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Part I
--What grave thoughts whisp through: banshee keenings
and shrouds of doubt cast over. He, harking back to a frightful
time when guts retched and propitious foregoings were beseeched.
Remembrance mindmirrored; anxiety wanes not with the passing
of time--
I climbed the winding road for miles, finally reaching the
gap in the fog-shrouded divide. The rockcut pillars stood silent
sentinel as I made passage through the swag and pointed my truck
downward...ever downward. Whhhhhhh Whhhhhhh...the
transmission protested but held fast when I downshifted. The dark
silhouette of a spring-gaunt bear glimpsed across the road then
disappeared into the forest. The road seemed tethered to the stream
nearby and I took sidled glances at a pell-mell race that gabbled
not of a faraway sea. The listing water slipped and swirled through
the boulder chokes, but I knew two significant tributaries would
soon strengthen its flow, and a mature thundering river would
erupt.
I continued driving down the mountain, finally pulling off
onto a narrow turnout below the hidden confluence. Oh yes, I
remembered. Here’s where the journey began. My thoughts took
me back to a time when three friends and I jumped upon what I
can only describe as the back of a writhing whiteserpent cast from
a dark sky by some nimbiferous god. In less than a mile we had
shat ourselves--haired out--and were looking for a way off the
beast and out of the gorge. We abandoned the run by grabbing
riverside tree branches and penduluming to shore, avoiding as best
we could the debarked boles through which the river squalled. We
were beaten, both mentally and physically--whipped rivermongrels
with tails flaccid and tucked...retched souls...so much flotsam
heaved up by the river. We took up our boats and scrabbled over
huge riverside boulders, roped up vertical rock walls and finally
bushwacked out through hells of laurel and doghobble. Darkness
found us stumbling up a thickly wooded ridge to the road above,
dragging our boats behind. Hence that day we had not “drawn near
the throne of the river god” (as a poet once mused). For us it was a
run unfinished; one hushwhispered about our campfires and lauded
not. Such was my first attempt at descending the Moria Gulf .
As I sat in my truck bethinking that last misadventure,
ethereal music and the dark-hued lyrics of the Lizard King filled
the cab:
Ride the snake.
Ride the snake.
To the lake...
The ancient lake.
The snake is long,
Seven miles.
Ride the snake.
He’s old...
And his skin is cold.
I stepped from my vehicle and walked down to the river. A
base resonance with overtones of a higher pitched SHHHHHHH,
like sand pouring through some cosmic hourglass, charged the air.
The faint clatter of rock against rock as the torrent swept cobbles
down the riverbed added a percussion to this swirl of sound and I
knew I was audience to a primeval intonation--the very pangs of
the earth--a gift rare. I looked upstream at the debording steps that
spilled down the mountainside and thought: What fanciful beast
would possess the might to scale such, and the abject madness to
descend!
My eyes caught a movement, a movement quite apart from
the sensory overload before me.
“Hello,” he said from a small eddy nearby, his voice raised
above the din of the river. Sitting there in a small haven in the
midst of a white tempest was a young man in a kayak. He hinged
to and fro in his boat as the eddy pulsed with the life-beat of the
swollen river; it was as if he had come from the very milieu upon
which he sat.
“Had a little difficulty the last time you were here, huh?”
he said.
“Well, yes,” I answered. “But how did you know that?”
As I looked into his eyes I felt a connection; there was
something familiar about him. It was if we had known one another,
perhaps even paddled together, in the past.
“Just a guess,” he continued. “But your face tells a story.
Care to give the run another go?”
“Jezzz, man, I don’t know. This thing handed me my ass.
No! Worse! Almost killed me the last time I was here. I just don’t
know....”
“You can follow me--I’ve got it wired! We can Blue Angel!
Come on...friend!”
