Honorable Mention, Book Passage Travel Writer’s Conference Contest
August 2002
The client wasn’t terribly impressed with our presentation, my boss wasn’t happy with me, as usual, and I spent most of the slow Friday evening drive from San Francisco to the Tuolumne River trying to figure out what should have or could have. By Saturday morning I had unwillingly thought through several careful strategies to improve my lot at my miserable job while my wife Nina stood on the bank of the river and decided between oar boats or paddle boats. I wanted to talk more about my job, complain about how life wasn’t as adventurous as it used to be when we were traveling, get her to feel sorry for me, to tell me to quit. Nina was busy asking people if they had been rafting before.
“But this is important,” I whisper whined.
She looked at me, annoyed, almost said something quickly, stopped, then whispered in a tone that was somehow on my side, “This is more important,” she said so convincingly that I didn’t quite know what to say, so I said nothing.
We got into a paddle boat, a raft with four other inexperienced river rafters and a guide and followed the other rafts down the river. The water, the canyon, the air, were quiet. I closed my eyes and paddled to the rhythm of the others. The repetitive action was soothing, tiring, numbing. Good. Whoosh, lift, forward, whoosh. I drifted away from my work, I dreamt of our traveling days, a time of freedom, of long, slow bus rides and talking with the locals, not knowing what’s ahead, not even certain where you’ve been, but there you are, not worried about it, just going with it. I longed for it like youth, but it seemed so far away. I let out a sigh that was sadder than I thought I was capable of. I opened my eyes.
The raft went out from under me with a sharp jolt, I flipped backwards off the edge, the paddle flew out of my hands, and I heard a thwack that sounded just like a helmet hitting a boulder. My helmet. My head is in my helmet. Action was quick and I was slow, quick and slow. In another split second, I was under water. I was calm as if I were dead and I wondered ever so quickly if maybe I were, but how would you know what dead felt like? I instinctively opened my mouth to yell or get air, but got only water so I closed it. So much for instincts. I flapped my arms and kicked my legs but I was in a washing machine filled with champagne. “Don’t panic, let the water take you,” a calm voice told me, Nina’s voice. She loves me so much. I stopped my flailing and looked for clear water, fewer bubbles. It was quiet, deafening. Finally, I was moving. The bubbles were thinning, I saw blue, my head was above water, I gasped. Air. Lots of great-tasting air.
“Are you OK?” they all said from the side of the raft and I instinctively said that I was before I knew. They pulled me back into the raft and the guide said that I was only under for a few seconds and he didn’t seem too worried which made me not too worried.
The river flowed smoothly again and my thoughts settled in my head like stew in a Crock Pot: the heavy stuff to the bottom and the light stuff to the top. My clothes dried in the warm summer sun and my skin felt refreshed, alive, cleansed, like a long, hot shower after a week of camping. I could see more clearly, my hearing was improved. My eyes and ears were wide open to focus on what was happening today, right now, not closed to dream about what it was like in the past. I spend energy and time trying to relive when I was 23 as if I were 63, but I’m 33 going on 63 wishing I were 23. I should just be 33.
The guide told us of local Indian tribes who used to live along the banks of the river and pointed out abandoned mines where the 49ers sought their fortune. Images formed in my mind when he talked and I saw the miners in their rugged 19th-century clothing, I saw them working on the mines, driving the spikes into the railroad ties. I realized that I was doing something that I had forgotten how to do, even though it’s so simple. I was listening. Not just hearing, not just collecting information, analyzing, and computing in my shallow nine-to-five brain, but simple, innocent, child-like listening with no prejudices, no other thoughts cluttering my mind, no nothing. Travel.
Three generations of a Mexican family shared our raft, out on a “man-only weekend.” We floated and listened to their stories of the family taco sauce business: working long hours, secret recipes, and stubborn grandmothers. I said I’d look for their brand at the Safeway. The grandfather was a tough businessman, but had a smile warm enough to heat tortillas. We were meeting people we normally never would have met, talking with them openly about anything and everything. We’d probably never see them again, we wouldn’t exchange phone numbers and promise to call. No reasons to hide anything or lie or exaggerate or be someone you weren’t. Travel.
The late afternoon came around and painted a fresh coat of color around us: the water transformed from bubbly, light-green champagne to smooth olive oil, the sky from faded blue jeans to rich navy, and the blond hills to brunette. Our guide had names for every set of rapids and said them aloud with a familiarity and pride as if they were famous places: “Dead Man’s Curve” and “The Rock Garden.” We sprang to work at his command: “Hard right!” “Shift left!” and everyone’s favorite “Get light!” which meant that we had to bounce up and down on the sides of the rubber raft to slide us over the boulder we were stuck on. Grandfather Mexico thought this was big fun and he let out an occasional loud Spanish-accent giggle. It looked like he was having a great time and I wondered if I looked like I was having a great time.
I looked over to Nina and was startled to find her staring at me. I looked away, then I looked back. Her eyes were soft and her face glowed like someone in love. She kept staring so I kept staring only to soon realize that she wasn’t just absently looking at me, she was looking deep inside of me. She was in love with me. Sometimes I’m a little slow to pick up on things. She continued to look into me and her eyes were a little watery and I felt exposed, she was reading me like a neon sign, knowing my every thought and at first I felt invaded, but then I let her inside of me. She knew me better than I did and I could read her better than I could read me, so through her, I read that my worries of work had just been drowned in the rapids, that my constant longing for the glorious past had floated away into the slow evening breeze, that I was content with the moment, that dozens of miles from home could be as adventurous as thousands, that I had remembered that travel was not a place you needed to fly to or show a passport to get into, that it’s not a spot on a map, that it’s not far away, but it can be hard to get to, hard to find, that there aren’t maps or guidebooks, that travel is a state of mind, a state of being, and that I had found it again.