Today passed in somewhat of a fog. I got less sleep than I would have liked last night, due to a rough patch by Ian (woke up and cried a number of times, then pulled off his pajama bottoms and diaper and proceeded to pee all over his bed--Ian had to be changed, the bed had to be stripped, and Ian needed to be rocked back to a calmer state before he'd go back to sleep). As bad as it sounds, I couldn't immediately tell you everything we wrote, read, or discussed this morning. The afternoon was dedicated to a writing on a strong memory, which is something we'll be able to refine and add to our memoirs that are due Monday. We finished with a research-and-share discussion of the Essential Understandings of Indian Education for All and some Indian history. We didn't quite get finished, so we'll have to finish tomorrow. We signed up for our daily duties; I wish I'd brought my schedule home to write on the calendar so I can remember what I'm supposed to be doing. I think I'm responsible for something on Thursday. Not sure. Anyway, here are the two pieces I wrote today.
Writing Into The Day 6/10: "Why I Write" intro to Creating A Life by Donald M. Murray
It's interesting to consider why I write. I love to write; I always have. In school, I churned out plenty of angsty teen poetry. I was an enthusiastic albeit erratic diary writer, at least until I was about to graduate high school, when my mom admitted that she had been reading my diary for years. Bitterly spiteful, I rebuffed her offer of a new diary since my old one was nearly full, and threw the old one in the trash. That didn't stop me from writing in college, though. I wrote lengthy letters to friends, and more questionable poetry for classes and for myself. In this glorious age of technology, I am a blogger (duh)--with a few lean years when parenthood, exhaustion, and depression made it hard to muster enthusiasm for anything. I am also a Facebook addict. I love seeing posts from friends and former students, but I get selfish pleasure from responses to my own posts: "You are so funny! You should compile your statuses into a book!" I think I write for the affirmation, not necessarily that I am clever or funny, but that I am still here. I can look back at my writing and think, wow, I thought/said/did that? How far I've come! Or, do I truly feel that way? How far I have yet to go. I can see the evolution of my style: habitual user of ellipses, dashes, parentheticals; ritual breaker of the fourth wall in asides to my reader. I can hear the "rapids" Donald Murray referred to; I need to start paddling.
Place-Related Memory 6/10: Half Mile of Hell on the Ocoee River, TN
The rapid, although it isn't much of a rapid, just class II "boogie water," is usually referred to as "Half Mile of Hell" by the other paddlers I know, but I don't know if it has an official name. It isn't really half a mile long, either--maybe a quarter or even an eighth? I'm a terrible judge of distance. And it's not that it's "hell" exactly. It just requires some balance, some boat control, and a willingness to play a game I call "Wave, or Rock?" It was my first trip down the Middle Ocoee in a kayak. I'd put on the river at the alternate put-in that missed three of the more difficult rapids. I'd successfully negotiated the first two rapids on that section of the river, a bouncy chute called Moonshoot (because of a butt-shaped rock in the middle), and the "sneak" line at the notorious hydraulic Double Suck. I was feeling pretty confident (although I still felt a healthy dose of apprehension, as I always do), which might be why I got a little sloppy, a little loose, and leaned back a little too much. I was following another boater, either too closely or not closely enough. As it was my first time on the Ocoee, Phil, who was an experienced boater, told me to follow his lines. His exact words were "Follow me, and when I turn my boat, you turn your boat." I have since pondered this advice, wondering how much fault lay with Phil and how much was my own. Were I closer to Phil's boat, turning when he turned might have helped me dodge the rock or hole or wave or whatever it was; were I farther behind, the same move might have missed the obstacle altogether. As it happened, Phil angled his boat to the left, so I did the same. Doing so brought my boat with a "thump" against a barely submerged rock masquerading as a wave (see the aforementioned game "Wave, or Rock?"), and suddenly I was upside down. No matter how many times I've practiced my "eskimo roll"--the move that rights a kayak using the paddler's body and paddle--the sensation of suddenly being surrounded by water instead of air when I don't expect it is disorienting and disconcerting. I'm sure there are other boaters whose immediate response to such an event is to flip themselves back over without a thought; I have never reached that point. My thoughts usually go through the following process: "Oh crap! I'm upside down! I can't breathe! Ow, that was a rock! I should set up to roll. I wonder if anyone else has noticed that I'm upside down. I should set up to roll. I'll try to roll. Well, I'll try after I quit thumping over all these rocks. I wonder if anyone is coming to get me. I haven't heard any thumps on my boat that might be anyone else setting up for a T rescue. I should try to roll. I'm running out of air. Oh crap." Sometimes this process has been followed by "Hey, wow, I did it! I actually rolled!" More often, however, the process was followed by "Tried to roll, didn't make it all the way. Tried to roll again, didn't make it all the way. Guess I'll pop my sprayskirt and swim." That's mostly what happened at this particular point in the river. I did indeed set up to roll--I bent at the waist towards the left side of my boat, thrust both hands skyward with my paddle clutched in my fists, rotated my wrists as though I were revving the throttle on a motorcycle...and punched my left fist really hard against a rock. I know this is what must have happened, although I really don't have a clear recollection of it. I remember realizing that I was only holding my paddle with my right hand. I know some people can roll a boat one-handed (or even without a paddle at all); I am not one of them. I let go of my paddle and pulled the grab loop on my sprayskirt. Once I had popped the skirt off the rim of my cockpit, I pulled myself out of the boat much like pulling off a pair of pants. I didn't do much to "self-rescue"--I let my paddle and boat float downriver without me, and swam towards the bank. It wasn't a great place to swim--lots of rocks, obviously--and it wasn't a great place to try to get out of the water, either. I had ended up on the inside curve of the rapid, right at the bend in the river before the rapid Double Trouble, a big wave train. The road that followed the river was perhaps 20 feet above me, up a steep rocky embankment. I scrambled to the top without any problems (not slowing down enough to consider the possibility that there could be snakes sunning themselves on the rocks as they do along