Why was I here? But I knew: I had seen the siren and heard
her beguiling song. I had been rejected once as unworthy, but I still
could not deny or forget the intensity of that first encounter. Was I
up to it this time? Or would I again shatter as does crystal when
put forth to high intensity. But the desire to possess, if only for a
moment, and to dance again with this enchantress was strong and
of an undeniableness that transcended mere redemption.
“Okay, let me gear up and get my boat. I’ll go with you.”
Why do I do these things? To be a warrior? An unrealized
rite of passage? It is certainly some strange manifestation of
atavism and perhaps the answer lies inside me, hidden away in
some twisted helix. But for the moment I was sure of one thing: I
was game to go and I would ride slackman to this enigmatic
boatman.
I was soon sitting in my boat atop the smooth gray back of
a boulder six feet above the river. I pushed until I began sliding,
then plunging, otter-like into the small eddy beside him. My
creeker quickly surged back to the surface from its dive, spilling
glassine sheets of water down its ridged deck.
“Call me Percy,” he said. I introduced myself over a quick
handshake then peered downstream. My heart was pounding; I
knew this first section of the river was steep, and coupled with the
water volume and maze-like riverbed, I would be pushed to the
very limit of what I could do, and after that lay the unknown. But
also coursing through my body was a marvelous sense of resolve,
and that, coupled with a tincture of trepidation, makes for a
fascinating excitant as those who enter the class-five realm well
know. I was ready.
“Let’s hit it!” he yelled. I watched as he peeled out into the
main stream then fell in close behind. Squinting through slapping
curtains of whiteness I watched his flow as he weaved his way
downstream. Shadowsure I followed him, my paddlestrokes
doubling as braces and forward power. Then, as if reaching for a
good-luck tap of the sylvan canopy, his boat bolted off the edge of
a huge pillowed boulder and disappeared into the shadows below. I
followed on faith, no time to give it any thought, simply reacting
and pressing forward, and, in a whrrrrr of paddlestrokes, launched
in like form off the boulder and landed in the small eddy beside
my suresby. I reveled in my sweet success, but the celebration was
short-lived. I looked over my shoulder at the severity of what lay
ahead: the streamside forest dropped away, tree trunk to crown,
there in front of me.
“Okay, focus, man. We’ve got a Damnation Alley class
section up ahead--very steep. The horizonline will be constant,
never giving us more than a brief preview of what’s coming, and
it’ll be coming fast! Just follow the main flow--trust me on this
one.”
Off we went, constantly buried to our armpits in a
wrenching spumescence between countless boofs and slot moves.
How long did we keep it up? I didn’t know; time and distance had
long since left my thought process. But I did know we were now
much farther into the run than I had made it before; nothing was
familiar. Then the river strangely quietened--gathered--and we
eddied out against the dark confines of a vertical rock wall.
“We’re near The Rabbit Hole,” he said. “It’s a huge drop
where the entire river funnels then drops into a cauldron. See those
mistfingers ahead?”
I looked downstream and saw tendrils of mist spawned by
horrific meetings of water and air ascending out of a void, their
whiteness contrasting with the dark wetness of the shadowed rock
walls.
“Watch the one on the left, it’s unique,” he said. “It’ll rise
straight up then form a spiral, bending back upon itself much like a
beckoning finger, and it’ll repeat the process over and over. I
discovered this many years ago on my first run down here and I’m
glad I did. You see, it’s a sign that we should run this drop in that
very spot, and I can assure you this run is about to get very, very
interesting! Are you ready to go...bravely?” He laughed as he
pivoted out of the eddy and sprinted toward the drop. Then he
disappeared.
The distance between trepidation and resolve can be
amazingly short, sometimes no farther than the walk back to one’s
boat following scouting a drop, or manifest in something as simple
as the direction in which one points his bow. And while this
phenomenon can be realized by participants on different levels of
this sport, it presents its most fantastic form to those who
consistently boat at the edge of objective danger. So it was with
this resolve--this certainty--that I peeled out, casting my
preexisting fright back into the shadows of the pool, and charged
the onerous drop ahead, my line sure and true, set for very center
of the spiraling mistfinger.
