Days on the River: COPE
The night between day two and day three was a strange one. Two days paddling in cold river was enough to tire me out to a point that falling a sleep was not a concern. Although I will point out that if you're planning on sleeping in a tent by yourself in the woods, your preferred choice of reading should not be about zombies. You'll quickly discover that you get the same cold fire in your chest from either a horde of the walking dead or a pine needle hitting your rain fly. Ironically, my over active imagination helps me to illustrate just how tired I actually was. In spite of the reanimated corpses I could feel closing in on me I wasn't awake more than a few minutes after I shut out my light and let my head hit the pillow.
As you can possibly imagine, there were dreams. Most of which I don't remember now a week and a half later. I remember them being very strange though none of them disturbing in any conventional way. But the ones I do remember well were the dreams about kayaking. amazingly enough I'm still having them occasionally. I'll be lying in bed at night just on the edge of sleep thinking about the rivers I was on and replaying some of the rapids themselves. Next thing I know I've flipped my boat and I'm preparing to attempt a roll. I do the hip snap and pop myself upright in bed. Usually I just wake myself up and muss up the covers a little. Sometimes I do actually sit up some. It's very strange.
That night was more vivid. The dreams were more based in reality. Not the sort of dreams where you wake up and remember what happened and ask yourself, "Wait, how did I think that was real?" You know, when bark starts talking to you...bark growing on a lamp post in downtown Jersey, only you've never been to Jersey and it looks suspiciously like a child's rendition of last nights movie until you turn around and you're in Yonkers...where was I? Right, reality. These were dreams where Jonathan, my instructor would come wake me up to get ready and we'd go hit the river. The one I've never been in. And I see rocks and waves and trees and...well, it's like kayaking without the fear of drowning. So long as you know it's a dream. I must have had a similar dream three or four times. Each time I woke up and had more time to sleep. So I'd drift off again and repeat the process. Oddly, I felt very rested after all of this.
Finally, I got up. Put my tent and gear in the car and indeed did go and get ready for the day. I'll spare you those details. We started the day in the pool again. With such a small group, just myself and Jonathan's sister, going to the river all day would have been a bit much. Besides with only two people it's a lot easier for an instructor to manage teaching them how to roll properly.
Sometimes when you're learning something, it's best not to just keep trying until you get it. When you first start out and someone teaches you all the right things to do, you still can't necessarily do it. And as you practice it you start developing a lot of bad habits. Little things that keep you from attaining your goal. This is normal. The thing is that sometimes as you practice over and over and over and over again and keep screwing up, what you actually end up teaching yourself is how to do it wrong. Your body remembers all the ways you're doing it improperly. The best cure for this is to not do it for a little while. Take a break and let your body forget some of the shit it's messing up and let your mind process the way to do it right. That being said, I finally got my roll....in the pool.
It's like a puzzle, or a relationship, or anything really that frustrates and infuriates you. When you get stuck and try repeatedly to reason, force, or finagle your way to the solution. That seemingly unattainable goal. Even more so when that goal seemed so simple to start and turned out otherwise. But then, that one piece falls into place, or you say the right thing, and the universe just kind of...rights itself. And suddenly you go from wet, scared, and breathless to dry, exuberant and, well, still a little breathless. Getting the roll for the first time is....it's heady. My first instinct, after the, "did I just do that" wore off, was to roll back over. When I did it again, that was it. I had it down and it wasn't going away.
Then I resurfaced and Jonathan told me quite plainly, you'll fuck it up. Not as a discouragement obviously, or what kind of instructor would he be. But it's going to happen. Deal with the fact that you'll try for it and fail sometimes. The hardest roll is never the first one, it's every subsequent attempt after the first one fails. You've got to reach deep, while your oxygen is depleting and more river is coming up, and remember the right way to do what you did wrong the first time. You have to be more composed, have more clarity, and horribly be even more relaxed. In fact, pay attention to that because it probably applies to more of life than just kayaking.
After the pool we headed over to the lower White Salmon. Right across the street actually. This was the source of my dreams from the night. I knew from what had been said that the LWS was bigger (not huge) than the Klikitat. Choppier stuff, heavier currents, requiring a little more skill and a little more...well, a little more from those of us not all that comfortable with a liquid environment. I had been very nervous about it, more so even than the first couple of minutes on the Klikitat, my first introduction to kayaking on a real river period. And you know what, it went about like you’d expect. Fine. I think, honestly, it was because I got my roll in the pool. There’s a definite boost of confidence from achieving something like that and I think I carried it with me into the LWS that morning. The nervousness wasn’t all that bad and I think I actually performed very well for a beginner. I only flipped twice unintentionally. Both times I made a weak attempt at a roll and then went for a T-Rescue. As I may have said the roll in the pool and the roll in the moving river are two very different things. I flipped again in a calm stretch to practice my roll. Got it once and then tried a second time…to no avail. I had to swim on that one. I attempted to roll twice then went for the T-Rescue. When Jonathan came over I grabbed his boat and then lost it. The nerves were gone at that point and swimming seemed like the only option. I made it down the whole stretch without swimming and then ended up bailing in the calm “lake” at the bottom. Ridiculous. Whatever. We finished the run, pulled the boats out and rode back to the shop for lunch. Somewhere about here my head started taking over.
