Why I Felt I Must Do It Again

It was early morning on the last day of summer vacation in the mountains, and I rose early to take in the sunrise on the river. Having spent the last few days constructing a raft, as I had learned to do from one older and wiser, I felt confident that I could navigate the lazy waters of the nearby river. A soft breeze floated gently through the trees, still lush and green with no sign of autumn’s turning tide. The tiny black silhouettes of hundreds of birds against the orange and pink hue of early morning dotted the sky like stars at night.

As the morning progressed, the sun rose higher over the water, emitting warmth to the cold dark river. There was a profound silence at most every moment, with the exception of the usual background murmur of nature, which I had come to accept as silence. As I drifted along in that almost utter silence of nature, my mind drifted into reverie, feeling like an invisible man, in a hidden cove, out of sight and mind, totally alone. Far in the distance, I could hear the barely audible sounds of tumbling thunder, rolling along the sky like the vibrations from a desert tumbleweed against the parched earth.

As I made my way further along the shapeless snake of the river’s edge, my reverie became a sudden slap in the face as the water began to swirl and crash all around me. While enraptured by my conjured, boastful bliss, the forces within the water had built up around me, and my tiny raft began to creak and pop under the pressure of the angry river.

I had all I could do to prevent myself from being tossed over into the roaring mass, which had now grabbed my craft and was throwing it about violently without discretion. I could feel my heart pounding rapidly against my chest, and the grasp I had on my normal calm began to resemble my tenuous grasp on my float. Putting my life in the hands of the river’s raging waters now felt like a consequence of an insult to the power of nature itself, for which I now would answer. My fate was suddenly at the mercy of an uncaring, unfeeling, inhuman mass of water. As the pace quickened, my mind was working furiously for a way out.

In the midst of my panic, descending like a gift from heaven, a long overhanging branch appeared directly on my path ahead–a path which now clearly was leading toward an abrupt change in altitude at the edge of an unexpected waterfall. I would only have one very brief opportunity to grab on to it, because once I let go of the raft, there would be no where else to go. My breathing was rapid and frantic. My mind was racing in its calculating of the trajectory and timing, until finally, with a true leap of faith, I flung myself upward as I grasped for the life-saver.

I felt my hands clasp desperately on the wood of the tree’s extension, as I watched the last few moments of horizontal travel by my raft before it plummeted over the falls.

Reluctant at first to move, I could feel my stomach slowly begin to relax, and I let out a long, low whistle. I gradually found the strength to navigate to the bottom of the tree, and when I set foot once again on solid ground, I laid down on the grassy mound near the water’s edge with my eyes closed and my heart open. The phenomenal world seemed to evaporate into a wisp of remembered steam floating aimlessly away from my awareness.

Standing at last, trudging along the path back to the campsite, I cast myself with reckless abandon into the uncertainty of what might yet be, and wondered… Why I felt I must do it again……