos play, my husband's company Christmas party. The things I have done the lives I've lived are either seen as intriguing detours ("how cool that you lived on a sailboat in Marina del Ray and worked for that producer what's-her-name!") or they are met with a stiff-jawed dumbfounded silence and the deft scratching of the pen as it crosses my name off the list. It does not help that among my accomplishments I count, proudly thank you, the time I planted beans with Walter at Old Oraibi, Hopi Mesa, and my ability to push my boat into the eddy at Vasey's Paradise just whisking the nose past that fang of limestone hiding mid-current into the suddenly green air, ferns, monkey flower, the water cascading right out of the cliff ("pushing" is guide-speak for rowing while facing toward the goal, that is, not pulling on the oars (more powerful) and thus heading downstream stern first, but in the case of pushing, the nose of the boat (the bow) goes first and the boatmen pushes against the oars which is, technically speaking, a trickier maneuver. Oh never mind you had to be there.) Anyhoo. The other day I was encouraged by my recent employer to join Facebook and for those of you who know me whoa, that was a shocker. The Luddite tries on new shoes.
And so of course I had to upload a picture and of course I chose the one of me in my boat just as we are rounding the bend above President Harding rapid. The folks in my boat (I guess if you get out a magnifying glass you can see this. You can also see that contrary to present reality I had some nicely toned thighs) are looking up, looking for the Anasazi Bridge I have attempted to point out to them, but pointing out a bridge made from ancient driftwood timbers that have somehow been hauled several thousand feet above the river and wedged into the Redwall limestone cliff face to span a gap that was, evidently, a route in and out of the canyon is, shall we say, tricky, and it takes not only a good set of binoculars but a leap of faith to see it. But when you do the improbability is almost too much. Why would they go there, what were they doing, what were they thinking, and how the heck did they get the logs up there are the usual questions, and good ones. A friend of mine, an old timer guide who pretty much grew up on the river climbed up there once, to check it out and see for himself. Kenton Grua, a fine teller of tales, a maker and rower of wooden dories who wore carharts while he rowed and as The Factor, as he was called, bumbled about in camp "fixing" things, liked to tell how he nearly peeled off into a two-thousand foot free fall, how his size eight feet barely fit the chiseled foot path, how there were hand holds made from wood stuffed into chinks and cracks, and how the bridge was composed of several long trees laid with cross logs. The Park Service also sent some folks up there to get a sample of the wood and according to their radiocarbon results the timbers are approximately 1000 years old. So in the picture like I said we are just heading around the u-turn in the river that dumps into a nice little rapid and then its pretty much back to flat water and looking for coyotes, the wild turkey who used to hang out on river left for so many years, or maybe even a good nap before we stop to hike up Saddle Canyon if somebody wants a turn at the oars. That was my life.
So I uploaded that photo (thank you Sam W. for taking it I never even knew you had) and then a day or so later while checking my wall (new fb lingo I am learning) it occurred to me that the picture was at least ten years old and in that way that an old familiar song (for me, Ten Thousand Maniacs singing "These are the Days" does it in a flash, or anything by the Cowboy Junkies) like a kick in the gut that keels me back to some other time, poor sad forty-nine year-old gut who has borne a child, sat at a computer too many hours, has lost the warm lick of sun as soon in May as it returned to the river and those big sunning rocks at lunch, the once very flat and muscular gut from rowing a thousand miles a season it hit me: I am living, quite possibly, some kind of weird pathetic arrested development looking-back kind of existence, as if the me of the here and now could not exist without the me of the once upon a time; as if the umbilical of what made me who I am keeps me tethered to a past life. But there I am and that is who I still think of, maybe she has the fallout from all that sun and too many fun nights with the communal tequila, keeping up with the boys, hands that only a potato farmer or Shrek could love, the half life of memory glowing quietly inside her cells, inside her very being. And when I close my eyes that is the me I see, despite the incongruity of it to those who know me now: suburban mother, picking her child up after school, the station wagon she can deftly park at Target, the way she hefts those groceries with one hand the other wielding the cell to her ear. Maybe because it is Spring and I should be shoe-gooing my river sandals, packing my ammo can, stocking up on power bars for the drive south and the layover at Springdale, a hike up Angels' landing, margaritas and jalapeno shooters at the Bit and Spur. Like every spring. Like every migration that pulled me there all those years, did I have a choice?
Well, yes. Of course I did, I do, I could go back, right? I think I could make it as far as the hike up to Angels' Landing, if my boys were with me and I could show them the way the walls turn pink in the right light, the view of Zion if it's not snowing but it usually does this time of year. But who knows now, we weren't talking about global warming back in the day. I remember during the gulf war being on a research trip and rowing all winter, seeing the fighter jets we had never seen before flying low above the rim, Kenton who died a few years ago after living a life on the river, calling them evil darts and how we would sit up at night around the fire and wonder what was happening out there, in the real world.
I will admit to times of crying, of pain and a heart break from not being that girl in the picture, of wondering just where she went and how I might find her again, of all that I have left behind apparent only in the light shining from all that I have. And when I open my eyes and really look back at it I remember times of crying, of pain, and a heart break on my boat at night under the velvet blue of sky,
don't listen to what they say/there comes a time when you have to break away
Which is my life all along, the not following the predictable path tilt of it, the reason I am here is because, lo! I was a river guide who also wanted to have a family and a life in the real world with a garden, maybe a dog and now, the way I was a river guide who wanted to go to law school, the way I was a high schooler who wanted to write poetry despite the plans for pre-med, and a college student who wanted to study art history and then I was a graduating college student who discovered life on a river and then
there I am in the picture; a life and the improbability of it all, after all.
