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Camping is a nice thing, but it lacks the natural forming of friendships that a rafting trip provides. When you go camping, mostly you just want to get some peace and quiet. So you drive two or three hours, pull into a park where you’re directed to squeeze into a driveway roughly half the size of the one you have at home, to a patch of dirt and rocks with some pretty weeds, cigarette butts, and a death pit/ barbecue grill sporting the remnants of Jeffrey Dahmer’s last 18 meals. You get out of your car, stretch and breathe in the fresh air, pop a beer, set up your tent, throw some chemically treated starter logs in the pit, strike that match, sit back in your lawn chair, and inhale with fantastic satisfaction that cigarette as you marvel at how you’re so at one with the yourself and the universe. Just you and nature, and maybe, just maybe, a smile and a nod at the family of nine running and shouting and setting off stink bombs from the 30 foot metal trailer in the lot next to yours. They’re there. You’re here. That’s camping. Unless you’re like my mother, Valerie, and you don’t just say “hello”. No. You join them, forcing your own family to become best friends with them for the next three days, even if you find them utterly loathsome.
People go rafting to be at one with nature, but they go also for a thrill, and the comprehension that they will be sharing their experiences with other people. They go knowing that they have no control over what kind of strangers they will be teamed up with on a rubber boat with their butts within three inches of each other for six inescapable hours. Surely, you think, they will be like you – adventurous, interesting, interested, fun, smart and cool. That could even be one of the reasons you go -- to meet other interesting people like yourself. Like my mother says, you don’t want to meet your future husband in a bar, you want to find one doing healthy activities like rafting because it’s a sign of emotional well-being because they’re not, you know, drunk. One hopes.
So I went rafting with all this in mind, except for the husband seeking thing because everyone knows you don’t find a husband when you’re consciously looking – you only find someone else’s when you’re unconscious. But I had been feeling kind of down and this seemed like just the thing to give my spirit a rattle -- feel some life around me and enjoy some interesting conversations other than the usual “hey lady, you wanna buy some crack? No? Well screw you!”
My friend, Kelly, and I packed the back of my Ford Explorer with the usual camping necessities – the tent, the sleeping bag, the Coleman stove. The wine, brie, steaks, strawberries. The queen-size airbed with foot pump, pillows, slippers and Walter, my stuffed red dog with the orange and black spotted nose. And we headed off to Coloma State Park, the grassless Mecca for would-be and have-been rafters. That night, after two hours of pumping up my bed, we supped on succulent steaks and sipped a delicious Merlot as we chatted with anticipation about our upcoming adventure. It was amazingly quiet and we felt lucky that we had two empty lots on either side of us. I was still just a camper at that moment, not having yet rafted, so I was in the solitude and silence mode.
We were up at dawn. The airbed had leaked and our hipbones and elbows were gradually impaled by gravel and pieces of glass. I had found a new method of getting to work on time. Toss the alarm clock, I said to myself, this works much better. At 10:00 after some delicious coffee and a breakfast of eggs and bacon we drove the five minutes over to the middle fork of the American River where the rafting company awaited us. The Whitewater Connection representative teamed us all up quickly into four different boats where we strapped on our lifejackets and, with barely a hello to any of our mates, started an easy float down the river led by our delicious “Kiwi” (as the New Zealander referred to himself) guide, Mark. Sigh, what a man.
So I introduced myself to each person on the boat. Sitting in front of me at the head of the boat was this incredibly handsome French man in California for a six-week visit. His name was Olivier, and having grown up in France myself, I greeted him in French and asked about his vacation. He was so happy – my having been the first person he had met in America who spoke his language. I haven’t been attracted to anything male in the last year that hasn’t been neutered or didn’t meow and suddenly I have two men whom I could really love right there in that little boat. No, I don’t mean in the boat.
Behind me was my friend Kelly, and across from Handsome Frenchman and us was the Brown family – wife Audrey, husband Milton, 9-year-old son Jamie and 7 year old daughter Melissa. I was a little worried about our safety driving this thing with the two kids, but my fears about them were quickly assuaged when Mr. Brown asserted his leadership with an impressively angry sounding squeal to Jamie to put his hat on.
“But I left my hat at the camp, Dad.” Jamie explained.
Dad’s superior understanding of the gravity of the situation became increasingly apparent and loud. I responded pettily as I was very jealous of his natural sense of authority, his keen focus and, mostly, the nasal quality of his voice.
“Look,” I interrupted the man; “He left it. We’re not going back, so stop yelling and let’s enjoy ourselves.” See why I feel ashamed?
In fact, the kids were great. They rowed hard and strong, they listened to instructions from the guide, and they were obviously enjoying themselves. I wondered if part of their enjoyment included the energetic alternating witty repartee from their parents. “Isn’t this fun Melissa isn’t isn’t isn’t it… do you like it are you happy we brought you here isn’t this fun Melissa? JAMIE! Don’t splash your sister! We’re here to have a good time, dammit! Stop it! Stop it!”
We all enjoyed it very much.
Handsome Frenchman, on the other hand, turned into Prissy Frenchboy who seemed to think that this was a Disneyland ride – It’s a Small World After All – and that he didn’t have to do any actual real rowing – that it was just for show. This embarrassed me in front of my cute Kiwi guide, Mark, who had instructed us that we had to coordinate our rowing and we had to row strong, we had to row deep and that the rowers in the front of the boats would lead the pace. Well, Frenchboy seemed to think that speech was just for show too, like the funny Disney guides on the boat ride through the “jungle”, so he would do one little flicking rowing thing, and look at the clouds, and leave his paddle dragging in the water for me to hit with my oar as I rowed again. Mark patiently instructed us again -- like a kindergarten teacher telling a 5-year-old for the tenth time that drawing on the wall is wrong. But it was all Frenchboy’s fault! Flying through the next set of rapids he held his oar over his head and fell backwards on me. I caught him – me and my 102-pound body – and pushed his 170-pound body back to the upright position. No more Mr. Nice Chick for me. As soon as Mark yelled at us to row, row, row and Olivier just sorta smiled and dipped his oar in, I whacked it with my own oar and hollered at him in French to row faster! And row stronger! Go! Go! Go! Go! I screamed. I had control now! He looked at me like I was insane. I was, and I liked it, so I screamed again. And it worked. Where there was only chaos, I created order.
Kelly and I drove back to our camp, exhilarated and exhausted, looking forward to a relaxing dinner by the quiet river. The two lots next to us had been filled by five lovely trailers, out of which spilled about 35 happy campers; the Buckwalter clan led by their matriarch, Kathy, who came right over to us, introduced herself, let us know in 15 seconds that she was an ex-alcoholic (no, she didn’t say “recovering”), and that she had had plastic surgery and liposuction on every single part of her body.
“Yup,” she said, “You think I’d have boobs this solid at my age? My doctor is an artiste. There’s no way you would guess that I’m 57.”
You’re right, I thought to myself; I thought you were 60. She called us Beverly Hills girls and said she was a real country girl, and she spoke with this southern country accent, but she only lived 30 miles south of Coloma. She left our company after detailing how her last lipo sucked a whole gallon of cellulite right out of her butt. I thanked her for sharing with us. It seems the Buckwalters went there every year to go rafting, but being true country folks, they didn’t need no stinkin’ guide. They had their own rafts.
