The week after school let out, Sam (top right) took us rafting down the Grande Ronde.
We'd also gone the year before and had a terrific time, five days of floating and camping, launching water canons and eating and drinking absurdly well. I was mildly wondering who would kill the rattlesnakes, because in 2013, Jim had come: he was competent with a machete and had killed three of them (we skinned and ate the first). Though Jim couldn't come this year, the weather was much cooler and we saw no snakes at all.
Replacing Jim and his daughter was our friend Jono (center, yellow) and his son, Lionel (right front), flying in from Brooklyn. Stephanie and I had just seen Sam and Jen (center, blue), and Jono at the Oberlin College reunion, during which, Sam and Jon revived the Plum Loco Circus, originally an extravaganza of clowning and acrobats that brought together town and gown in an unprecedented community gathering; later, Plum Loco was Sam and Jono on the road, two clowns on their way to becoming a doctor and a child-life specialist.
Here's a chunk of their show from the reunion.
This year our rafting trip featured equally excellent provisions and ended with the same promise by Sam: next year, more austerity, less prep and less weight. And once again, the area is stunning. The Wallowas in Oregon are dry and craggy, and from the river, we cut through basalt and steep hills. From Minam to Troy, we floated 45 relaxed miles and 4 nights on two rafts and an inflatable kayak.
The trip did have one sleepless night, following an incident early on the second day.
Toby and I were in the inflatable kayak. Everything he did with his paddle, I did the opposite, trying to prevent him water-terrorizing the rafts with his water gun. He was avid to drench someone, but it was just too cloudy, too cool, too early. I steered him towards action.
And then our boat overturned. And I couldn't flip it. We were still in rapids. In the end, Toby was rescued first, though he was holding a paddle in one hand and wouldn't relinquish the water gun from the other, and I floated for what turned out to be a mile and a half before the churning water calmed enough and Sam pulled me out of the river.
First, though, I bobbed along in my life preserver, leaning on the underbelly of the ducky, which kept me a little warm, and grasping my paddle with the other hand, watching the rafts in front of me get further and further away, and getting colder and scareder, looking wildly for a place to self-rescue but mostly keeping my legs up and pointed down-river, just like Sam told us, not to get the feet trapped in rocks and the rest dragged under in the current, and also whimpering a little, saying hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey
"Are you hypothermic?" Sam asked me. I asked what that looked like. He said I'd be numb and foggy and wouldn't be able to move. I wiggled my toes and head and figured I wasn't.
But when Sam and the other raft found a place to eddy out, there was no other priority but to warm me up. This began one of the most beautiful episodes of my adult life.
Stephanie and the girls closed in all sides around me. Sam took my wet shirt and gave me his warm red jacket. Someone gave me water which I kept tossing in my face because I was shaking too hard to get it to my mouth. Sam took my swimming trunks, and now I was only wearing his jacket. Someone gave me warm tea, which I jerked into my mouth. At some point, Jono was with me; at some point, Sam's father got behind me and rubbed my kidneys. The girls were all around me.
Then Sam told me to get naked with Stephanie, and he covered us with sleeping bags, and Stephanie shed her clothes so readily, just chucked them and held me, didn't look around or hesitate, and there was nothing else like it, I'd felt so loved, I felt so full of love, and I said so: the embrace from my daughters and friends, being naked with Stephanie under the sleeping bags and everyone around us.
Sam said I was probably feeling weak and a little groggy headed. "Or as I like to call it," I said, "relaxed."
