River Sick/River Remedy

Before the dams on the McKenzie River were constructed my grandfather and his friends ran the river in winter when the swells could be the size of the those in the Pacific. I grew up in the late 80's fishing next to a dam that makes my hometown livable. Every weekend I walked with my Snoopy pole and OshGosh overalls down a dirt road, over a small bridge covering the town millrace to the reservoir where every spring they stocked rainbow and cutthroat trout.

Back in the age of rain my grandfather was a hero for his place in time, in the dark damp wetness long before the sun scorched and exposed unseemly men operating in the shadows. In spite of his faults this is a story told in the light of gracious local lore of the past, his wild eyes devouring an epic river run, back when it was in style to be greedy towards life, when common men wanted to feel the thrust of nature’s sword. When you could go beyond your means and live to tell about it later. Oregon was a place where people were apt to fight cougars for their winter game meat and a man could take on a wild badger for a pet and no one would think twice. It’s was a time your sister, mother, little brother would all die of the flu and everything left was just dirt and terror inside. He was a man who longed for the safety of the holler but understood there were parts of him meant to dance in the swells of the great McKenzie. The river was wild and flooded parts of town every winter. It lived unfettered and ignorant to the dealings of man. There was an aspect of my grandfather free and savage like this river-he didn’t know or want to know the civilized framework of man and the city. A solitary sort in reality, uninhabitable even to himself, when he saw the rage of the river in full blinding January grey he knew he needed associates to do what he was told to do. I say told because he had a slave attitude to him all his life, desperation and exhilaration quietly mixed side by side in his daily interactions. By the time I knew him much of what I could recall are the shadows of these emotions, exasperation and deep exhaustion by a man who never drank from his own well.

The man in this photo is foreign to me. He was the kind of man the townspeople told stories about. The kind of character you could deliver an exact quote by, a steadily unstable presence, who like the McKenzie in January was always roiling. Usually he would boil and cycle and crash unto himself but sometimes he would hurt others. On that day he didn’t know why but he knew he wanted to ride that water in order to transcend for one moment his own flailing cycle, to ride the top of the wave instead of being submerged in the mud, rain and debris and suffered prey of diving Osprey.

For him it was simple and he didn’t need to know why. He knew a man Marie supervised at her work had boating experience. He called him one day and asked: “Tory, this is Art. I want to run the rapid just north of Hayden Bridge. What do you say?”. He looked out the window where it had not stopped raining for weeks. A soft drip drip inside a dim grey dreamscape. He knew the river was high, although snow was staying in the mountains rain had settled into the lower valley as well near Mohawk and Walterville, he knew those creeks were feeding this monstrous swell he has been obsessed with ever since he first laid eyes on it. “Erhm, uh, what are you talking about, Art? Have you seen the river lately? Not sure I have the type of equipment to get us through that one. I’ll need to think on it. I’ll call you back tomorra”. “Yap, lemmee know”. He ate leftover birthday cake, alone with himself and dreamed about the white crests of water.

Little did he know he had planted a seed in the mind of Tory, a rugged outdoorsman who found himself working at the billing department of Alexander’s department store in downtown Springfield. He had been tamed by the starkness of numbers and putting food on the table. He built boats and raised his kids in his spare time. He was notably more tame than Art, genteel in his way with kids and women. He loved his wife but didn’t need her, different from the way Art seemed to rely on his just to stand on his own two feet. He knew Art was a little touched by something ludicrous and was not of the typical persuasion. Yet he also knew he could man a boat and row with the best of them. The truth is he needed a fish to fry, a project, a goal. He wanted to touch the sky even though much of his day was spent in subordination to Marie, who was smarter than both men combined and as royal as they were rough. He wanted to live for one wild moment outside this paradoxical modern world he found himself in. It’s for this reason he called Art the next day and found himself uttering the words “Yes, let’s go.” The logistics weren’t difficult in theory. In practice they both knew they would only get one shot at it. Tory thought it might be appropriate to invite his 17 year old son James along simply for the manpower. It might be good for him he thought, because James had shown his softness last November during the Elk rut. He had an opportunity in clear sight but didn’t take what was considered an easy shot by his father. James had cried a little that night- evidence in the damp morning of a still wet pillow crumpled into a ball, trying to hide his face in the evidence. Tory thought this would give James a redemptive run and might scare the light shit out of him, something known to work wonders for blind adherence to masculine hierarchy.