I knew the plunge pool would contain the mother of all
hydraulics, and therefore went for a boof that would propel me as
far from the lip as possible. I set a cadence, cranking out measured
power strokes that would culminate in that all-important heave at
the brink of the drop. But it was not to be; I launched off a
mockrim--an exfoliation at the edge of the fall caused the river to
dip several feet before making its final plunge. The rug was pulled;
my fate sealed. I bounced the dip then penciled straight down the
face of the waterfall and into the seethe below. My final thoughts
were beseechings of mercy from a watery burial, alive.
Down, down, down into the seam of the vertical hydraulic I
dived. I saw a spectral effervescence racing back to the surface in
front of me as I melted past. Then Crack! A bolt of whitehot pain
shot through body when my forehead slammed into a horn of rock.
Caught in the upswell the bow of my boat stalled and the entire
weight of the falls smashed down upon the stern, violently
slamming my torso against the back deck as the boat reared and
fired up and out of the falls. Suddenly, I felt the wind upon my
face then an odd whacking, switching, all over. My God! I was
being back endered into the forest canopy! Splayed against the
back deck, I watched in astonishment as the river disappeared, a
broken silver ribbon beneath the trees, spinning away, far below,
then a blue flash as I left the earth’s atmosphere and headed out
into interplanetary space, the earth, a blue orb swirled in white,
spinning away, far, far below.
* * *
Part II --And how they soared, these
companion sparks mere yet zoetic,
trippers across the ineffable vault, seekers of the paths to Esoteria
and Fantasia. Riders of theurgical craft, these exemplars of
boatmen; riders touching The Resplendent!--
“Whooooweeee!” he shouted. “You took long enough to
get here!”
I sat upright in my boat and looked upward in the direction
of his voice. And there, in as adroit a levity as has ever graced the
cosmos, he and his boat rolled and tumbled as one; a showy phasm
against the boundless firmament.
“Ha! Didn’t I tell you this run would get interesting?” He
laughed then carved a quick turn, sending a wave of
phosphorescence in my direction. “Come on, friend! We have a
long way to go! Follow me!” He carved another turn, then like a
diamond glint of sun off the water, knifed through the welkin and
disappeared. I followed, although I didn’t really know how;
everything was now beyond my reckoning. It was as if I were being
pulled through the cosmos by will alone. I simply closed my eyes
and created traces that tied into some faraway expanding wave of
Creation; the traces tautened and I hung on! The stars rained by in
a fulgor as I rocketed headlong toward their unaccountable radiant.
I finally caught up with him, or was it more that he had purposely
slowed, holding back until his charge made the attainment?
“Look ahead!” he shouted. “There he is! My colossal
friend, Orion, the Great Hunter! Isn’t he a magnificent sight
standing there with arms upraised...and look at that belt cinched
about his waist. Isn’t that a thing of beauty! See the bejeweled hilt
of his sword? Check the size of that emerald! It’s that fluorescent
green region--a nebulous luster you might say--below his belt.”
He continued describing the vast surroundings, becoming
almost babblative.
“And look--LOOK! there high above Orion! Look past the
bull with the fierce red eye, see them? See the Seven Sisters? Ha!
You can count far more than seven when you’re this close, that’s
for sure! It’s one of my favorite sights when I’m up here. I’m
always inspired to recite the words of a poet--Tennyson--when I
see them:
Many a night I saw the Pleiads,
rising thro’ the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies
tangled in a silver braid.
“See Orion’s bright left foot? That’s Rigel, our lodestar, the
key to the line we’ll need to take. Stick close to me--we don’t want
to pass too close to that supergiant since some incredible solar
winds will be coming off its surface. We’ll never be able to hold
our line there, even at its outskirts--too close and...poof! We’ll slip
to the left of Rigel and should be able to see Cursa soon after that.”
“What’s Cursa?” I asked. “And why are we going there?”