I don’t know where I lost my nerve or why. I sat eating lunch at the picnic table in back of the Wet Planet shop and just let my brain run away with me. Fear of the whole thing just started creeping in on me. Fear of drowning maybe, fear of water. Fear of not doing as well. Fear that…hell, I don’t know. I was tired at this point, more tired than I knew, and I’m sure that had something to do with it. But when Jonathan told me we were going to put in a little higher up on our second run so we could tackle Rattlesnake, I nearly lost it. Rattlesnake isn’t that huge, but looking at it from the bank it’s still intimidating to a novice. It looks kind of nasty and there’s another rapid not far below it. I talked myself out of the whole thing right there, but didn’t have it in me to fully chicken out and call it a day. So, I found myself back in my boat on the river staring at my guide into it knowing I was going to flip. So naturally, I flipped. I got through most of it until I hit a section of kind of sideways waves and rather than leaning forward and paddling, I just kind of leaned back and tried to roll with it. And I did. I rolled right over. I didn’t attempt a roll at this point, I just went for the rescue and by some miracle managed to talk myself out of bailing out. The next half of the run was the most tense I have been since I was a kid convince there was an alien hiding in a rolled up carpet in the corner.
Jonathan kept telling me to just relax, I’d already done this once and done it well, but I just couldn’t let myself loosen up. I was tired and having a much more difficult time making my body do what I wanted so the boat could do what it wanted. The confidence was gone and instinct was starting to take over. A later flip resulted in another rescue in spite of two attempts to roll myself back up. My brain had gotten back to the more primal directive of “Need air!” so the roll procedure wasn’t happening. This, kids, is why coaches tell you to get a good nights sleep before a competition. When you’re rested, you’re way more capable of actually doing what they’ve taught you to do. The same goes for pretty much anything really. Life lessons from skidding down a river in a plastic tube.
At some point I think he got tired of that terrified, anus clenched, deer in headlights look on my face and just before a rapid he paddled over, grabbed onto my boat (rafting up it’s called), and told me to take my paddle out of the water. Just having an instructor that close inspires enough calm to actually do something that sounds that crazy. Also, it’ll allow even a terrified rookie to loosen up enough to actually do what he says, which in this case was to just relax and let the boat float on its own. We went down the rapid just like that. And suddenly, it becomes clear in a way I already knew but couldn’t feel…”Oh, I just have to relax.” Doesn’t make sense? Could you relax and calm down if someone was in your face screaming at you to do it? In effect that’s what I was doing to myself. The rest of the run went smoother. In fact, this was how my class ended. Finally calm and only a little pissed off at myself for having let my head run away with me so badly.
Cowardice seems to be an of the moment kind of thing. Personally, I’ve always been better in the thick of things when I don’t have time to think. Probably true for most of you as well. Fear is for intellectuals and thinkers who have the time to wonder, worry and ponder about what might happen and what the consequences could be. If fear hasn’t gripped you by the time your in a thing, it’s not likely to get its hooks in you at all. But if you give it even that instant before the nose of your boat goes over into roiling waters, it will have you an hold you. It’s a bitch to be brave when you’re already afraid.
I took this class for a lot of reasons. Some I mentioned in the first installment. A hobby. Something impressive. Etc. I might have even said to conquer a fear, but I didn’t realize how much water had an effect on me. For days after the fact, when I woke up and splashed cold water on my face in the morning I had little flashbacks of being upside down in the river. Even now I’m having trouble working up the stones to go back out with my brother. I will, of course, because there was another reason I took the class. Fear aside, I did want to conquer something. To actually do something that I had talked about. I’ve spent so much time recently talking about plans and possibilities and following through on none of them, I’d begun to make myself sick. Being one of those people with too many should haves in their final days takes the soul out of me. I could have done this and that, but now it’s too late. Well, fuck that. I talked about kayaking and I damn well went and learned how. More hurdles ahead, like getting equipment so I can do it more frequently and more importantly dealing with the fears of potential loss and damage involved, but the hardest part for me is over. Beginning new things is my kryptonite (hush Jenny, I said it, so you don’t need to). It’s like they say, the first step is the hardest. Only because there is still so long a journey ahead.
