Montana, Day Four: On the Raft

Up early, a bit of yoga on the rocky beach—stretching, thanking the body for that horseback ride.

Mike fries up huckleberry pancakes over the campfire, and after the splatter ware is washed in the river (with my handy camp soap) and rinsed in boiling water, he and Jack show us how to pack the dry bags—tightly rolling things we won’t see until the end of the day, things that shouldn’t get wet: sleeping bag, air mattress, tent, pajamas. Push, push, push. Cram in as much in as you can, then roll the top over and over and clip the clasp.

Inflating the rafts is an arduous task I leave to prowessy young men.

Holding the manual pump with the handle squarely in his chest, the victim thrusts his upper body up and down, filling the raft with his vigor for an exhausting fifteen minutes, trying to ignore his huckleberry pancakes, until he just has to give the next guy a chance.

They also inflate a one-person pontoon, which will transport more goods and offers personal fun for Jack, who has never tried one before. Lauren eyes it like a Maserati. She wants to get in on the act.

Most of us—though not Jim and his sons (sigh)—pull on life jackets. We clamber into the ungainly fat yellow rafts laden with everything we will use, consume, wear, and recline on in the next five days. Three sprightly fly fishing rods wag merrily. After yesterday’s workout, we’re definitely ready to float.

Mike captains one raft with Don, Domenic, and Derek. Jack mans the pontoon, and Jim captains our raft, seating Ro on the left, me on the right, and Lauren in the prow.

“The rafts are self-bailing,” he says, handing out paddles. “Whatever water gets in will go out through special channels in the floor. River’s a little higher than usual this year, but we’ll go through some rock gardens.”

Good. They sound so lovely. I don’t want to miss them.

“Keep one foot in and one foot out of the raft, but pull both feet in when we go over rapids.”

This is the sum total of instruction we receive.

Did he say rapids? Ro and I look at each other. They called it a float, right? Neither of us needs or wants the thrill of shooting rapids.

Before we can utter a word, we’ve suddenly shoved off into the swift river. Almost immediately both rafts are plunging toward a low-hanging, jutting mass of dead pine on the shore.

“Pull, pull!” shouts Jim.

I pull with all my strength, but we zoom straight toward the jabby wood.

“Duck! Duck!”

I cram down low as I can to protect my eyes and win a long bloody scrape down my right arm.

Past the trees, we find two fly rods are decapitated, we’re all raked over by sharp branches.

“My god—Lauren’s overboard!” She’s been cast off and is tumbling swiftly downstream toward the other raft. Mike reaches out.

“Got her!”

He hefts her aboard. This will be Jim’s Story Tarp pictograph tonight.

Jim offers us a swig of what the boys call “num-num,” named for both senses of the word. This mingling of vodka and fruit punch serves as their navigational fluid. I take some—trying to avoid the thought that not only has this turned into rafting not floating, but that our principal navigators are drinking.

I’ve hardly swallowed when “Pull!” shouts Jim.

The river is rushing us straight at a rocky outcropping—

Wham!

We bump into it, grab the handles, hang on, swirl a swift 360. No one hurt or dislodged. I’m the kid who got carsick riding reverse in the back of our finny Plymouth Stationwagon. I wept on elevators as a baby. I screamed a Ferris wheel to a complete stop at age seven because I hated the sensation and had to get off.

I don’t like this. At all. But I can’t think about this now because we’re suddenly bumping in shallows. Thud. Now we’re stuck. On slippery rocks.

“Welcome to your first rock garden,” says Jim.

This is a garden?

“We’ll have to portage,” he says.

Portaging sounds so simple—lift your boat over areas too shallow to ride, but the raft is as heavy as the finny Plymouth, and the rounded rocks underfoot are designed to flummox your ankles.

Suddenly, Ro slips, falls, her ankle wedged under the raft. Oh God, no. Please, Rocks, let go! Don’t snap her ankles! Raft, don’t go over her back! Which is just what she fears.

We manage to get her to her feet, her ankle sore, but walkable. She’s visibly shaken. I walk even more gingerly than before—sometimes holding the raft, but more often not, since even in the shallows the current pulls the heavy raft faster than I can comfortably walk.

This is so much work.

Ro has a good deal of canoe experience under her webbed belt, but not I.

A few years ago I did take a six-week kayak class, though, and happily (as with my horseback riding class), some of the instruction starts coming back—keeping the window between your arms on the paddle and twisting your torso to go with it. Don reminds me to keep my wrist straight through the stroke. Like the fly fishing, I guess an “unbroken” wrist is par for the wilderness. I just hope it remains unbroken.

•••

We tangle through several more areas on this narrow, swift and twisty river, trying to get to the Big Prairie ranger station, where they promise Tang and cookies. It’s amazing what little carrot it takes to inspire work, and how welcome solid ground beneath our feet sounds.