“Cursa is the beginning--the headwaters, if you will--of
Eridanus, the longest river in all of creation. You realize that’s
why we’re here, don’t you? Surely you didn’t think we were going
to piddle away all our time in that earthly realm. Think about it:
the longest river and we’re going to run it!
We sped along. I had long since ceased taking paddle
strokes, but still held my paddle tightly as might a lame man,
suddenly healed, would his cane when affinity holds sway over
purpose. We kept Rigel to our left as we continued our journey
toward Cursa. I then noticed my friend fringed with a teardrop
shaped luminescence that trailed strangely at a right angle to his
line of travel, and I saw that I had one, too.
Then appeared the phantasmagories: I held a writhing
serpent, its two heads striking, a screation of crimson spew, a
venene bile, beading forth. Then a wonder: A great masted ship,
firesails billowing, hull furrowing the darksea and I, the watcher,
hitching a ride upon its bowwave, my steed now a transfiguration
more at Phocaena aswim, surfing the ether, running the break
alongside my dim selfsame, the stars spinning and rushing in a
glory, crystal spiders spinning and casting their gossamer webs,
and then came the waning, the peculiar waning.
“Friend, friend,” I called weakly. “What is, what is this
about?”
“If you’re able, cut...cut away to the right. We’re too...too
close to Rigel...ion tail coming off....”
In unison, we slowly turned ninety degrees and began
putting some distance between ourselves and Rigel. My mind
began to clear as we carved around and looked again toward
Cursa, a softly glowing, whitelight sphere directly in front of us.
“That was close,” he said. “And I knew better. I was asleep
at the wheel--shouldn’t have been on that line. I know this run like
the back of my hand--shouldn’t have made that mistake. I have no
desire to become some small, nondescript comet, forever a fixture
in a dim corner of the universe. Sorry, and I was telling you to
focus awhile ago.
“Cursa is just ahead. We shouldn’t have any trouble there,
although I did catch it flashing several years ago. Man, can you
imagine cruising along and having a feature flash by a factor of
fifteen on you? Wild! I surfed the photon surge all the way to Azha
before I was able to catch an eddy, and that wasn’t easy. Had I
missed that last eddy, I don’t know where I’d have ended up!
“The old ones call Cursa “The Footstool.” I suppose if
Orion wanted to prop his foot, he’d use it for that. But I’d rather
think of it as the headwaters, a golden well spilling forth, if you
will--the beginning of a fantastic river.”
We sped along, finally reaching the source of the celestial
river. I didn’t know what to expect and was amazed when suddenly
I saw a vast alien liquescence surging before us; a pellucid
ambience with tangible flow and direction. The stars danced and
shimmered throughout its measureless form yet appeared
lasersharp at its shores, providing outline and measure to this
marvel. In silence it rolled along, searching for some interstellar
sea.
“Take a strong run at that eddywall,” he said. “At the last
second make a big--really big--splat against the wall, your bow
should be swinging left. Not easy in these creekers but this thing is
so huge it’s possible, especially if we hit it with a lot of speed. We
should be able to blastclimb the wall before our momentum plays
out. Pace yourself.” He became a blur as he charged the eddywall
and I watched as his insignificant ripple climbed the massive
rampart before being swept downstream and out of sight.
I took a long, hard look at the eddywall and the move I’d
have to make: indescribably daunting. And then came the doubt,
swinging in like the fist of some galactic imp, slamming hard into
the pit of my stomach. A wave of nausea surged; I swallowed hard
and thought of yellow butterflies and blue skies.
But I knew I had to go; there was simply no other way, no
retreat. I called forth all my resolution then rushed toward the
imposing barrier. A split second before meeting it I bounced my
boat slightly right then slashed with all my might back left on the
rebounce, burying the stern in the etherseam. The bow leapt up the
eddywall, climbing in some semblance of a blast up its face. The
move then became part of a much larger tableau: that of jumping
aboard a gargantuan flowing train as it raced through the galaxy,
and I the hitcher.