“Oh, Lord, your sea is so mighty,
And my boat is so small.”
As you can possibly imagine, there were dreams. Most of which I don't remember now a week and a half later. I remember them being very strange though none of them disturbing in any conventional way. But the ones I do remember well were the dreams about kayaking. amazingly enough I'm still having them occasionally. I'll be lying in bed at night just on the edge of sleep thinking about the rivers I was on and replaying some of the rapids themselves. Next thing I know I've flipped my boat and I'm preparing to attempt a roll. I do the hip snap and pop myself upright in bed. Usually I just wake myself up and muss up the covers a little. Sometimes I do actually sit up some. It's very strange.
That night was more vivid. The dreams were more based in reality. Not the sort of dreams where you wake up and remember what happened and ask yourself, "Wait, how did I think that was real?" You know, when bark starts talking to you...bark growing on a lamp post in downtown Jersey, only you've never been to Jersey and it looks suspiciously like a child's rendition of last nights movie until you turn around and you're in Yonkers...where was I? Right, reality. These were dreams where Jonathan, my instructor would come wake me up to get ready and we'd go hit the river. The one I've never been in. And I see rocks and waves and trees and...well, it's like kayaking without the fear of drowning. So long as you know it's a dream. I must have had a similar dream three or four times. Each time I woke up and had more time to sleep. So I'd drift off again and repeat the process. Oddly, I felt very rested after all of this.
Finally, I got up. Put my tent and gear in the car and indeed did go and get ready for the day. I'll spare you those details. We started the day in the pool again. With such a small group, just myself and Jonathan's sister, going to the river all day would have been a bit much. Besides with only two people it's a lot easier for an instructor to manage teaching them how to roll properly.
Sometimes when you're learning something, it's best not to just keep trying until you get it. When you first start out and someone teaches you all the right things to do, you still can't necessarily do it. And as you practice it you start developing a lot of bad habits. Little things that keep you from attaining your goal. This is normal. The thing is that sometimes as you practice over and over and over and over again and keep screwing up, what you actually end up teaching yourself is how to do it wrong. Your body remembers all the ways you're doing it improperly. The best cure for this is to not do it for a little while. Take a break and let your body forget some of the shit it's messing up and let your mind process the way to do it right. That being said, I finally got my roll....in the pool.
It's like a puzzle, or a relationship, or anything really that frustrates and infuriates you. When you get stuck and try repeatedly to reason, force, or finagle your way to the solution. That seemingly unattainable goal. Even more so when that goal seemed so simple to start and turned out otherwise. But then, that one piece falls into place, or you say the right thing, and the universe just kind of...rights itself. And suddenly you go from wet, scared, and breathless to dry, exuberant and, well, still a little breathless. Getting the roll for the first time is....it's heady. My first instinct, after the, "did I just do that" wore off, was to roll back over. When I did it again, that was it. I had it down and it wasn't going away.
Then I resurfaced and Jonathan told me quite plainly, you'll fuck it up. Not as a discouragement obviously, or what kind of instructor would he be. But it's going to happen. Deal with the fact that you'll try for it and fail sometimes. The hardest roll is never the first one, it's every subsequent attempt after the first one fails. You've got to reach deep, while your oxygen is depleting and more river is coming up, and remember the right way to do what you did wrong the first time. You have to be more composed, have more clarity, and horribly be even more relaxed. In fact, pay attention to that because it probably applies to more of life than just kayaking.
After the pool we headed over to the lower White Salmon. Right across the street actually. This was the source of my dreams from the night. I knew from what had been said that the LWS was bigger (not huge) than the Klikitat. Choppier stuff, heavier currents, requiring a little more skill and a little more...well, a little more from those of us not all that comfortable with a liquid environment. I had been very nervous about it, more so even than the first couple of minutes on the Klikitat, my first introduction to kayaking on a real river period. And you know what, it went about like you’d expect. Fine. I think, honestly, it was because I got my roll in the pool. There’s a definite boost of confidence from achieving something like that and I think I carried it with me into the LWS that morning. The nervousness wasn’t all that bad and I think I actually performed very well for a beginner. I only flipped twice unintentionally. Both times I made a weak attempt at a roll and then went for a T-Rescue. As I may have said the roll in the pool and the roll in the moving river are two very different things. I flipped again in a calm stretch to practice my roll. Got it once and then tried a second time…to no avail. I had to swim on that one. I attempted to roll twice then went for the T-Rescue. When Jonathan came over I grabbed his boat and then lost it. The nerves were gone at that point and swimming seemed like the only option. I made it down the whole stretch without swimming and then ended up bailing in the calm “lake” at the bottom. Ridiculous. Whatever. We finished the run, pulled the boats out and rode back to the shop for lunch. Somewhere about here my head started taking over.