We have several minutes to appreciate the wide mountain-backed prairie and its scolding prairie dogs popping up and down. The long trail to the ranger station gives Ro and me needed sotto voce “Holy Mackerel!” time. Mackerel will be increasingly sanctified as the days unfold.

At last we reach the old wooden ranger station. A tattered picture of Bob Marshall himself is tacked to the wall. Lover of the outdoors and independently wealthy, Bob founded and funded the Wilderness Society, among other accomplishments. Though he died early at age thirty-eight, Bob’s efforts and those of the society led to the Wilderness Act, which legally defined wilderness. Congress passed it in 1964, and well over 100 million acres are now protected. We owe this man a lot. He’s the father of wilderness preservation. He’s why we can be here at all.

The rangers are out of Tang, a funny disappointment. There is lemonade, though, and a package of Chips Ahoy. And the last latrine for the next five days. We postpone going, waiting as long as possible to bid farewell to such luxury.

A strapping young woman hands Mike a paper.

“Here’s today’s river report.”

Mike looks it over. “Okay, good.”

I peer over his shoulder.

“The Next Seven Known Hazards.”

I try to make sense of this chilling title. Next means coming right up. Seven. Oh my God. Seven more? Known. New ones may have formed since the report was filed. Hazards. The official name for the hellsticks, rockpiles, logjams, and other obstructions we faced. Below this chilling title are suggestions for traversing each one: Keep right. Head down the middle. Bear left, but then sharp right—the fourth hazard comes up quick.

And there’s no getting out. There’s no leaving. There’s no “I’m done.” There’s no “I didn’t sign up for this.” There’s only “heave ho, back in the boat, you landlubber, you.”

How precious a wood-seated, Ur-odored, hand-tended outhouse can feel.

Back down the trail, the ironic Chips Ahoy shift uneasily with the stomach’s taking-up of duty. Un-go-back-on-able commitment. Stop thinking about hazards. Anticipating hazards when you don’t know navigation sucks the strength out of your muscles like a malted up a straw.

Feet, it will do you no good to shake.

We shove off. Derek is now our prow man. Lauren has joined Mike in the raft ahead and Domenic has switched with Jack. He wants to try the pontoon. I can’t even think of safety for these young ones.

Immediately the first hazard springs up like a dragon in a Japanese Noh play. Huge rock to the left, smaller rock to the right. We’re supposed to swerve away from them altogether, but there is no controlling the river. Jim’s frenzied “Pull! Pull!” is useless. We haven’t the strength.

We are suddenly jammed into a cliché, between the Rock and the Hard Place, which cannot be even dwelt upon because there’s a sickening POP and the back of the raft is filling with river.

“Get to the front of the boat!” shouts Jim and my body has not yet processed it is in danger or perhaps it has but I have not and I scramble to the front dimly grasping that if I’d stayed in back, I would have swamped the raft and all our goodies and—don’t think about that. The body did respond and got up front.

But we’re still stuck between these rocks. How do we get out? We shimmy the raft, we shake, we lunge and lump and at once: release—but we can’t relax because we have to think about Mike’s raft behind us and waving them away from the rocks and now we’re spinning like a Disney teacup. And our raft is leaking.

There are brief intervals where we can catch our breath and have beauty take it away. Rounding a gentle bend in the river, we see ahead of us, perfectly silhouetted against a sandy cut bank, the great mounded back of a shore-exploring black bear. The boys want to go closer.

“Let him have his territory,” says Jim.

Ro and I and Don agree, not out of fear, but respect for this stately creature who deserves the run of his world free from the burning eyes of curiosity. But the boys in the other raft paddle close enough to scare him straight up the bank. It is beautiful and sad to watch him clamber up to the bristled treeline edging at the clifftop.

Inky little waterfowl pepper the shallows; killdeer and pipers squeak and seesaw to distract us from their nests.

Ro changes place with Don—she is now in Mike’s firmer, non-popped, not leaky raft.

We’ve surmounted but three of the seven hazards.

•••

The river is higher this year, due to more snowmelt. Lots more. The most snow in fifty years, we learn, therefore the highest, fastest river in fifty years.

The areas Jim calls “rock gardens” sound as lovely and meditative as “float on the river” (which I now know means “Get Buzzed and Shoot Some Rapids.”) But I quickly learn that “rock gardens” is Montanan for “Get Out and Walk Your Boat.” Or “Bid Farewell to a Working Ankle.” Or perhaps “You Don’t Need Two Functioning Knees, Do You?”

The accurate translation is: grab a little handle on the side, lug a mountain of equipment-laden raft over the few tablespoons of water coating the rocks just enough to make them treacherously slippery, and time it so that you proceed neither faster nor slower than your team, because the raft will pull you cracking to your knees if you’re not fast enough; and if you’re too fast, you’ll pull the others down and all the while the rocks ogle your knees and ankles like hyenas eye a limping zebra.