.
The climb was arduous and just before I stalled, I made it
over the edge and onto the incredible undulating surface of
Eridanus. My God! What enormity lay before me: a river like no
other I had seen! Imagine, if you can, a vast mountain range rolling
along, waveswells leviathan, faultrips pleating, and stretching as
far as the eye can see!
“Over here!” he yelled.
“I’m glad to see you finally decided to come along! he
exclaimed. “Ferrying on this thing isn’t easy! Let’s go!”
* * *
Part III Like two sailors adrift in a
stormsea, we rode the swells of
Eridanus, and a dreamride it was: Waves towered like mountains
before us and we glided up their translucent masses, each time
losing our stomachs as we pitched over the crests and commenced
the long, long glissade down into the next trough. How high those
waves, you ask? Miles? Tens of miles? But what is earthly
dimension in a realm where one rides the bubble of space and
time?
“Did you ever, in your wildest dream, imagine that your
boat would bring you to a place such as this? he asked. “Now you
know how amazing these magic carpets are!
“River running means different things to different people.
For some it’s a means to an identity, and a river’s whitewater can
sure provide an arena for that! By contrast there are the adepts of
soulboating, quiet and mysterious spirits, often hidden. Others
enjoy it because it brings them into a closer commune with nature.
Then there’s the social scene, which we all seem to enjoy to some
degree--it takes a crowd for some, a single kindred spirit for others.
And the list goes on. But for me it has to be about the magical
realms I visit by way of my boat, and they can run the gamut from
the delightful to the otherworldly.”
I agreed, then thought about another aspect of our sport...a
darker one: What compulsion...better, what covinous allure could
lead someone to place such significance upon a peculiar
singularity, that when taken to its unnecessary extreme--or
somewhere along the progression to that extreme--could well
deliver its participant into the netherworld? For this, I had no
answer, and the wavering visage prompted by this thought was all
too familiar.
As we made our way downstream, streams of
phosphorescence trailed from the sterns of our boats, much like
those churned up by nightboatmen on the southseas back on earth.
“Hey, try to write your name on the surface!” he yelled.
I watched as he playfully carved and cut, looped and
curled, the mercurial runes slipping away behind his boat. I made a
few cursory zigs then ceased, my string of jibberish melting away
into the darkness.
“Keid and Beid are just ahead,” he said. “Keid is an Orange
Flare and could give us an exciting ride! Depends on the flaresync
when we go by. This is the first bend in the river, and it will be
challenging.”
I looked ahead at a spectacle of massive eruptions and
sucking folds of colored gases and clouds of stardust as the
twinstars wrested sway over the river, it protesting this insult as all
rivers are wont to do. I could see no possible line and wondered if
it would be here that we would be rendered into a oneness with the
universe, for such was the chaotic whelming before us. We had no
choice but to continue.
I watched as he entered the fury. A reflex wave rolled in
and swallowed him almost immediately, then another wave,
springtide and massive, took me under as the starpulse heightened.
Deeply into Eridanus we mysteried, riding the amnic downdraft
into limbonia, swirling and whirling with no sense of direction,
becoming one with the dynamics of wave and antiwave, of folds
and antifolds, a molecular silt cast about by the universal forces of
motion. Shards of space debris churned alongside us: remnants of
minor planets from esoteric solar systems, comas eroded, and
broken dust rings in spectrum; giblets in a soup of elementary
particles. Then came the great rising: a massive parbreak purging
all from the depths and back onto the ordained path of the river
that lay beyond the maelstrom. Like Cetacea breaching, we blasted
to the surface, rending glistening sheets of uranian polychromasia
asunder as we broke free!
“Whoooeee!” he shouted. “That was quite a ride!”
We continued our descent of Eridanus. We flew past
Zaurak and Rana, also known as the boat and frog, he told me. Our
sky seemed composed of countless diamonds randomcast into
black velvet, and we navigated beneath this canopy by
penumbralight: distant novae still, like hued Chinalamps
suspended.
