by Laura Stavoe and featured in the March/April issue of Paddler Magazine

A Woman Confronts Her Fears on the River and Finds She's Not Alone

“Our guide school is not for the faint of heart. We are looking for people with a strong work ethic and a desire to take on some amazing challenges in potentially cold weather.”

—ECHO Web site

The skies dump rain while we pack coolers and stack boats by the gear shack. We’re not even on the water yet and I am already shivering. They told us we’d spend the first night of guide school at the Rogue Guide House, which really means we’re sleeping on the ground beside a beat-down trailer. It’s midnight by the time I find my way to the tent, which I erected (thinking what luck, a flat bedroom) in an area slightly below sea level. The ruckus outside my tent reminds me that I’ll be spending the next eight nights camping with college students on their spring break. Thunderstorms rattle my tent and the depression fills with muddy Oregon rain. 

When I found the ECHO Web site (sitting in my warm, dry office) guide school seemed like a good idea. My twin sons would be spending spring break with their dad, and I wanted to learn to row a raft. My partner, John, always ties the knots, straps down the bags and rows the big rapids on our family trips, leaving me the role of passenger.

There was something else, too, which may have started when I turned 40 last November—a low-grade depression clouding an otherwise perfectly fine life. I don’t want to make too much of the milestone thing. It’s not the graying hair or the fact that I’ll probably die before the next forty years are up that has me bugged. No, what really gets to me about being 40 is that I’m still so damn afraid.

Other women write books about how self confidence arrived in their 30s and self-actualization in their 40s and by 50 they hardly need a self at all they are so enlightened. I’m forever a late bloomer, and still spend large swaths of my life fretting. Sure, I know better. Fear makes me self-centered and less productive. I know that, as the husband of one of those over-achieving women once said, we have “nothing to fear but fear itself.” Those are wonderfully wise words, Mr. Roosevelt, but they put a fearful soul like me in a rather circular predicament.

So, I sign up for guide school as though putting myself in uncomfortable circumstances will force me into being brave.

Our first day on the Rogue River begins late, because when fourteen rookies rig six rafts, things get a little confusing. Then we blow a  tube on the first rapid. The instructors think all this is really funny because we were supposed to have a boat repair lesson at camp that night. As it turns out, by the time we reach camp, we can barely see the sticky chicken ingredients we toss into the Dutch ovens.

How to Re-Repair a Boat

“The ideal workplace is clean and windless, with low humidity and an ambient temperature between 50 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit.”

—The Complete Whitewater Rafter

 “At least we won’t have to fix a boat today,” someone says. The words are meant to cheer us after a rainy night in leaky tents and a frigid morning in wet neoprene, but they’re still hanging in the mist when we hear a sound like a gunshot, followed by a long exhale. We de-rig Colleen’s raft—I’ve already dubbed it the Coyote for its trickster qualities—and heave the flopping rubber onto the beach. It’s raining. 

Jeffe, a mustached instructor dressed in purple Gore-tex and ornamented in safety gear, gives us our second repair lesson, accelerating the glue-drying process with a propane torch. It’s noon when we finally launch, and I’m in the softly inflated Coyote, ready for my first day of actual rowing.

John told me when I was deciding whether to come here that I’d have no problem learning to row. That it’s way easier than kayaking. Jeff, a student from Cal Poly, takes the oars first. I see the green tongue where we need to go and he doesn’t go there. Our instructor Colleen yells, “T –up!” at the top of a rapid, and he slides the boat down sideways. I can’t wait for my chance, and when Colleen asks who is next, I scramble into the guide’s seat. I brace my feet against an ammo can, grab the solid wood oars, lean hard into a forward stroke and am immediately stopped by the weight of water. I try to lift the oars to gain a better angle and am instantly reminded that, since my sons learned to walk on their own, I’ve had almost no upper-body exercise. I throw all my weight into the stroke, but mostly I spin in circles. Miles, 19 years old and the next rookie in line, looks at me like I’m crazy. I can’t wait for him to get in this seat and give it a try.