much of the river). It wasn't until I got to the top and reached for the road's guardrail to pull myself up and over that I noticed my left hand. Specifically, my index finger. The section between the two lower knuckles had already swollen to twice its usual size, and the skin was stretched and shiny, like the casing of a sausage. That section of the finger had gone almost white, while the rest of the finger was starting to turn purple. My first thought was, I've broken my finger. Then I noticed my Timex digital watch. Takes a licking and keeps on ticking, the ads said. Well, this Timex was licked. Period. I had broken the face; it would not tick anymore (not that it ticked anyway; it was digital). I walked along the roadside, careful to hug the guardrail as cars and large trucks could come barreling around the curve quickly and potentially swinging wide. About 50 yards, maybe as much as 100 yards (remember, bad at distances), I climbed back over the guardrail and worked my way down the path the river outfitter photographers used. As I clambered back down over rocks and tree roots, I thought two things: "I hope they got my paddle and my boat" and "I can't believe I only made it two rapids before I swam." You see, in kayaking, swimming is portrayed as something to be ashamed of. It means you screwed up, probably twice: once when you didn't successfully negotiate an obstacle, and once when you failed to roll. On a lot of paddling trips, at the end of the day, the swimmers must "drink from the boot." Someone will take a neoprene bootie, like a thick rubber sock with a sole, and fill it with beer. The offending swimmer or swimmers must then drain the boot. Other times, the swimmer is expected to buy the beer for that night's campfire. Either way, it's a moment of shaming, even if relatively good-natured. I wasn't concerned with drinking from the boot or buying the beer at that moment, however; I was overwhelmed with the feeling of failure, the feeling that I'd let my friends, and more importantly my husband, down. While kayakers are generally a community who look out for each other, a "newbie" on a trip puts other more experienced boaters in an instructional or support role. They must guide the newbie down the river and be responsible for helping that person out if he or she gets in a jam. A newbie on a trip means the other paddlers aren't as free to paddle in their own way, at their own speed, or stop and play as they might usually do. A newbie, in return, is expected to listen, follow instructions, and try not to screw up too badly. I had screwed up, big time. I felt like I had let my paddling buddies down. When I got to the bottom of the trail, I found one of our friends, Drew, sitting in the eddy with my boat. I pulled it up on the bank. I looked downstream, and there was my husband, sitting behind a rock with my paddle across his boat. My gear had been recovered without too much effort, thankfully. Attention then turned to my hand. Drew turned to a photographer and asked if he had a first aid kit. He didn't, but a raft guide who was sitting in the eddy waiting for the rest of his trip to pass by did. He got out one of those cold packs, the kind you twist to break open the chemical pouches and then shake to activate the cold. He told me I should keep it on my hand for about fifteen minutes. The rest of the boaters in my group had to decide what to do--should someone stay with me? I assured them I was fine. I said that after I'd iced my hand for a little while, I could hitchhike down to the takeout, get our truck, come back up and get my boat, and then meet them at the takeout when they were done. I didn't want to take any of them away from the river, away from the fun of paddling. I sat on the bank with my legs in the water, watching my friends and my husband paddle away. While I sat there, a few boaters who came through asked me if I was ok; others asked what had happened. And I noticed a few who came through didn't ask me anything because they were preoccupied with their own problems. Some had rolled; some even came through swimming. One's companions had to chase his boat through three rapids before they were able to catch it and get it to an eddy. I started to realize that I was not the only one who wasn't having a good day on the river. I also realized that my finger probably wasn't broken; although my hand was swelling alarmingly, I could move all my fingers--I had just popped the blood vessel on the top of that finger (the bruise that developed after the initial swelling subsided gradually worked its way across most of my hand, making me look super tough and causing some dismay for my mother, which is a story for another day). My paddling day, and in fact weekend, was done for sure, though, because I couldn't grip my paddle with that hand very well because of the swelling. I hitched down to the takeout, river karma granting me a quick pickup from a nice fellow boater, got the truck, went back up and picked up my gear, and met my friends at the bottom. They'd had a great time, which I couldn't help but be a little jealous of. But that night, in the campsite, I was not made to drink from the boot, nor was I expected to provide the alcohol for the group. Instead, various people oohed and aahed over my injury, we all shared our own perspectives of the event, and other boaters shared stories of their own swims, many of which made mine pale in comparison (especially the newbies from Mississippi who had tried to tackle the river with no ability to roll and no one to guide them; again, a story for another day). Ultimately, what I took away from the experience was an adage that several of the boaters repeated to me: "Everybody is just between swims." There are no boaters who ever do it perfectly, there are no boaters who can make it through their entire paddling career without an occasional mistake. Sometimes those swims result in nothing but slightly hurt pride and a drink from the boot; sometimes those swims create great stories to tell back at camp; sometimes those swims end in catastrophe. But swims are always learning opportunities for everyone in the group--what mistake was made, what could have been done to avoid it, how it was handled when it happened--and everyone takes something away from the experience. I must admit, I've never swum in exactly the same place on a river twice. And I guess that's life, really. We have all those sayings about making mistakes, about how you have to try and try again, about how you have to get back up on that horse that bucked you off. For me, it meant learning that I could make mistakes, that I would make mistakes, and that the best I could do would be to learn from the experience and try to avoid making that same mistake again. In boating, that meant leaning forward, keeping an active blade in the water, reading the water better, trusting my instinct when playing "Wave, or Rock?" and knowing that my instinct might occasionally let me down. And practicing my roll.
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