“Were you the first to find this place, this river?” I asked.
“Was yours a first descent?”
“Oh, no,” he answered. “The ancient Greeks and Romans
came here often, as did the Chinese and Arabs, so mine wasn’t a
first descent by any means. The first descent--well, attempt--was
by Phaethon, a bold but impulsive boy. He simply wasn’t ready for
the difficulty of Eridanus. He persuaded his father into loaning him
a boat, came up here and crashed and burned. It’s been said that
he’s here yet, stranded somewhere, although I’ve never seen him.
My first run was a glorious experience: I was alone and had never
seen anything like it; I simply reveled in the marvel of it all, as I
am now!
“There’s Zibal--Zeta Eridani to some,” he said.
As we flashed by he continued: “Zibal is a minor feature
with no consequence, but it’s important as a marker. I always get
butterflies when I see Zibal because not too far downstream are the
Falls of Azha, the most incredible drop on this entire run!
“Eridanus makes an abrupt turn above Azha. We’ll catch
the slower current on the inside right and eddy out.”
We rounded a bend and suddenly before us lay a most
astonishing scene: a vast horizonline stretched as far as I could see.
It was a consternating view into a Precambrian sidereal scene as an
unaccountable escarpment fell away into boundlessness! The lip of
the fall was aglow, as if in celebration of its own display! We
pointed our boats right and powered into the gigantic eddy above
Azha Falls, pushing our way into the galactic sleech, wending our
way through asteroidial flotsam while remnant comet tails spiraled
beneath us; fanciful iceserpents once removed.
“We’ll stage from here,” he said. “See where the current
flows between those two wobbling asteroids--see how the long
winding strands of spacedust on the surface begin to uncoil and
converge just as they’re sucked out of sight? That’s where we want
to go, but I can assure you, once you’re over the lip, nothing else
matters!
Then he took off like an arrow, and I followed. I sprinted in
speed passage between the overhanging asteroids and shot out over
the falls.
There is a memorable moment--a wideangle freeze frame
of sorts--one gets at the lip of a high, vertical drop. As one leaves
the edge and the boat’s bow drops away, the eyes quickly strike an
image of just how far below the pool is--a Lilliputian riverscape is
glimpsed--and in that moment the mind processes it all, then the
eyes close and you hold your breath.
Or this is how it sometimes is in the earthly realm.
But we weren’t in an earthly realm and as I left the lip of
Azha Falls I gazed agog into The Vastness: distant galaxies
spiraling; candent pinwheels gyring ad infinitum. Jademist nebulae
glowing; ignes fatui silent, watching.
Down, down, down I fell, eventually smoothing into a
visceral glissade upon the face of the falls, accelerating as might a
tetherless plumb bob dropped into infinity. Far below I saw a glow
that soon stretched into a spectral streamer that extended to, then
past, me.Wavering blues, greens, then yellows and oranges flew
past like the trailing plumage of some ethereal peacock. Then
came the red, settled and constant, and a voice:
“Pick it up if you want to cruise with me!”
The voice was that of Percy, but his appearance was
startling: He had melded with the falls and his very essence had
been transfigured into a meteoric rainbow.
“Throw away your paddle--you haven’t needed it for some
time now, anyway--and become an arrow!”
I tossed my paddle and leaned back. I felt myself becoming
elongated, being stretched into a thin streamer of pure energy, a
cosmological projectile arrowing toward some unknown. The
blues, greens, yellows, and oranges spilled out of me and trailed
like the train of an oriental robe until I was rendered to crimson
marrow. I fell away, soon merging with Azha Falls.
“We’re falling at red-shift now,” said a gentle voice, the
words floating into my mind like the softness of a thought.
I sensed his presence nearby; a glimmer in parallel. We
were voyagers of the sheer, lambent streaks in cascade, and
together we rode the unplumbed mass of Azha Falls into The
Vastness. Yet, the thoughts we passed soon became
inconsequential and ebbed as we were absorbed by the falls and
our energy merged with that of the universe...
where
we
became
Azha
Falls
and
we
became
Moria
Gulf.
