I could see the churning cauldron to my left and the easy, smooth, fast-running water to my right, but to get to it we had to go to the right of a big boulder fast approaching. We had shipped some water, and the canoe was sluggish and not responding as quickly to steering. We hit side on.
The canoe tilted crazily. I reached out and slapped the water hard with the flat side of the paddle blade. The canoe came upright, shipping water as it entered a rolling field of haystacks, huge standing waves sculpted by the hidden boulders beneath. We back paddled to keep the canoe riding the waves.
The eddy we had seen from the shore had to be somewhere ahead, somewhere we could take out — had to take out before the falls. And suddenly there it was, the big boulder and beyond and to its side the small square of dead water and safety. But to my horror, straddling the rock and pushing out over the water to block our route was a “sweeper,” a great bloody pine tree, partly submerged.
If we hit it broadside the canoe would tip and fill. We’d be swept under and held by the sweeper. But there was no time to go around it. If we hit the sweeper bowon I could leap onto it, if it held, but Ryan would swing around or, worse, dump as I leapt.
Broadside it would have to be. We would have to leap in unison, just before it hit. I made the decision, drawing frantically to pull the bow around as Ryan pried, hoping to God we could time it right, that Ryan was reading my signals properly. I braced myself as the canoe hit broadside, flinging my weight downriver to counteract the canoe’s crazy tilt upstream into the current. I could see Ryan, closer to shore, flinging his body onto the tree, even as I felt my hands close around a limb. I felt the branches beneath me ripping through my shirt as I grabbed the ones on the surface and then felt the weight of my body dragging them into the water, its power slamming into me like a freight train. I could feel my grip slipping as the water grabbed my legs, pulling them down, dragging me with them. I felt the canoe broach, felt my hands slip. I grabbed wildly for another branch and struggled as my legs were pulled along by the water. I hung on desperately, but the branch was pliable, soft, and my weight pulled it under; I felt my body being pulled under the branches, still with their needles untarnished by death, and then my momentum stopped suddenly as I was jerked back by the straps of my pack.
I was face up and felt like a pinned insect amongst the submerged branches of the tree, barely able to breathe as the water sluiced over my face. I was afraid to move, for fear the backpack would suddenly let go, my left hand in a rigid grip on a small branch, my right hand and arm pressed up against another branch. I stayed as still as I could and waited. Where was Ryan?
I could feel my energy dwindling away as the force of the water pounded me mercilessly. And then he was there above me on the main tree trunk, reaching down, touching my face. I could see his lips moving but heard nothing, just felt the water pressing hard against my ears like a vice; I couldn’t move my head in any direction, as it was braced by the water on both sides and was being pushed down against the ominously flimsy branches beneath. Ryan said something again but it was useless — I couldn’t hear him and suddenly he was gone.
I timed my breathing to coincide with the least amount of water sluicing over me, terrified that I would start to choke. I felt the panic in me begin to rise and forced myself to think of something else.
And then Ryan was back and I watched as he pulled out his knife and cut the end off a plastic Coke bottle. He reached over and indicated that he wanted me to breathe through it. I started to lose it. I was sure I was going to drown, the bottle would be wrenched from my mouth by the power of the water and I’d be gone. Ryan grabbed my free hand and pressed it, and then pointed to the sturdy branch right above my head. He placed the bottle upriver of it and fed it into my mouth so that the branch braced the bottle. I clamped down with my teeth on the rim of the bottle and took a tentative breath through the tube, fearing water, getting air.
Ryan disappeared for what seemed like hours. The water was sluicing constantly now over my face, and my teeth ached from their iron grip around the bottle. Suddenly I felt Ryan’s nails digging into my hands.
“Cordi, can you hold on?” he yelled over the raging of the river. He was gone and then was back with a coil of rope, one end of which he tied with a bowline to one of the tree’s branches that soared out of the water. Struggling, he lay over the partially submerged trunk and reached down into the lunging strength of the current. After what seemed like an interminable amount of fumbling he finally got the other end of the rope under my arms and tied another bowline.
“I’ll pull the rope tight first,” he yelled as I struggled to hear him. “Then I’ll have to cut through your pack before I can pull you up.” He looked at me, and I saw the fear etched in his face.
Jesus, what was I doing here? This couldn’t be happening to me. I felt as though I was being pulled apart and I was getting tired. All I wanted to do was sleep. The sun was overhead now, lunchtime. It seemed that years rolled by and I lived in a dream, and the dream got lighter and lighter, and then I felt the pressure of the rope and saw it tighten over the horizontal trunk of the tree above me. I felt some branches in the water tighten over my chest and the pull of the backpack on my shoulders. I lay suspended between two forces and waited. Suddenly Ryan was back, his hunting knife in his hand.
He yelled something at me and motioned to the straps on my shoulder. I felt his hands then as he groped for the straps and suddenly I swung forward with the current as the backpack released me. The branch slid through my hand as I struggled to hold on. And then the rope jerked me to a halt.
Ryan was hauling on the loose end trying to winch me out of the water, but my mind was floating up there with the sun as I clutched the underwater branch in my hand, as if it were the lifeline and not the rope.
“Let go, Cordi!” bellowed Ryan “Let go. For God’s sake, Cordi, let go!”
I could feel the sun and wind on my face and the roaring, rasping power of the water. I didn’t want to let go of my branch. It was my lifeline, wasn’t it?
“Let go!” The terror in Ryan’s voice seared into my brain; like an automaton, I reacted instinctively to the insistent fear in that voice, and I let go. Suddenly I was free of the river, winched back to safety, coughing and retching in the blessed sunshine, my mind numb. Ryan hauled me out of the water onto the tree trunk and hugged me in a grip almost as fierce as the river had hugged me moments before. I was awed by the tiny distance between life and death.
My legs felt like cement blocks as we struggled together along the fallen tree toward shore. We collapsed in a heap in each other’s arms on the sunlit rocks, inches from the water. We lay there side by side, holding each other, shivering, and neither one of us spoke. The sun still shone, warming us. The wind still blew as though nothing had happened, and yet we had nearly died.
I watched the slight breeze shifting the leaves overhead, smelled the soil and the leaf litter, felt the soft, rich earth beneath my clammy, clothes-covered body, felt the scratches on my face, the ache in my limbs, the warmth of the sun as the roaring surge of the rapids, constant and rough, thundered in my ears, setting my whole body on edge, the vibrations of that power dancing in my head, my body like a dishrag. I was limp and spent, but my mind was suddenly a kaleidoscope of thoughts, each one leading inevitably to the next, like water over the falls. I saw again the cliff that had risen straight up out of the bedrock by our canoe, jagged and crumbling, a scree of broken rock with boulders at its feet. I saw again something move at the top of the cliff and a flash of purple, caught