The three men individually plotted how they would navigate what could be an over 6 foot swell at the time of running. Art had flowed right through the lazy summer river, navigating its snags and new turns after the spring snow melt, he understood these two faces of the river but never before had he met “grandfather time” in the steely beast of winter rain flow which devours the river bank taking every root-rotted tree with it. It was a feeling familiar to Art, who at times when his emotions were big would consume his world with ravenous speed. The river was moving like this now and he knew without foresight he and his foolish companions would be consumed also. There was no avoiding it. To die like that was his greatest wish in life; doing something great instead of being diminished by a chronic disease felt Romantic in the best possible of ways.

The boat needed maintenance. Art trusted Tory and James to handle this part. Art would take the oars with Tory in the front and James in the rear. James would take out the back seat, giving him space to help if necessary and lessen the weight of the vessel. People who didn’t know Art called him by his first name but family and kin called him “Coy”, his surname. When the three men met on the morning of the run Art told them to call him “Coy” from here on out. Tory felt as if he was getting the better end of the deal between the three, his sense of bravery was reinforced by his placement on the boat. A beautiful new drift boat, one made to navigate these waters, was the vessel of convenience and preference. It was grey and the aluminum bowed elegantly around the body. The sides felt too short to accommodate what they were about to do but Coy paid no mind. He liked the feel of the cedar oars in the palms of his hands, they were soft and manageable but not slippery. He noted James’ nervous flinching and said “buckeroo up Kid, you’re going to be fine, this winter river ain’t seen Art Coy or nothing like him before.” He was right. The river hadn’t seen a man quite like this, in his prime and unafraid of death, renouncing the civil world and in the thick of his own madness making which propelled him unflappably. James didn’t have anything to fear. Troy looked calm and already celebratory, like a peace that overcomes one before they’re read the last rights and the firing squad loads their guns.

He felt his steady destiny pulling him towards that river and as they slid the boat into the water under Hayden Bridge they yee-hawed in the muted wetting rain. The water was so high it already had soaked their legs and feet over their boots. By the time they had positioned themselves the boat was already filled with six inches of water. Coy knew the river intimately as he had spent his long years away from Kentucky fishing it in a mystified state of terror. Kind of like the state he was in now. He could ruminate with the best of them but he truly relished the challenge of stark concentration. The boat jarred to the right as the crest of a class 3 took his boat out of position for the big mamba wave. With the water so high and branches and debris all around he found it difficult to maneuver back to the “V”, and a boulder an inch from the surface was making a sucking noise and a hard strainer on the other side of it was making a play for the boat as well. The men’s hearts shook inside these moments of not knowing- too far to the right to compensate and the boulder like a magnet pulling the boat into it’s orbit further to the oblivion of the right side. If Coy couldn’t get the boat back to center by at least a few feet they’d fail the mission, head for the boulder, the boat eviscerated inside a strainer. James had a canoe paddle for emergency backup and the took to the water, emboldened by the threat of danger. With about a hundred yards to go they were cast by the shadow of the bridge on one side and a big fir on the other bank. Coy’s eyes got wide as they sometimes would when he was spinning yarn about a big fish he caught. The kind of intensity that comes from fear of obliteration was a mainstay for him but Tory and James had never seen him like that before. He fervently threw his whole body behind the right oar and pushed. He faced the monster head on, it was the only way to ride with beauty through the torrent. With James on his knees on the floor of the deluged boat he prayed and paddled, he wanted to show his father bravery was genetic and all was not lost on him. He cried at the thought as his icy hands red and white with gripping told the story of salvation. Coy’s eyes softened in the white sky as the boat drifted and shifted inch by inch towards the river’s core. They certainly weren’t going to hit the boulder and he took his first breath in what seemed like several minutes. Tory had been silent this whole time- he didn’t want to add to the infernal sound of the river and inner mayhem. He simply watched as the boat glided back into position, helped by some deep swells rising up from the bottom of the river that helped slow the current. The boat was dancing now in and out of the water, the bottom slapping against the undercurrent. No one could tell where the sun was in the mass of dark and light grey, yet they were all squinting looking for it. The water, a muddy endless grey blended into the whole and gave a hue of disorientation to the whole journey. The visibility was low and the boat was just right of center. Coy knew it was good enough and let his arms go slack for a moment. A large Doug Fir floated next to the boat, keeping pace, then surpassing it, diving roots first through the current before they did. The first half of the tree went straight down the “V” and disappeared out of sight, only then to be propelled out of the water and over by the great current. “Well, it looks like we got a little preview, boys” Coy growled over the sound of rushing water lapping insistently against the boat. They were within 30 yards now and the current was already moving them faster and faster, magnetizing them towards the middle where the biggest swell lay. The water invading the boat and the boat cutting through the water. The men were numb and near hypothermia in the 45 degree soaking rain that turns your bones to sponge. Teeth chattering from the cold or fear the men descend the first big dip before being catapulted asunder into the pitch grey blank page.

