A North Woods Odyssey

Someone recently asked if I wanted to join him on a whitewater rafting trip.

    “No.” Didn’t even need to think about it.

    “Why not, Trav?”

    “I’ve been whitewater rafting one time,” I said. “It was thirty-five years ago and people still talk about it. And not in a good way.”

    “I’ll pay for your ticket.”

    “No.”

    “Oh c’mon,” he said. “It couldn’t have been that bad.”

    “Care to wager?”

May, 1990. A friend from college was visiting and suggested we go whitewater rafting. This sounded to me like a wonderful idea, mostly because I was young and even dumber than I am now. We reserved two seats for a trip down the Penobscot.

    The following Saturday morning, the two of us rose before dawn and headed to Millinocket for a 7:00am rendezvous with the whitewater rafting bus. We arrived several minutes early and passed the time standing around the big gravel parking lot, drinking coffee and chatting with the other rafters. The bus pulled in at 7:00 on the dot. Right behind it: an old, dilapidated, rough-running Volkswagen van. With its tie-dyed hubcaps, beaded curtains in the windows, and four-foot-tall dancing bears painted on its sides, the van made for quite a sight. Judging from the smoke billowing from its exhaust, it was burning more oil than gas. And judging from the smoke billowing from the windows, the driver was burning something else entirely. After a moment, the van’s door swung open with a long, loud creak and the driver climbed down—a male, late thirties I’d say, with shoulder-length, sun bleached hair and a long, unkempt beard. He wore cutoff jeans, flip-flops, and a t-shirt that read, “Who Farted?” He looked, to me, like Jerry Garcia had Jerry Garcia been considerably less clean-cut.

    I leaned into my friend and jerked a thumb in the hippie’s direction. “Check out this dude,” I whispered. “I hope he’s not gonna be in our raft.”

    My friend rolled his eyes at me. “You idiot,” he said, “that’s our guide.”

Having never been whitewater rafting, I knew not what to expect. But it took me precious little time to figure out that the only real objective to whitewater rafting is to avoid drowning. Basically, if you make it through the day without having been life flighted, you’re having a great time.

    You would think that a sport as dangerous as whitewater rafting would require a fairly intensive training seminar. Yeah, that lasted about three minutes. It began with staff members issuing each of us a plastic paddle. The paddle is arguably a raft company’s most important piece of equipment, as it provides the customer with the illusion that the vessel can, in fact, be steered. Next, they handed out life preservers—because, obviously, you can drown. Then they handed out wetsuits because if you don’t drown, you can freeze to death and drown. Then they gave us each a helmet because if you don’t drown or freeze to death and drown, you can hit your head and freeze to death and drown. Then they made us sign a waiver form that said, essentially, “If you drown, freeze to death and drown, or hit your head and freeze to death and drown, it’s nobody’s fault but your own. Have fun and don’t forget to like us on Facebook!”

    Next, the guide gathered us in a semi-circle to offer a couple of pointers.

    “Listen up, folks!” he said. “WHEN you are ejected from the raft…”

    That’s how he phrased it. Not with an “if,” but with a “when.”

    “…you want to face downriver…and keep your feet up.”

    Keeping your feet up, he said, is vital. Otherwise, you may find one or both of them wedged under a rock. “In which case,” he went on, “you’re gonna need a lot more than a life preserver to save you.”  

    Duly noted.

    Next up: pointer number two.

    “WHEN you are ejected from the raft…try to keep your head up.” The guide went on to explain that most people submerge completely when thrown from the raft. The important thing, he said, is not to panic. Instead, swim for the surface. And when your head pops out of the water, be sure to take a deep breath. “Because you’re almost certainly gonna get sucked back under the water.”

Following our raft guide’s terrifyingly brief introduction to whitewater safety, I spoke to my friend out of earshot of the other rafters.

    “You know, uh…I’m thinking maybe this whole rafting thing isn’t such a good idea.”

    “What’s the matter, Trav?”

    I shot him an incredulous stare. “Have you not been paying attention? We’re about to go hurtling down a river that apparently can kill us six ways from Sunday and—”

    He dismissed me with a wave. “The Penobscot’s no different from Splash Mountain.”

    “No different? Ever had a Disney employee tell you all the ways you can die? Huh? Have ya?” I assumed the persona of a Magic Kingdom ride operator. “‘Welcome to It’s a Small World, kids. Are you ready to meet The Reaper?’”

    “Oh please,” said my friend. “Don’t be so dramatic.”

    “I’m not being dramatic; I’m being sensible.”

    “We’re in good hands.”

    “Good hands? Are you insane?” I eyed our guide across the parking lot. “Dude looks like he took a long, strange trip and never came back.”