The experience is humbling. I hand the oars over to Miles and begin to sulk. Then a silver fish jumps and Jeff tells us it’s a salmon. I stare up at the moss-covered canyon and it all comes back to me. Incredible waterfalls line the canyon. Water is everywhere, cascading from rocky ledges, rushing through side creeks, and, of course, falling from the sky. I’m on a river.  

The Crew

“An important aspect of guide school is learning to do everything you need to do at camp with a beer in your hand,”

—Zach Collier, Head Instructor

The next morning I lug fire pans and water jugs to the boats, and try to hold my teeth still when others pass. I have a low shiver threshold and if I let it show, all these enthusiastic future guides will start treating me for hypothermia.

They make an impressive crew. Geoff works as an electrician at both the North Pole and the South, and climbs mountains in his spare time. At 17, Shannon is already one of the top 20 female boulderers in the America, and has the biceps to prove it. Ben is working on a PhD because a medical degree alone just wasn’t challenging enough. Then there’s a just-turned-40 mom and a Wisconsin dairy farmer named Mark. We have more convoluted reasons for being here.

People slip easily together on river trips, as though normal boundaries dissolve in the current, making way for lifelong friendships, or even romance, a force you’d think would be mitigated by lack of showers and Aveda products. Something bonds Mark and I immediately. When I mentioned at the introduction circle that I have twin boys, Mark echoed back, “Twin boys.” Not as in “Wow, you’re in trouble,” which I’m used to, but a recognition, as though something important just fell into place.

Hemingway says we all have one story. Mine is that my sons almost died before they were born; it is the story that weaves its way into all the others. I went into labor in January; the babies were due in May. How we got from that point—where survival would take a miracle—to the two 9-year-olds who today give me pointers on how to ski powder, I can’t entirely explain. When I think back in time, I am overwhelmed by a sense of mystery and grace.

Mark lost his twin sons. He lost one while the babies were still in his wife’s womb and the other eight years later of complications from cerebral palsy. I walked into the guide house that night while Mark was telling the story to someone else, and I plopped down on the limp couch like it was my station. “Koty died in November,” he said. That was four months ago. Mark is here because he doesn’t know what comes next.

I don’t know what it is like to lose a child. It is the question that trails behind my own story. Some babies die. Some are born sick. I have always wondered how grace can live up to its own name, if it visits some and not others.

“We had eight years more with him than we thought we would,” he says. And this I do understand. And so Mark and I are river pals. We set up tents next to each other. He helps me with my rain fly and tells bad blonde jokes. Mornings, we show each other pictures of our sons and cry.

Swift Water Rescue

“Some river runners look at wraps as an outstanding chance to whip out all their rescuer paraphernalia, blanket the landscape in nylon ropes and metal implements, and set up intricate raft-retrieval systems.”

–The Complete Whitewater Rafter

On the third morning my group is in the paddle raft with Jeffe, and he’s telling us how to flip it over. I’m about to suggest we wait for afternoon when it might be warmer when the raft goes vertical and my wetsuit fills with water that, I swear, had been snow only moments before. As I flail, Shawn swims over to us to ask if she can join our lesson.

Shawn is a twenty-something watershed biologist who’s trying to decide whether to keep her “real” job or run wilderness trips. She is maybe 90 pounds soaking wet and holding a cooler, all brightness and beauty and good cheer. No matter what job needs doing, there is Shawn: raising the tarp, tying a bowline, grilling the chicken, drinking the wine, and packing the boats the next morning. (At the end of the trip—and I swear I’m not making this up—Shawn complained that only guys were chosen for the groover-cleaning crew.)

With Shawn’s help, we finally right our raft. I am at the stern calling commands through chattering teeth when Jeffe tells us that Blossom, a formidable Class IV, is just around the bend. Far away thunder murmurs and we look up at the darkening skies. “Really sets the mood, doesn’t it?” Jeffe says. I laugh heartily with the others, we love adventure, yes we do, we’re RIVER GUIDES. But honestly, I could use something easy for a moment—a clear sky, an early afternoon at camp, a steamy latte.