Tory, a Catholic, silently prayed as the boat rocked viciously. Coy, a praying man, felt for one moment like God, but he would never admit it- gently catapulted from his seat as the boat made it’s full apex, his feet were lifted 6 inches into the air, separating from the soaked floor of the boat, unsanctioned and free for a moment. His arms were quite muscular but he was unable to control anything about the boat in this moment. This was how he transcended, he felt no pressure to perform as his life balanced for one millisecond between death and living. It all mattered how the boat came down, how the floor of the boat interfaced with the surface of the water upon its arrival. The boat seemed to twist to the left and they feared they would come down on it’s side. Coy yelled “everyone to the Right!” hoping to correct the balance and save what was still differentiating them from the river. Coy didn’t have any thoughts after that moment. Only a kind of knowing he would be let down gently by the hand of the Master because he had come down hard all his life and he was due. Yet he liked to push, to tempt fate with the devil in his eyes, knowing he would make God prove his worth in faith whatever way possible.

Tory gripped the sides of the boat. As the boat hit it’s peak he felt his left foot go numb from the cold and his whole body shuddered and rocked with the suspended boat. And with brute force it came down like a hammer, lunging them forward as the front bow crashed into the water. Tory and James fell to their knees. Coy’s grip on the oars tightened like a cobra around it’s prey while his arms braced against them as he was plunged towards the front corner. His elbows buckled and his pearly white teeth ground against one another. He was beyond a champion in the moment his face came 6 inches from the cold water. Resurrection, the muddy water a portal to baptism into a new life. One where he wouldn’t need to steal light or ever worry about his dark shadows again. For one moment, instead of running, he found his way to come all the way through, through the wave, through his sadness, through the unbearable guilt of his family perishing from the flu, through all the deep burdens which consumed him. Even in this moment of freedom in the bright grey light, the Destroyer appeared. It had not won today but it would wait for him in his dark moments near dawn with cold coffee and a tiredness so deep life felt like a day dream of remembering. Even though the river had swallowed it whole, he could still see the form of it outlining itself in the shimmering white through his eyelids. It was soft and the mist curved up towards the heavens. His eyes flashed blue as the boat crested the next wave. He smiled at the rainbow of his mind as his soul un-spooled like a ball of yarn on the floor.

They took out down river at Armitage Boat Landing. The men congratulated themselves through gritted chattering teeth and soaked bones. There was a love now between them that would last. Terry was no longer afraid of Coy- he understood him, a difficult thing to do. Coy didn’t care if he was understood or liked. They were worthy men on the water and that’s all that mattered to him. “Nice riding with you Terry, Jim” glancing at them with unfurled eyes and a hint of grief that it was over. They would go home now to their warm, fire-stoked houses with their doting wives who make biscuits and gravy at 1 AM and set out the morning paper. All surreal images now to the men bathed in the powerful opaque world of the river. Their lives felt trivial in some sense after a vertical ride to heaven and back. Coy breathed deeply and wanted to live there, separate from his obsessive thoughts and strong yet subtle moves for power and control. He wanted to love from the grey river place inside but he would never learn how. He was swallowed whole by a Bardo state angels before he returned home, yet this was a rare quiet before his perpetual storm. He laid down on the daveno and slept. Something rare for January, 3 hummingbirds perched on his feeder outside the window, he opened his eyes for one moment as the sun shown through a break in the clouds- all 3 now were suckling on the red plastic shaped flowers of the feeder. Coy sat up and his belly growled. He felt his mother and sister beside him, West of where he had ever desired to be. Given over to a completely new tide that rode into his bloodline and unfurled out in front of him. He had carried decaying love inside him all the way from Kentucky- the grief and loss of his family and homeland but on this day, risen out of or in spite of this ash inside him he planted a new seed for a new crop, he rode the arc of that high and beautiful wave, commemorating his own curling back to his uninhabitable insides. Yet his son would show his daughter, who in turn would show others how to ride on the top of a subterranean wave out of darkness into light then back again. All born from the intimate darkness of truly being alone with oneself. My grandfather had a portrait I thought was haunted as a child, a man at a table with a red beard praying. It was so sad and hopeless I felt desperate just looking at it, like we were all destined for this ocean of sadness to overtake us. But on that day, and a few others, I inherited my grandfather’s grizzly turning of darkness into light, his ability to make what he wanted of the world like a misguided alchemist who only once in his life discovered the golden fleece.

Someday I’ll be visited by 3 hummingbirds, no longer veiled by the night, dancing above the stagnant water of days gone by. Yet I know these things take grit and time.