The river is my home. The Rogue River in Oregon, specifically. I ran my first river when I was five years old on the main fork of the Salmon in Idaho. I cried when we got stuck on a rock. I split my chin open running from some bees and spent the rest of the trip avoiding putting my head under the water; a challenging feat when all your friends are enjoying the cool water and it’s 90 degrees out. Sounds a bit like a disaster, right? Wrong; I had fallen in love. Don’t get me wrong, river rafting scares the living daylights out of me. Gnarly rocks and waves can wrap your boat and send all the passengers (and your food and gear) swimming and can be straight up dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing. But although my heart jumps into my throat before almost every rapid, I keep going back.
Summer after summer, river after river, we load up our old Volkswagen bus with our raft, tons of food, drinks, and cookies, clothes and sleeping bags and head for the river. A group of 8-10 of our best family friends join us and we hit the water. Most of the adults on these trips are ex-river guides; so very skilled boat men and women. We haul ass down the river, rowing through class three and four rapids for a couple hours, jumping into the river when we get hot and napping on the warm tubes of the boat when we get cold, and applying ridiculous amounts of sunscreen to our increasingly tan bodies. Around three or four we pull into a sandy beach, fire-line our gear off the boats, set up our sleeping bags and kitchen and then hike, read, or craft until cocktails around six. A ridiculously delicious meal and three packs of cookies later the instruments are pulled out and beautiful mandolin and guitar music drifts through the warm, clean air. I was on a trip a couple weeks ago during the Perseid meteor shower and every night we would lay out under the stars, doing our best to keep our eyes open in order to witness the best (yes, the best) shooting stars I have ever seen.
All the kids in our family friend group go to river guide school when they finish their first or second year of college. It’s like how in some families the kids are expected to take over the family business or work at the pool around the corner; it’s just sort of expected of us. My sister became a river guide last year and has spent the last two summers leading trip after trip down the river and next summer I plan to do the same. There’s nothing like skinny dipping in crystal clear creek water or laying out under the stars. The smell of river on your skin may fade and the carefully crafted friendship bracelets may fray, but (and I know this sounds cheesy) the friendships and the skills gained along the way seem to last a lifetime. I’ll see you all downstream.