Where we became all that ever was, all that is, and all that
is yet to be; where we glimpsed eternity and floated downward,
ever downward until...
we slammed into the plunge pool at the base of Azha,
retroshapeshifting into entities of the present as our spectrums
converged and coalesced into the ordered elements of sentient
beings. We sprang forth from the depths of the pool, hurlbirthed
creatures skipping our way across its expanse then skittering away
into the downstream reaches, fleeing Mother Azha as would
respued foundlings.
* * *
Part IV We continued our ride upon the magnificent strangeness of
Eridanus. We braved the turbulent Angetnar Rift and survived the
massive reflex waves of Theemin. Then came The Acamar Wall:
Theta Eridani. Here the river collided with the binary wonder of a
giant and dwarf star and was sent into such grand protest that the
resulting coruscation was known even to ancient mariners. We
rode the towering pillow off The Acamar Wall and spurred our
way down the falling arc of Eridanus. We tailsurfed into the
slackwater pool backed up by Achernar, a soft blue dwarf star far
downstream. We followed the twisted, yet now docile, flow to its
end and gazed in awe at the gargantuan fan that fed away into The
Vastness. We had reached the end of Eridanus and floated out
upon a lake. Then he shouted:
“Hurry! The Rabbit Hole opens only for a moment at the
end of the star day. We can’t miss it!”
I looked below into a strange spiraling aperture, quickly
growing like some esoteric swallower awakened. Like two stones
thrown from the vault, we hurtled toward the widening orifice now
near apogee and plunged through into a whirlwhorlworld as the
portal closed behind. Down, down, down, we spun, following
tightening spirals into the very viscera of some measureless whelk
until we were voided from its cone like two fecalith pebbles, no
longer worthy to soar the firmament.
We plunged back into the estuating maw at the base of the
waterfall from whence we began our fantastic journey. My
previous run of the falls was visited upon me like some frightful
rerun: the swirling and pounding was terrific and I saw the rock
that had nearly taken off my head. Suddenly I found myself
swimming and thrashing to the surface where I felt the
unmistakable slap of a throwrope against my face; my lifeline back
into the terrestrial world. I grabbed the rope and held on for a
welcomed ride to the edge of the pool where I felt strong hands
grip the shoulder straps of my life jacket and drag me neap upon
the shore. Like some primordial lifeform making its initial foray
into an oxygenated world, I crawled higher on the bedrock,
gasping with each advance. Muculent strings danced from my
nose; a puppet reversed with river and rock the master. I belched
and puked forth a mixture of stale air and water; fetid alms heaved
at the feet of my deliverer.
“Thanks, ” I whispered.
“Hey, man, are you all right? he asked. “You were under
there for two--three minutes! Scared me to death!”
“I need to...rest,” I said. “I don’t feel so good.”
I sat quietly on the cold rock at the edge of the plungepool
until I had recovered somewhat. I looked back at the falls and
shook my head in disbelief.
“To think this drop almost drowned me is unbelievable,” I
said. “Especially after all we’ve been through.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked. “This is a big drop
and that’s one heinous hole at its base, set in a box--a frowning
cauldron! Nothing we went through upstream compares!”
“No, no...I mean running Eridanus,” I said. “You
remember--our journey down that celestial river, dealing with
Rigel, that miles high eddywall, the Falls at Azha...all of that.”
“What are you talking about? Man, you were
hallucinating,” he said. “And look, there’s blood running down
your face and dripping off your chin. You took a hard shot
somewhere.”
