Streaks of reds, yellows, whites,
and blues are clearly visible on the large rocks just below the water’s
surface—paint stripped from the bottoms of boats that have traveled this route
before. We add some color of our own as we bottom out time and again, scraping
our canoe’s hull across the river’s bed. A shiver rolls down my spine each time
we make contact, worried more than anything of damaging our canoe. I don’t
believe we’re in any physical danger, and I’d say with confidence that we’re
running the rapids about as smoothly as they could possibly be run, until…
The
canoe turns, ninety degrees, perpendicular with the rapids, crashing the
amidships into a large rock. With one side of the canoe pinned against the
obstruction, the fast-moving water bucks the other side, lifting it, working to
roll it over, like a log. Water begins to pour over the gunwales. A dry bag
falls overboard. Nothing is tied down. I don’t think. I react. I jump out of
the canoe. The water isn’t deep, just above my knees, and not moving fast
enough to push me over. I use all my might to push down on the far gunwale
while pulling up on the one closest to me. I swing the bow, using the rock as a
pivot point, until the canoe is straightened out, and once again parallel with
the water flow. I hop back in my seat and as we proceed downstream I reach
overboard to snatch the slow floating dry bag.
It
all happens so fast that it seems like a dream. We continue down the river,
floating so casually, and maneuvering so serenely, that I begin to wonder if anything
even happened in the first place, if the whole occurrence wasn’t just a figment
of my imagination. And then, when the rapids end, and the water calms, Jack
makes it perfectly clear that something did indeed happen, that I am not losing
my mind. “What the hell was that?” he asks.
“What
the hell was what?” I ask in return.
“You steered us
directly into that rock back there.”
“Me?” I reply. “I thought you steered us into the rock. Wasn’t I the one that saved us?”
“Saved
us?” he says with laughter. “By what, jumping out of the canoe?”
“It
worked, didn’t it?”
“Well,
if you wouldn’t have steered us into the rock in the first place…”
“We
both know that the man in the stern is in charge of steering.”
“That’s
right, and I was steering us
straight, until you took us right
into that rock.”
“Alright,”
I say, “I’ll take full responsibility for the mistake, but I’m also going to
take credit for saving us. So now you can tell everybody that you know a real hero.”
“But
you see, the thing is, if you set a building on fire, and then save everyone
inside, that doesn’t change the fact that you set the building on fire. You’re
still going to jail for arson.”
“Well,”
I say, “luckily I didn’t start a building on fire.”
“Your
logic is absolutely ridiculous.”
“When
you’re a hero, your logic doesn’t have to make sense.”
It’s
good that we can joke around about our little debacle, because according to my
calculations, we’re going to be sitting about ten feet away from each other for
another 2,542 miles.
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