One Christmas Remembered: A Saga of Woe and Deliverance

I remember that day like it was yesterday...

They say don’t do it. All the rules--both written and unwritten--say so, but sometimes I don’t follow the rules, and this was one of those times. Iconoclasts will know what I mean. Stay with me here, this is a Christmas story (sort of) that involves kayaking (for sure).

It was a few years back on Christmas day and I’d been bummed ever since my wife left me the previous month. I’d met her about five years before when she was a performer in a carnival that set up on the outskirts of town one fall. She was a Filipino exotic dancer and kind of caught my eye during a Ripple daze. Wino xenophiles will know what I mean. I guess it was that third night when I walked up to the stage after her performance and said: “Saan ang banyo,” (some Tagalog I remembered from a shadowy past of steaming along the night streets of Olongapo) when we hit it off. On the fifth night I asked her to stay--leave that frikking carnival behind. Life with a dirtbag kayaker couldn’t be any worse than life with a carney, I told her. She finally agreed, but with the understanding that if she stayed, so would her monkey; a pet that wore a little Spanish hat and carried a silver cup when it beseeched the crowd for coins. We had five good years together--and I guess I should be thankful for that--but my empty Gypsy lies finally took their toll and one day she left--took her suitcase and then a Greyhound. Country Music aficionados will understand what I’m saying. Yep, I was down that Christmas, way down. I missed my little biscuit... and that damn monkey, too.

Yep, they say don’t do it--don’t paddle Class V solo. I could see that tall dude from AW wagging his finger at me from above, but sometimes you just do things like that, especially when you’re depressed; a catharsis some would call it. Shrinks will know what I mean. I’d done the gorge once before with a strong group of four--that magic number that works well for those esoteric runs that teeter on the rim. That day we reconnoitered a lot and set a safety boat and throw rope at the more gnarly drops (following some intuitive rule rather than any written one) and somehow made it to the end alive. But my run would be different: the equivalent of a “free solo” in climbing parlance. I arrived that Christmas morning at The Gollum Gulf just as the sun edged over a distant ridge and fired its golden rungs of Jacob’s Ladder through the fog-shrouded gorge. I took that to be a good sign. Signs Followers will know what I mean. I didn’t bother with a shuttle since I had two working feet, a thumb, and the knowledge that the world is round (and it was just me, anyway). So I donned my paddling gear, hopped into my kayak, and shoved off into an otterskid that took me down the bank and into the river--

___\\\\ WHOOSH ////___

I skittered out over the pool and stern ruddered into a carving downstream turn. “WHOOO-YAAA!!!” I yelled as the delightful sensation of speed cast my worldly gloom into some faraway closet and slammed the door SHUT! Nothing else mattered at that moment; it was just me, the river, and that outrageous gorge. Soulboaters will know what I mean. The first mile is Class III rock and chop and I settled into a delightful flow, catching eddies first on one side of the river and then the other, never stopping. It would have taken a quick eye from above to decipher the ephemeral etchings of the Arabic-like script I left on the river’s surface:

^^^^zIgZaG^^^zIgZaG^^^zIgZaG^^^^

But I knew the boogie water wouldn’t last because this was a serious place. Soon the river pooled and a horizon-line became visible ahead. I recognized the frightful drop coming up--and it was coming up fast!--as I spilled out of the backside of the pool. On that first trip this drop suckered every one of us over and into a non-stop aqua-glissade down a steep bedrock shelf. With not a hope in hell and no time for a prayer we went over that drop in quick succession and yelled “OH, NOOOOOO!!!” as we plummeted warp speed toward the mother of all hydraulics. But this time I knew that I’d slam through that jump of counterfroth below like a rock thrown through a plate-glass window. Undaunted, I entered the notch then hurled myself over the drop, paddle chattering--setting on edge the very silver amalgam in my teeth--as I rock-ruddered down the shelf, holding fast my line on a target that was as hard to focus on as an old skipframming super-8 movie! Then:

SPLAMMM //////////////

I hit that megahole going at least thirty miles an hour and exploded through to the other side and into the sanctuary of the plunge pool. Those who have paddled the Tallulah or Moose will know what I mean. With “Mr. Bill” behind me, I took my thumb and forefinger and gingerly flipped my eyelids back down then pulled my helmet back snugly onto my head. I quickly peeled out and continued downstream; there was no time to savor my run of “Mr. Bill” because another formidable drop loomed ahead and I wanted to strike while The Warrior Within was extant. Looking downstream, I glimpsed the crown of the huge pillowed boulder that one must drive off of to initiate the critical move for “BoofBoof,” a Class V drop whose name becomes a classic onomatopoeia... if run correctly. Those at one with the river will know what I mean. I heard a faint, surreal wailing, but realized it was only the whistling of the wind by the earholes in my helmet as I funneled hyper-hydrosonic down through a tilted trough sculpted by the relentless river. I focused--held my line--on the water piling up on the boulder ahead then like a cosmic bull-rider bucked up and launched off the right spill and freefell into the shadows below--

\\\\\\\ BOOF ///////....

But I foundered--stalled--and instead of hitting the sweet skip, I penciled in over the next frightful drop. hOsHiT!!! A clammy terror engulfed me for that brief moment between the realization that I’d screwed up ... and what would come next. Then, like a cork in a bottle--like a log in a pothole--the river jammed me and my boat deeply into the bedrock folds and I was vertically pinned--bolted to the riverbed as soundly as a piece of rebar. I remembered the words of a poet: “Rule number one--do not die!” and I began to struggle--tried to bring one foot up to the front rim of the keyhole cockpit--but the boat had folded slightly forward and my effort was futile. I grabbed for the rocky rails of my trap with the idea of somehow pulling myself back out the way I went in. But the river would have none of this; it had spent many thousands of years polishing this sarcophagus. In desperation I popped my sprayskirt in hopes of triggering some fortuitous shift in the boat’s position, but I felt only the icy deluge as it filled the bow and pushed me even deeper. I grappled for and found the inflation tube of my stern airbag and sucked in perhaps fifteen seconds more of the sweetness; I couldn’t find the other one. And then I became a watcher--a spectator--to the horrific tableau that was taking place, and through the crystalline water I saw the wavering image of some poor soul, arms languidly yet gracefully waving as if conducting a mysterious symphony to whatever ears might hear and then the form morphed into some strangely colored and misplaced kelp telling in sign the river’s secrets and I saw pebbles of all colors in a long swirling helix that stretched from the mountain to the sea, twisting through bottomless and broken potholes, etching unrenderable hieroglyphics along the way as a writhing mass of red-spotted waterdogs drifted by and I closed my mouth so as not to show them my teeth. Then came the brightness--the utter brightness--ushered in with a “shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh” that seemed to emanate from the very center of my brain... I shielded my eyes but the blinding incandescence was all consuming and there was no escape. Then all converged, whirling down into a measureless vortex of brightness that sucked everything in: river, stone, light... life.

“CLOMP!... CLOMP!”

I felt two huge hands close over each of my shoulders, stopping my slide into the immense white hole. As I was wrenched up and out of that radiant caldron, I watched a teardrop shaped shadow form at my feet and heard a sucking “SUPPPPTTTT” as I broke free, the shadow spinning away into the void.

“HO, HO, HO!”

Laughed a hearty voice from behind as I was pulled up and onto a sloping rock at the river’s edge. I rolled over, puking and belching pink-stained riverwater, then looked up at a rather husky fellow standing before me. He was dressed in heavy, crimson pile and wore a matching zany, Andean-like hat. He had a full, snow-white beard and held the stump of a pipe in his teeth. “That was a close one!” he laughed, his belly jouncing as he chuckled. “Good thing I was around,” he added. “And for you, a bit of serendipity! You see, I’m only around here once a year--in fact only on this specific day!” Then, laying his finger aside his nose, he gave a nod and... vanished. Through a raw throat I yelled, “THANK YOU!” the echo mixing with the roar of the river and becoming lost in the gorge.

I looked up at the vertical wall before me and noticed a small cleft through which I’d be able to scramble and chimney to the road above. I took one last look at the river then turned and began the trek out. As I slowly walked toward the wall, I contemplated the gift the jolly big man had given me and remembered that I’d been given one like it many, many years before... nice to have had two in the same lifetime.

Happy Christmas to all.

Faron Vaughn Bunchausen

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