Middle Fork, American River, California
For over 30 years my poor wife has listened to me tell of the white water rafting experience I had in my relative youth, with a group of guys I worked with at San Quentin State Prison. I was a lieutenant and the prison was a rough place. Lots of death there, in its history and in our everyday work experiences. Mostly inmates, sometimes employees, sometimes friends.
A group of us took to doing adventures that had an element of risk to it, an odd escape. We chose river activities, easy at first, canoeing, but on a path of escalating difficulty, culminating with hitting the class 4 rapids on the Middle fork of the American River. Class 4 is the highest you can go, class 5 is not commercially allowed as we had to portage around those. We chose the section of river that had rapids called “the chute” and a portion of the river went through a tunnel. The gold miners in the 1850’s had altered the course of the river to use the power of the water to aid in their search for gold – leaving in their path a churning, boiling, agitated river that takes you in at the top, bounces, shakes, tosses and spits you out at the bottom without consideration for your safety at all.
The river calms at the bottom and you go pretty quickly into the tunnel. My historic version goes like this; We were at the top of the chute. The river guide had instructed us to move the oar to the inside hand, slide our butts into the bottom of the raft and hold the outside pontoon strap with your outside hand. When he gave the shout I moved the oar to my right hand and thrusts the oar into the bottom of the raft, then I got a death grip on the strap with my left hand. John, my sergeant in the East Block, shared the front of the raft with me and did the same on his side. It was exhilarating,
Down we went, flying, being jerked and tossed, water splashing in waves off the rocks and over us. All the while John was screaming, in a manly way. I was rocked this way and that but kept myself steady by holding tight to the strap in my left hand and keeping the oar nailed down with my right hand, letting my weight shift and bounce between my two holds. The frothing white water covered us, as if thrown by buckets full. When we got to the bottom I said to John, “You screamed like a little girl.” He said, “Yeah, you were digging your oar into my leg.” I looked and these deep red lines were on John’s left leg mid inside thigh. Oops, thought I had the oar on the bottom of the raft, not wedged on his heg. I told him I was sorry, he got his revenge later on during the trip. We had to almost lay in the raft not to bump our heads as we floated through the tunnel. The tunnel was claustrophobic, dark, scary in a different way.
When we cleared the tunnel we paddled to the shore to wait for our friends in the raft behind us. There were five in that raft. As they came out of the tunnel there were just two. We yelled from the shore and asked where the others were. The two in the raft did not know that they were alone and they looked back in the raft, acted surprised, then started looking over the sides of the raft down into the water, for bodies. We jumped into the river and started gathering items that had been tossed out of the raft and were floating in the river (oars, shoes, backpacks). Then, finally, we saw a head come out of the tunnel. Luther, the former Marine, followed shortly by Fred, the former Chicago PD officer. The guide showed up later on the other side of the river as he had gotten tossed at the top with Luther and Fred and got out of the river before going through the tunnel. He hiked around the hill and it took him awhile.
Luther told the story:
I couldn’t believe it, I fell out right at the top. Didn’t even get a chance to take a breath! In l went and the water sucked me right down to the bottom. I knew I was going to die. I could see the raft high above me and the bright sky beyond that. I started praying, please Lord, let me get just one breath. I was flying in the water, and they told us to keep our feet in front of us, hell, this Mae West life preserver, no way. I was flying face first! I put my hands in front of me, I just knew I was going to smack face first into the rocks. I put my arms out in front of me and I was flying like superman. Finally I broke surface, caught a breath and went right back to the bottom. Everything went dark. I realized I was in the tunnel. I broke surface and was able to breath. I saw someone, just their head in the water near me and I thought to myself, thank God. I am not going to die alone.
And his relief at having a companion for death is the punch line of my story. Edie has heard it too many times. Then one day a groupon flashed on my screen with 50% off for the very same rafting trip. I asked Edie if she was game and she said she was. I bought the trip. I called the company and they told me that it was such a wet year that the water was too high to schedule the trip now and we should wait a month or two. We waited two months and signed up for a late July date. They told me to hope that others sign up, we need at least 4 to row the raft.
I called two weeks before the trip and they told me that no one else had signed up and we would probably be put on another raft on a different part of the river. Class 2 rapids. I was very disappointed. Edie and I talked about it. The trip would be days before my 70th birthday and just a few more days before Edie’s 65th. We collectively agreed that it was probably providential that no one else signed up. What business do we have running class 4’s anyway. Relieved we traveled on the day before the adventure and stayed in a nice Airbnb place.
After a pleasant night we drove to the meeting place and met our guide, Kennedy. He happily announced that they would honor our trip and two guides volunteered on their days off to go on the trip and help paddle. We were shocked and disappointed anew. And a little scared. But what could we do? We thanked them and set out on the adventure. They placed us in the front of the raft.
We had a wonderful time. I asked Edie at the end of the day what she thought. She told me it was one of the top 5 experiences of her life.