I don’t know where I lost my nerve or why. I sat eating lunch at the picnic table in back of the Wet Planet shop and just let my brain run away with me. Fear of the whole thing just started creeping in on me. Fear of drowning maybe, fear of water. Fear of not doing as well. Fear that…hell, I don’t know. I was tired at this point, more tired than I knew, and I’m sure that had something to do with it. But when Jonathan told me we were going to put in a little higher up on our second run so we could tackle Rattlesnake, I nearly lost it. Rattlesnake isn’t that huge, but looking at it from the bank it’s still intimidating to a novice. It looks kind of nasty and there’s another rapid not far below it. I talked myself out of the whole thing right there, but didn’t have it in me to fully chicken out and call it a day. So, I found myself back in my boat on the river staring at my guide into it knowing I was going to flip. So naturally, I flipped. I got through most of it until I hit a section of kind of sideways waves and rather than leaning forward and paddling, I just kind of leaned back and tried to roll with it. And I did. I rolled right over. I didn’t attempt a roll at this point, I just went for the rescue and by some miracle managed to talk myself out of bailing out. The next half of the run was the most tense I have been since I was a kid convince there was an alien hiding in a rolled up carpet in the corner.
Jonathan kept telling me to just relax, I’d already done this once and done it well, but I just couldn’t let myself loosen up. I was tired and having a much more difficult time making my body do what I wanted so the boat could do what it wanted. The confidence was gone and instinct was starting to take over. A later flip resulted in another rescue in spite of two attempts to roll myself back up. My brain had gotten back to the more primal directive of “Need air!” so the roll procedure wasn’t happening. This, kids, is why coaches tell you to get a good nights sleep before a competition. When you’re rested, you’re way more capable of actually doing what they’ve taught you to do. The same goes for pretty much anything really. Life lessons from skidding down a river in a plastic tube.
At some point I think he got tired of that terrified, anus clenched, deer in headlights look on my face and just before a rapid he paddled over, grabbed onto my boat (rafting up it’s called), and told me to take my paddle out of the water. Just having an instructor that close inspires enough calm to actually do something that sounds that crazy. Also, it’ll allow even a terrified rookie to loosen up enough to actually do what he says, which in this case was to just relax and let the boat float on its own. We went down the rapid just like that. And suddenly, it becomes clear in a way I already knew but couldn’t feel…”Oh, I just have to relax.” Doesn’t make sense? Could you relax and calm down if someone was in your face screaming at you to do it? In effect that’s what I was doing to myself. The rest of the run went smoother. In fact, this was how my class ended. Finally calm and only a little pissed off at myself for having let my head run away with me so badly.
Cowardice seems to be an of the moment kind of thing. Personally, I’ve always been better in the thick of things when I don’t have time to think. Probably true for most of you as well. Fear is for intellectuals and thinkers who have the time to wonder, worry and ponder about what might happen and what the consequences could be. If fear hasn’t gripped you by the time your in a thing, it’s not likely to get its hooks in you at all. But if you give it even that instant before the nose of your boat goes over into roiling waters, it will have you an hold you. It’s a bitch to be brave when you’re already afraid.
I took this class for a lot of reasons. Some I mentioned in the first installment. A hobby. Something impressive. Etc. I might have even said to conquer a fear, but I didn’t realize how much water had an effect on me. For days after the fact, when I woke up and splashed cold water on my face in the morning I had little flashbacks of being upside down in the river. Even now I’m having trouble working up the stones to go back out with my brother. I will, of course, because there was another reason I took the class. Fear aside, I did want to conquer something. To actually do something that I had talked about. I’ve spent so much time recently talking about plans and possibilities and following through on none of them, I’d begun to make myself sick. Being one of those people with too many should haves in their final days takes the soul out of me. I could have done this and that, but now it’s too late. Well, fuck that. I talked about kayaking and I damn well went and learned how. More hurdles ahead, like getting equipment so I can do it more frequently and more importantly dealing with the fears of potential loss and damage involved, but the hardest part for me is over. Beginning new things is my kryptonite (hush Jenny, I said it, so you don’t need to). It’s like they say, the first step is the hardest. Only because there is still so long a journey ahead.
“Oh, Lord, your sea is so mighty,
And my boat is so small.”