    My friend nodded toward the raft company bus. “They’re boarding, Trav. You coming or staying?”

    By now, I wasn’t just uninterested in rafting; I was diametrically opposed to the idea. Wanted nothing to do with it—not now, not ever. To stay behind, though, meant spending the day in Millinocket…

    I let out a long, angst-filled sigh. “Oh, alright. I’ll come along.”

The ride to McKay Station took about an hour but the non-stop bumps made it feel like forever. Picture the most turbulent plane ride you’ve ever taken minus the free snacks. Several times, I wondered if that old school bus had any suspension at all. And never have I experienced a dustier road.

    My friend and I sat directly behind the driver. After about twenty miles of breathing dirt and getting tossed around like a pair of dice, I leaned forward and asked, “Is the Golden Road always this bad?”

    The driver spoke to me over his shoulder. “Heck no,” he assured me. “Matter of fact, it ain’t often I see her like this.”

    “Is that so?”

    “Oh yeah,” he said. “She’s usually much worse.”

At McKay station, we rafters deboarded and proceeded to dress in our wetsuits and life jackets. I immediately encountered a problem.

    The tag on my wetsuit read, “X-Small.”

    I showed it to our guide. He took one glance and said, “Huh.”

    I expected him to ask my correct size and fetch another wetsuit. Instead, he said it would stretch.

    Thinking he was joking, I said, “Seriously, can I just trade this for an XL?”

    “Well you could,” he replied. “But we didn’t bring any extras.”

Putting on a wetsuit isn’t the easiest task in the best of circumstances. Putting on one that’s five sizes too small, though, is downright impossible. Try cramming a cantaloupe into a tube sock; same idea. Ten minutes of expletive-laden futility later, I quit trying.

    With only my swim trunks to wear, I thought for sure they’d never let me on the river. The brochure explicitly deemed wetsuits mandatory during the month of May. But instead of sending me back to Millinocket by bus, our resident Deadhead/raft guide handed me a clipboard bearing a form titled, “Spring/Fall Cold Water Wetsuit Waiver.”

    I signed my name and muttered, “I’m gonna regret this, aren’t I?”

    “Only if you get wet,” he said.  

The morning proved magnificent: floating through the gorge with the sun on our faces; the exhilaration of waves breaking over the bow; the tranquility of wide, slow water. Aside from looking decidedly out-of-place among a boatful of neoprene-clad rafters, my lack of wetsuit proved no problem at all. Cold water splashed and sprayed and splattered, but the day’s unusually high air temperature kept me comfortable. In early afternoon, we pulled up to the riverbank for a delicious campfire meal. There I sat on a stump with a paper plate of steak in my lap and admitted to my friend that this whole rafting thing maybe wasn’t so bad after all. Of course, I had no way of knowing what the river held in store.

    It happened immediately after lunch. We climbed into our raft and pushed off. A hundred yards downstream: Nesowadnehunk Falls, a 14-foot-high waterfall and the scariest thing I’ve seen outside of the old Whiskey Cove at closing time. Nesowadnehunk, the guide explained with ironic nonchalance, is an old Indian word which, translated, means, “Way too dangerous for whitewater rafting.”

    “Can’t we go around it?” I asked, and the guide just laughed and laughed and laughed…

    Our raft flew over those falls like The General Lee. Of the nine people onboard, only I--the lone person without a wetsuit--fell into the river. I remember slamming into a frothing wall of white, then finding myself trapped underwater, the churning current spinning me round and round like sneakers in a dryer. After a rather unsettlingly long wait, my lifejacket overcame the waterfall’s hydraulics and pulled me to the surface. I looked around and saw the raft floating past at a distance of perhaps fifty feet. Suddenly remembering the guide’s safety talk, I raised my feet to keep them out of harm’s way. This had the unfortunate effect of sending my head back under the water. The next minute or so proved a life and death struggle. Try as I might, I couldn’t keep my head and feet out of the water at the same time. I eventually fell into an alternating pattern: feet up, head down; feet down, head up; repeat. My fellow rafters later likened me to a human see-saw. Meanwhile, I couldn’t understand why none of them were trying to save me. They just sat there looking on, the boat drifting aimlessly and not one of them paddling in my direction.

    “Help!” I screamed, finally. “Please! Help me, please!”

    The guide stood and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Stand up, you idiot!”

    So I did. To my great surprise, the water came to just below my waist. Also to my great surprise: the river had stolen my swim suit. And I don’t want to talk about the water temperature…

Greenville native Travis Wallace works as a writer and uncertified public accountant. He also dabbles in home dentistry. For more glimpses into his warped mind, visit travishwwallace.com.