« PART 4

For three days Marco and I ate pasta with salami, cheese, carrots, garlic, and onions. We drank coca tea with so much sugar we couldn’t sleep. When Marco’s bandages started to stink, I boiled them and redressed his wound twice a day to fight infection. We talked about rivers. The big ones: the Zambezi, the Futa, the Slave. We reassured ourselves that we’d seen bigger water. The distinction we left unsaid was that some rivers carry their water better than others. If large volume rivers are voluptuous, then the Tambopata was morbidly obese.

We held our ground on the thin grey line between the river and jungle. One night I laid in my tent, naked on top of my sleeping bag. I couldn’t sleep. “Marco?” I whispered through the walls of our tents.

“What, Shuggi?”

“I want to go home.”

“Just make home wherever you go.”

I rolled over and thought of the old Maasai man who said to me once, “Melakua ang inchu”—”You’re never far from home as long as you’re alive.” He taught me that home is in the heart and mind’s eye. Home is a place, but it is also the strength you take on your peregrinations. It is roots grounded in place, it is wings governed by no place. His father had taught him this when he was young, becoming a lion hunter. Home is never far as long as you’re alive.

By 5am on the third day, the water hadn’t dropped at all. In fact, the river had been on the rise the whole time. I could not sleep through the thunderous sound of the river shifting the massive boulders of its bed. The rain hadn’t stopped in all the time we waited and it did not look like it would break any time soon. The food that we bought two weeks before in Cusco was dwindling. Downstream was the only way out. Marco and I decided to go. The understanding that I only had one option terrified me, but let me step forward with confidence. That too was the only option.

I unwrapped Marco’s bandage and my gut turned at the pussy infection. I boiled his bandage again and put it back on wet since it would get wet anyway. He packed his bag and tent while I rigged to flip, pulling the cam straps extra tight. I pulled Marco’s kayak down to the river and helped him in. I tried to remember everything I had ever learned or been told about whitewater, chiefly that, even if I flipped, never let go of the boat. On many rivers you can see driftwood and other deposits high in the trees. We were already high in the trees, and I saw no indication that the river had ever run higher. As I climbed in, a tree slammed into the side of my boat, its roots raw and wild, slapping my face.

The light was flat and the forest hung over the water. The rapids were continuous. Dogged current and walloping waves funneled into a mess of holes the size of buildings. The holes and falls swallowed half the river in places. Out of options, I read and ran without hesitation. My life depended on my ability to turn fear into focus. My mind and body had to be quicker than the river.

There were no lines in the rapids. The river sucked my boat back into holes and surfed me there, spinning the raft before spitting me out. I bent my oar and heard the metal frame flex and crack. River waves are usually consistent, but these waves behaved like a sea in storm. Surges lifted me off my path and set me in the meat of the whitewater I was trying to skirt.

Our precious napkin showed the landmark that would indicate the end of the gorge and the beginning of the flats, a boulder the size of a two-story American house and a tributary entering there on river left. As the river screamed around a left bend, I saw it. Our landmark rock stuck out about three feet. It was the first rock we’d seen since the Rio Colorado and on any other day I might have missed it. I couldn’t believe there was a rock, the size of an American house buried there under the water.

The tributary on river left was blowing its banks. I blasted up on the pillow of water piled on the upstream side of the boulder and slid off it to the right. A short while later the river calmed and flattened out like a fat snake in the sun. I tucked my oars under my knees and looked up for the first time. Marco started to play in his kayak. We talked a little and started watching for birds. The canyon was done.

PART 6 »

SARAHLEE LAWRENCE is a river rafting guide and experiential educator who lives an adventurous life running rivers, researching riparian environments, training horses, farming and writing... {more»}