We pull over to scout the rapid. From the boulders above we watch Mark make a clean run through with one raft and then Martin captains the Coyote toward the raging whitewater. Jeffe calls the route as they go. “See where he’s entering, center left. That’s good. Now he’s going to pull right. He better pull right…right…see what Colleen’s doing? She’s preparing to high side…uh oh.” The four of us lean as though we can keep the raft out of trouble with sheer will and posture, but the boat careens into a massive boulder and the river piles in. Martin drops the oars and he and Colleen scramble onto a rock, marooned in the middle of a Class IV rapid on the Rogue.

To my relief, Jeffe takes the guide position through the rapid to the eddy below and begins a spontaneous lesson in raft retrieval. He quickly assembles a Z-drag with a prussic brake system. He weaves bright lines and shiny objects into a web-like mass reaching halfway across the river to the Coyote. I think how good it is that Martin is out there. Any of us could have run up onto the rock, but Martin at least knows his knots.

From the bank, we heave and pull while Shawn, who volunteered to be the brake person, crouches below the line inching the prussic back on Jeffe’s command. Occasionally a loud snap punctuates the scene, and everyone looks down to make sure Shawn still has both blue eyes and that her skin is intact. The boat doesn’t budge. I examine the jagged bank for a good place to camp.

Jeffe attaches more metal and rope. He explains this is now a 9:1 combined with a 3:1 Z-drag which seems to impress the more physics-literate members of the group. Finally the raft slides from the rock, upside down, into the raging foam. Adam and Zach jump from a nearby cliff onto the raft and paddle it to shore. We collect Colleen and Martin from their perch, a task that requires them to run a beefy Class IV without a boat. When Colleen climbs in she says, “Only took fifty minutes, and did you notice the rain stopped?” We all look up at the blue patches scattered across the sky; no-one had noticed. We re-rig the Coyote for what seems like the millionth time, and push off from shore. Fat drops start to fall and thunder rumbles in the distance. No matter. We’re river guides. We love adventure.

Grant’s Pass, Oregon

“Recreate. Hibernate.”

—Travelodge Franchise Slogan

After four soggy nights on the Rogue we are supposed to spend a night at the Guide House before heading to our next river. There are nineteen of us and two weak showers. We have 1,000 pounds of wet gear and one washer/dryer combo. Available beds include either greasy linoleum or wet earth outside. I drive twenty minutes to Grant’s Pass and book a room at the Travelodge.

 I hang my sandy, wet tent and sleeping bag in the bathroom of room 212 and feed coins to the washers and dryers downstairs. I feel guilty for abandoning the others. For about five minutes. I order pizza in. I call John and my sons while reclining between clean sheets. Forty dollars has never been so well spent.

Before long, I start to think about quitting. A sharp pain is stabbing my right shoulder, my wrist is swollen huge, and a toenail is about to fall off. (I don’t know how, exactly, I got any of these injuries.) Continuing means a nine-hour drive to the Tuolumne River near Yosemite, and an even longer drive home to Idaho. How much more can I learn in two days anyway? I go on thinking like this until all thought disappears in slumber.

In the morning I pack the car and head to California.

The Big “T”

“One moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.”

—Rainer Maria Rilke

Our first day on the Tuolumne is our first without something dramatic to slow us down. We spend the first few miles plucking swimmers from Class IV rapids and Colleen’s raft surfs Clavey Falls, a Class V with a boat-hungry hole. But the raft stays upright and the paddlers stay inside. Our camp at Indian Creek is lined with California poppy and lupine, and that night we see the stars for the first time all trip. The end of the trip is a palpable thing, and everyone seems quieter.

Long ago I learned not to say “back in the real world” on wilderness trips. What’s more real than making a fire of soggy branches to keep warm or the way the river seems to disappear before Clavey Falls? What’s more real than a place big enough to grieve the death of a child?

I sit next to Shawn by the fire. “So, did you decide about work?” I ask. She shakes her head.

I tell her about my reasons for being here. The depression is long gone, of course—who has time for that on a river? But I’m not so sure about the fear.  

Shawn’s answer surprises me. “That’s me exactly. I’m always afraid so I force myself to do things,” she says. It’s the last thing I expected from Guide School’s star pupil and suddenly I understand the moms at my kids’ school who think that because I kayak, I’m brave. Maybe it is true that courage is nothing more than fear T-ing up and rowing forward. Maybe if you do it often enough, you get to call yourself a river guide.

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