The river was her refuge. She missed spending time on it. With the sun warming her back and the cool breeze off the water caressing her face, she felt the faint ember of something she thought had died a long time ago stir deep inside of her. Was it hope? She wasn’t sure.
As she immersed herself in the present moment, the dull ache she carried from the past and the anxiety of an uncertain future dimmed in the sparkling light that danced from sky to water. She pulled with the left oar and pushed with the right, easily spinning the raft to give herself a rotating panorama of mountains, trees, rocks, river, and sky. Then in one fluid movement, she straightened out into a downstream heading.
She felt a sharp pain in her right ear and instinctively reached for it. She cringed as the pressure increased. She swallowed hard trying to release the pressure, but there was no relief. She’d had horrible ear infections as a child and had ruptured her right eardrum, but what would cause this sudden pain?
She became aware that the sound of rushing water was increasing. The noise drew her attention away from the pain. Something was wrong.
She knew this river at all water levels. There was nothing ahead to cause this volume of sound. The noise was rapidly becoming a steady roar. She felt the raft beginning to pick up speed. She was being pulled downstream by an invisible force concealed beneath the water’s smooth surface.
The gentle breeze she had been enjoying just moments before was increasing in intensity. The wind had changed directions and now rushed in the same direction as the river. As the turbulence of the water increased, eruptions of whitewater began to roil up from beneath the river's surface.
Caitlyn rose to her feet, oars in hand, straining to see through the trees that obscured the rapid around the bend ahead of her. As she stood, the frothing water and gusts of wind pulled the raft sideways. She lost her footing landing hard in the raft as it hit a wave that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.
The raft rose up precariously on its right tube, threatening to pitch itself over. Caitlyn threw her weight towards the high side of the raft forcing it to slide down the menacing wave. Her only thought was to keep the raft upright. As the raft flew over a wall of water, she found herself descending into a sea of churning white water surrounded by building waves. She dug into the water with all her strength using her oars to brace against the wind and waves.
There was an eddy just before the bend in the river, a calm pool of water sheltered from the main channel by rocks along the shore. It would be her only chance to escape the roar ahead of her.
She dug into the turbulence with her oars again, and again, and again. With each stroke, her body moved forward and back as the oars bit into the froth ahead her. She pulled herself through the heaving water abandoning the stability of hitting the waves head on and cutting a sharp angle towards shore. The oars became extensions of her arms, propelling her forward and bracing her against the waves that now battered her broadside.
As she hit the eddy line, the raft lurched sideways wrenching one of the oars from her hands. It popped out of the oar frame and was swept downstream. Caitlyn fought against the river with the single oar that remained, spinning the raft further into the eddy and closer to the shore. When she felt the oar hit bottom, she leapt into the shallow water grabbing the bowline. She began pulling the raft towards shore, a tug of war with the strange winds that fought to drag her back into the boiling cauldron of the main channel.
The wind seemed to be taking on the properties of water. Caitlyn turned her back to it and pulled with both hands on the bowline. Wind funneled down both banks of the river whipping up more white-capped waves. As the opposing winds and waves met in the center of the channel, they exploded in a towering torrent before changing direction and rushing down river.
Taking a breath was increasingly difficult. Caitlyn’s vision blurred as the wind hurled fine sand stinging her arms and legs and enveloping her in a beehive of activity. She reached the shore and began dragging the raft out of the water. She stumbled backwards as the wind suddenly released its fierce grip on her.
She froze as the roar of the river began to ebb, and the force of the wind stopped as abruptly as it had begun. In the same moment, she felt another stab of pain as the pressure in her right ear released with a pop. With a river of adrenaline coursing through her veins, every fiber of her body was screaming.
With the cessation of the wind, the tossing branches of the trees along the shore began to slow their frenzied dance leaving only the sounds of rustling leaves and creaking branches. The turbulence and froth in the river began to dissipate as the water settled back into its normal state. Caitlyn realized that the hammering she heard was from the blood that was pounding through her temples.
She dragged the raft out of the water onto a beach of fine white sand pummeled to softness by centuries of rushing water. As her river sandals settled into the sand, the warmth of it touched her icy feet, and she realized her legs were trembling from the exertion of the last few minutes. With the glycogen in her muscles depleted and now no apparent danger to run from, she abruptly sat down on the outside tube of the raft. She stared warily at the river before her.
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