In truth, it is a meditation, because your mind cannot swerve from the task at hand, or you might make a deadly mistake.

That’s what I don’t like. Seems the trip is all about avoiding damage—to your team, yourself, your raft. Never liked the verb “avoid.”

•••

What I appreciate about Jim as captain is his enthusiasm and his praise when we have coasted right down the middle of the silver V.

“Woo-woo!” we wave our paddles overhead. It’s a thrill when you get it right.

And we’re here, surviving, spending time with family. I have a shimmer memory of our departed brother. It all goes by so fast.

“I can’t believe I have waited so many years to do this,” Ro says. “Should have started in my thirties.”

Then the other raft rams us, tossing me backwards into the water.

When I get my breath back, I find it’s fairly shallow, so I get my bearings and rise carefully on the slippery rocks. Don pulls me back in, reminding me of the stability of fireman’s grip, grabbing forearms, not hands.

Twelve miles of paddling on our first day. Soaked and shivering, we pull the rafts ashore at our second campsite and run to pee. In my chosen spot I spy a long elk femur. Elegant, yet disturbing. Can’t say why.

Let’s get into dry clothes. Unroll the dry bags. Oh no—water has gotten into some of them, soaked some clothes, and the repeated impacts smashed open the canister of Slap Ya Mama spice powder, which has pasted itself all over my new jacket. Oh well. At least we’re on dry land, and here’s a bag that didn’t get wet.

Climb into warm dry clothes and set up camp. Out comes the single malt.

“Something hurts,” says Jim, tapping his back. I take a look—he’s bleeding from a branch stab unfelt in the moment. I clean it up and dab on ointment.

Beauty, camaraderie, cooperation. But also Wilderness.

I am a soul who relishes choices, who tries ’em on like shoes and collects ’em like handbags. One reason I didn’t have children is they profoundly curtail decades of choices.

But here there is no choice. You don’t want to get back in the leaky raft. You want out. The only choice you have is the one you already made: to join these people on this journey. Even if it’s stressing and distressing and painful and frightening. Even if it should never have been asked of you. Even if you and Montana speak two different languages. Risk is oxygen to Montanans.

No matter what you think, no matter how you feel, short of an airlift, there’s no way to get where we’re going except to propel ourselves through the river, whatever it brings.

Let go, here at the fragrant warm campfire. I’m grateful to see these glowing family faces, but look at that gouge in Don’s leg. Ro’s ankle is blue and swollen. That has to hurt. Such wicked scratches down Jim’s arm. How did Mike and Jack get so cut up? Though I’m sore and fatigued, seeing my relatives bloody and battered weakens my knees.

But we made it. Enjoy the comforting stew and hot biscuits Mike whipped up in a flash. Join this lively conversation, watch event and shock and effort congealing into stories larded with good-natured ribbing.

And this unfamiliar brilliance in your body? The tingle of survival. She admits this more easily than the rest of you. You whisper “stop mewling” to yourself.

Besides, we’re two days at this campsite. Tomorrow’s a full day of rest.

After dinner, Jim hands Domenic a book.

“Read us a story.”

“Naw, Jim.” Reading aloud, so easy for us, is to him a scary set of rapids.

“Ah, come on, Dom. This guy’s a funny writer.”

Domenic looks at the book. “They Shoot Canoes, Don’t They?” Patrick McManus.

“Read us ‘History of the Tuttle Lake Expedition.’ You’ll like it.”

“Oh, that’s a good one,” says Mike.

“Yeah, read it!” calls Jack.

Domenic haltingly begins, and then relaxes with every laugh he gets. By the time he finishes, he can ham it up with the best of us and we are all aching with laughter.

•••

The evening winds down. There still some good stars shooting.

Don and the kids decide to sleep out under the stars. I want to see them unmeshed myself. Ro wants me to stay with her in the tent. It’s still unclear to me why.

“I’ve come so many miles to see real stars, Ro. I want to. You camp all the time.”

Ro has a knack for viewing superb celestial events. She’s always describing a sky fluttering with showering meteors or double rainbows or extraordinary planetary convergences, eclipses, balls of green lightning. I just want a good look at the night sky.

“Sorry.” I pull my sleeping bag out of the tent.

“You will be if you get wet,” she grumbles. She’s miffed, but it’s our only spat on the trip—the rest of the time, when I was uncomfortable or panicky, she was in a good way, and vice versa.

In rare moments of resting heart rate, it’s clear the splendor of the terror and the trauma is the teamwork—well-experienced and strong family members all doing their best to assist and protect each other. Utterly depending and dependent on each other.