Whitewater
“Wake up K.,” Sara called from the other room. I nestled my head further down in the downy pillow where it had sunken and stayed since the night before when I had laid my head down. The air trapped between the pillow’s feathers breathed out cool air as my peanut head lowered onto the puff, and the soft static of the feathers against the case made me want to stay there for days. “We’ve got to get going if we’re going to make it to the bakery.”
We were in Weaverville, had been since a few nights prior, redeeming a Christmas present I got for the fam — a trip whitewater rafting on the French Broad. Everybody was there — Clark, Sara, Reece, me — everybody except Reece’s partner Marnie, and all our cats and dogs. We stayed in the downstairs apartment of a lady’s house that we found on AirBnB, and it was AMAZING. A back porch overlooking lush gardens sprouting coreopsis, lamb’s ear, wild violets and ferns; couches and beds with the firmest give of memory foam and feathery rests; an open floor plan laid out in an “Z” shape with 12’ ceilings and lots of natural light; and the most thoughtful things left out for us to use if we so wanted — bookshelves full of fiction and nonfiction with guides relevant to the area, breakfast foods of homemade muffins, yogurt and granola in the kitchen, shampoo and body wash in the shower (this is always much appreciated,) and a first aid kit (which is probably required by the AirBnB folks, but seemed like a nice touch because I am clumsy.)
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We left for the rafting trip on Saturday morning, checked in and waited around for our PFD’s (Personal Flotation Devices,) and our helmets. Thank God we got them because I fell into the water on an especially jolting rapid and our raft guide had to lift me up and into the boat using the shoulder straps of my PFD. They say don’t panic when you fall out of the boat, just lift your legs up out of the water, but I panicked. Everything was going so fast. Later we stopped by a high rock jutting out of the side of the mountain, one that you had to climb up a pretty steep hill to get to, and the guides called out for anyone who wanted to jump off the rock and into the water. I was still a little shaken from the fall, but I almost climbed that rock for the jump because Reece did. To be clear, I didn’t. I waded out into the water, watching people jump here and there, and when issued a “last call” for jumpers, a woman scurried up the rock and flying squirreled into the water, face first. “Ouch,” I thought, but it was time to go so I made my way to the boat. Sara and Clark, 67 and 66 years old, respectively, came up behind me, Sara’s face beaming and a little red. “Did you go?!?” I asked, incredulously. “I did,” she sang, and only then did I realize it had been Sara flying off the cliff horizontally with her arms outstretched and her head reaching for the water, so that when she hit she smacked so hard it echoed and I thought she’d done a belly flop. Clark went off the cliff, too, feet first. “You are insane!” I told Sara, “are you okay???” The lights in her eyes told me everything, and her face in that helmet said more. “I’m fine!,” she spouted, melodically, “I think I hit face first, but I’m fine!” She never looked more like a little kid, and Clark never looked more like a mother. “Sara, you could’ve killed yourself!” he chastised her, to which she replied, “I did it because you did it.” Sara and Clark may not own Harleys, but they’re pretty f’ing crazy. Sara limped around all night, afraid she’d dislocated her shoulder, and Clark felt a bit dejected because we were not making such a big deal over him. The following day Sara’s soreness had subsided and Clark’s ego unleashed a madman and he was mean to me all day.
We fought. About what, I can’t recall, something about me projecting my insecurities about being 4 sizes too big (in my heart — wait, no, my body — wait, no, both) onto everyone in the car. We stopped in at the Well-Bred Bakery and Café and we ate, and Clark said something about how he wouldn’t just choose some trendy town to live in based on the food there, and I took it personally, both because of the “trendy” comment and because of the talk about food. (I have been looking around for a new place to live.) “The term “trendy” most of the time means there is a diversity of things to do in a place,” I whined, “and would you like to see my wish-list of things I would like to have in a town besides good food?? What are you saying??” I looked around at all the people, tried to think of other things to say, but tears welled up in my eyes and my cheeks felt flushed with anger. We finished eating and got in the car. “Furthermore, not everything I care about is food, even though it may look like it. I’m trying to do this! What I’m going through is hard!!” (Twenty minutes of silence ensued, laced by a stream of tears.)
“The colors have hardly changed at all yet,” said Clark. “It’s a little early in the season for that.” “I wonder if that’s because I am fat,” I said aloud, and I kept nonsensically interjecting fat comments into conversations for another 30 minutes or so, when Reece took matters into his own hands and started making outrageous comments to try to get us all to laugh. It took awhile, but it took. I started thinking Clark was talking about the leaves on the trees not changing yet because he saw potential in me. It was early in the season, he knew, but my fat would turn in its own time and fall right off my body. I warmed up.
There is more — the hiking, the swimming, the playing on the grounds of Little Switzerland where we stayed the last night — but it doesn’t really further the spirit of the whitewater. Turbulent and classy, the whitewater calls and must be met face first.