I looked at him and wondered what kind of a joke he was
trying to bring off. I waited for a burst of laughter from him but it
never came and I was too shaken and exhausted to pursue the
matter any further. Several feet away I saw my boat rocking gently
against the sloping bedrock and I moved toward it; I knew there
was only one good way off the river and that was downstream. I
pulled its waterfilled mass from the river and flipped it over,
cockpit down. A stream of water spilled from the boat and
migrated down the rock, following small cracks that led back into
the river. I retrieved the breakdown from the stern and pieced it
together then collected the remainder of my gear--and wits--and
shoved off, cheating the difficult exit rapid that led out of the
chasm. Percy took the centerline, punching a large hydraulic and
shouting with glee as a lamina of water cleared his face.
Little conversation took place between us for the next
several miles. The gradient eased and I felt comfortable leading
through the Class III runout of the gorge. He began to hang
back--playing the numerous waves and small holes on the lower
section--and stopped altogether at one steep wave sculpted by
some concealed stonemason.
“I’ll be here for awhile,” he said. “You should go on
without me--and don’t wait for me at the takeout.”
I paddled away and as I approached a sharp bend in the
river, I took one last look upstream where I saw a shadowpuppet
carving to and fro on the hyaline wave, disappearing then
reappearing as it surfed in and out of the trough.
Class II chop made up the last mile or so of the run and I
finally came to a bridge that I recognized as being the takeout. I
eddied out and waited, and waited. I paddled to the shore and
exited my boat, taking my time, peering upstream in hopes that he
would round the corner, but he never came. I sat on the bank until
the evening’s first stars began to appear. I watched as a beautiful
meteor in a strange arc of ascension shot across the dusky dark
sky. I finally realized that he simply wasn’t coming. I felt no real
concern but I was puzzled by his disappearance. Perhaps he had set
camp somewhere nearby, I reasoned.
I shoved my boat and gear into the riverside bracken and
began the climb to the road, soon emerging back into civilization. I
heard the drone of a car engine and looked up to see headlights
approaching. I walked to the edge of the road and extended my
thumb.
* * *
EPILOGUE I have returned to Moria Gulf several times, either to
walk down to
where I met Percy that day, or bushwhack farther down the rim of
the gorge, hoping to glimpse the silver ribbon that thunders in the
farbelow. But I have never repeated a run of the river; it remains
patently dangerous for even the best. A few fringe riverheads still
paddle there, but only when the conditions are right; rumors of their
unexpressed adventures somehow make it back to a perceptive
few.
I have often thought about the marvelous journey that
began that day in the Gulf. Was it what Percy had called it after
pulling me from the base of the falls: a hallucination? Was it some
incredible dream conjured up by a stone addled and hypoxic brain?
Yet, how could the events that unfolded during our voyage have
taken place during those moments I was being pummeled under
the falls? No, what we did was no illusion; it was too visceral, far
too tactile to be dismissed as such. Ours was in fact a sojourn into
the vast reaches of the universe...and perhaps into the mind as
well. I am reminded of the words of the anthropologist Loren
Eiseley: The time has to be right; one has to be, by chance or
intention, upon the border of two worlds. And sometimes these
borders may shift or interpenetrate and one experiences the
miraculous.
And how does one reach, by intention, such a border? By
way of the wonderful craft--our magic carpets as Percy called
them--we ride into those ineffable realms that exist beyond the
familiar, and we need to touch those realms whenever possible.
We must also realize that our wonderful craft keep us afloat and
out of that vast sucking hole where tumble the homogeneous
masses; those who have forgotten--or never knew--that it is still
possible to take a great leap outside the commonplace and into a
province of grandeur and enchantment. If there is any parable
swirling in the fanciful waters of this story, it would be this.
Sometimes on a starsprent winter’s night I will gaze into
the sky. Orion is easy to find; a huge hourglass shaped figure
slowly arcing through the ecliptic, standing with shield and
club outstretched and the fiery Betelgeuse at his right shoulder. But
it is the meandering line of faint stars that trail off Orion’s left foot
that I look to, for that is Eridanus, The River. I behold its
course--an elegant question mark--until it bends away and
disappears into the southern hemisphere, and I wonder if Percy
paddles there still.
* * *
River Jack
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