Do It In a Skirt: Rescue a Damsel in Distress

I’d just like to say: Do it in a skirt. Whatever it is.

It doesn’t seem to matter what I’m doing, from running rivers, to farming, to hiking, to biking, to running… I just have more fun in a skirt. It’s something about my legs being free, or maybe (speaking of Chi) the skirt opens the connection to the circulating life energy inherent in the earth.

I’d like to share a series of odes to the skirt in a gesture of thanks to Athleta for giving us skirts and skorts for almost any activity we do.

Day 5: Tamarisk Coalition remote data collection team actively monitoring the progress of a biological control agent, the tamarisk leaf beetle, in its decimation of the invasive tamarisk tree.

Drifting lazily, for the flows were easily taking us our thirty miles in a half a day, I lean off the bow, sweeping overhanging trees with my bug net. Suddenly in a deep thicket of tamarisk snarl we hear a rustle and see what Peter first thinks is a porcupine in a ball of dry grass. But I see the needful eye of a cow in distress.

“We have to rescue it!”

“Rescue what?!” Peter asks.

“The cow,” I squeal.

“Cow?? You mean that porcupine in the grass?”

“No! I made eye contact. We have to help it. Get the throw bag! Eddy out!”

“Are you serious??”

“Yes!”

The wall of tamarisk at the river’s edge is so thick, but we find a tiny break and Peter pushes us into the bank in one valiant effort. I leap ashore. While I tie up the boat, Peter cracks a cold Coors.

“Aren’t you coming with me?” I ask.

“Who’s gonna rescue you?” he says flippantly.

Considering what I would actually do when I find the cow, I ask Peter to throw me the rope. Cold beer in hand, he grabs the rope and says, “Can’t let you have all the fun. Let’s find us a cow!”

So now what do we do? I tie my Athleta 2-in-1 Changing Skirt up in a knot around my waist and we scramble up a loose embankment of mud and rock. Heading upstream through cactus and scrub we yell for the cow. “Cow! Where are you cow!?” We peruse the shore, looking deep into the tamarisk morass.

“I see it!” I yell to Peter, who was farther down the bank.

“Really? What, the porcupine??”

“No, the cow you nit wit. Drink your beer and git over here. And bring the rope.”

We drop to our hands and knees and crawl through the thick dry jungle of tamarisk. “Do we have everything we need?” I ask.

Peter holds up his Coors and says, “I’ve got all I need. A beer and a cowgirl; one for help and the other for entertainment—not sure which is for what.”

As we near the cow begins to struggle, only to reveal how trapped it really is—legs caught in tamarisk, belly deep in cold Colorado River water that is so high because of the spring runoff (twenty-nine-thousand cubic-feet-per-second, to be exact). We approach cautiously from the side with soothing voices and the cow stops struggling momentarily. We pull a little on the tamarisk branches but the cow is still stuck. Upon further investigation, the cow has only one way out—into the river.

Peter says, “Tie the rope to its neck and pull it in the river while I hoot and holler back here.”

“Well, if I tie the rope to it, how am I gonna get the rope off of it?” I look at the cow suddenly thinking this was a horrible idea on my part. “We can’t take it off in the river because a swimming cow is dangerous. And on shore it’s wild and it’s gonna take off running with the rope.”

“I got an idea.” Peter grabs the rope. “I’ll tie a releasable hitch mid-rope. We’ll pull with one end, and once she’s free I’ll pull the other end to release the hitch, drop one end, and reel it back in as she swims away.”

I think about this for a second and look at the silly cow. “How are you gonna pull it in the river?”

“Well, I’ll crawl out on the tamarisk limbs and pull until she comes free and then I’ll jump in the river and release the rope and swim back to the boat.” He seems suddenly quite confident in all of this.

“Alright, but we don’t have life jackets.” I am definitely making excuses. This is a stupid idea.

“Well,” Peter looks out at the fast, swollen river, “They only give you 16 pounds of flotation anyway and this is an emergency. This is the future beef of America!” I look at him askance. This was my idea anyway and I didn’t like him acting like some kind of hero all of a sudden. “And we’re strong doggy paddlers,” he adds. Oh gawd.

So, Peter approaches very carefully. Luckily the cow is tired and has clearly been stuck for a while, so is quite cooperative. He gently ties that releasable hitch to the cow’s thick black neck. Then he carefully maneuvers out onto the bending branches so he is waist deep in the water, but standing about ten feet from the cow’s head. “Ready?!”

I quickly consider all the options and realize we must go for it. I scramble to pull tamarisk branches from between her legs, careful not to get too close, while Peter pulls hard on the rope. The cow begins to budge, but isn’t trying hard enough. I take my cowboy hat off, swat her on the butt and yell, “Come on cow!”

“Hit it again, like you mean it!” Peter yells from the river in a very precarious position.

This time I  gave her a five star with my open hand and she starts to come loose.  Peter is yelling gibberish as he’s pulling the cow into the river with him. The cow takes the plunge as Peter releases his hitch. “Come on Sarah!!”

I re-tie my skirt and scramble out the limbs and into the brown water, chasing after Peter, a seventy-foot rope, and a cow. Two hundred meters we swim, back down to our boat, while the cow continues past to a downstream break in the brush. We heave ourselves onto the boat, crack two cold Coors, and begin to dry out and warm our cold bodies.

“High five!” I say with a deep breath.

Peter slaps my hand and assumes his cheesiest voice: “We, members of the Tamarisk Coalition, are doing more than just saving our rivers from the choke of tamarisk. We are keeping America’s hamburgers alive and well!”

SARAHLEE LAWRENCE is a 2008 featured athlete, river rafting guide and experiential educator who lives an adventurous life running rivers, researching riparian environments, training horses, farming and writing... {more»}