The Loss of Summer...

The sun began to set as I headed downstream toward the lip of Pummel. This evening was beautiful. The sky was a sharp blue and the radiant fall light placed the innocent green leaves of the oaks, hickories and maples in the spotlight of the fading summer sun. The air was a bit chilly, but the water still wonderfully warm as I let my hands drag silently beside my boat. I watched my orange paddle blades cut the smooth black surface of the water, stroke after stroke, and all the day's troubles melted into nothing. The waters carried me forward and I drifted alone, quietly happy, and quite still on the inside. I could feel the summers months losing their grip as I watched the leaves blow in the onset of a cool fall wind.

Over the past several weeks I have had the pleasure to kayak the Falls quite frequently, almost everyday last week. These days I boat for nothing but the joy of the sun, to feel weightless as I fall with gravity in solemn moments of contemplation, the roar of the water tumbling over rock and potholes, the mist rising in a ritualstic dance with the evening light. This evening I thought about the summer. I thought about the 11,000 miles I traveled in a car fueled by vegetable oil, the Tetons, the Canyon, Yosemite, Hood River, Crater Lake, and the endless miles of flat and rolling plains. I thought about the rivers, the cold waters of Colorado snowmelt tumbling down in several months of liquid freedom. I pictured the man I saw gasping for air as he surfaced from an undercut boulder, while his boat was violently recirculated in a tight pourover. I pictured another, his boat plastered against the side of a boulder and then suddenly disappearing as the water pulled him into the darkness below. I remembered being pressed against a rock in the middle of an deep canyon upside down. I remembered pulling my skirt and bashing my legs, rising to the surface and clawing wildly for shore. I thought about the risks and rewards. I thought about it all and I thought about nothing. I thought about the deceptive thoughts that often creep into my head before a day on big water. The irrational thoughts that occassionally plague my psyche like a barrage of tiny pin pricks. I washed them all away with stroke after stroke of calm and decisive determination.

Over the past year, several episodes of gripping fear caused me to abandon a day on the river. Perhaps, the root of my fear was not the water itself, but in the fact that I was changing. Perhaps, there was a time when a part of me desired to be swept away in the waters of a cold, icy canyon. It is easy to ignore the truth. It is much more difficult to seek the truth. The river is always there. It is always patient. It is always waiting. It is loyal and relentless, ever changing, but always true. It is passion painted in artful shades of blue, black and green, a mellow and violent mystery twisting through time.

If you ride these waters, you may not always see the truth. You may not always hear the truth. You may not always speak the truth, but I assure you my friend, that in some soft way, you will always feel the truth, and in turn you will come to know the truth.