About Rivers and Rescues
I do love the river.
The picture for this post is lovely. Check out the colour of the water — how do we even describe that! It is taken from Kananaskis Lake. I’d have taken a river-picture, but the river is too fast; there is too much going on for me to take a picture. Different than leaving the shores of the lake, pushing off from the banks of the river is a bit of a heart-stopper. It is a pushing out from safe places right into beauty. All the ingredients of being wide awake. When I was first learning to stay upright in that awake, wild place, my kayak instructor said:
#1: When heading into current, dig in. Don’t hesitate, and don’t stop to analyze what’s going on. Go. Pick a spot on the far bank and head for it hard.
#2: Angle is everything. Pick your line.
#3: Lean into the current. You’ll feel like you're capsizing, but it’s what’ll keep you upright, Trust what is counterintuitive.
Life lessons indeed.
I’ve been thinking about what happens when we hesitate, misjudge the angle, lean away from instead of into that which is hard. And when it all goes wrong, I wonder about what it means to rescue, and to be rescued. About that thin space between being in big trouble and sitting safely on the banks, taking pictures.
The term “liminal space”, which seems to be very sophisticated, is what this is. Smart people I know use this term comfortably, and for a long time I hadn’t a clue what it meant.
I do now.
This summer, June 3rd to be exact, my friend Amy and her nine-year old daughter Juni and I paddled into the liminal currents of that in-between space. The space between two drowning teenagers and our kayaks, the space between currents pulling us downstream and two boys sinking into cold. Liminal: that in-between an abstract but too-real space between a bright June evening of fun and a wreck in-process.
After, the Global News Headline read: “Calgary Mom Helps Rescue Men from Bow River in Her Kayak”. Carolyn Kury de Castillo reported it. Before she got her story, Amy hurried to change her clothes and clean her yard. What ought a rescuer look like? Not sure if that time between the call for the interview and Carolyn showing up, between a normal afternoon and re-living that evening on the river, was “liminal” — maybe.
Teenagers jumping off the railway bridge in Bowness into the Bow River during Grad week is supposed to be fun. But jumping without a lifejacket into extremely cold water running high and fast is not fun, especially if you cannot swim. I’m pretty sure about that.
Rescue, the verb, means “to free from danger or violence”. Juni knows that we did a rescue. We did a thing. We did a thing to persons in a place. That’s a lot of nouns hanging on to that verb. She learned all about nouns and verbs this year in school.
Fast forward to interview day with Global News: Juni tucks her mom’s hair behind her ear as Carolyn adjusts her mic. A whole different kind of rescue, for moms on TV.
And, for the camera, Amy and Juni tell all the verbs about the river rescue.
Juni knows that her mom wrapped her lifejacket around her paddle and plunged it into the current until she felt the boy, caught him under his arm and pulled him up. After paddling herself across the current and pulling her pink kayak up onto the banks of the Bow, Juni watched her mom deliver the boy from danger. She held up her pink paddle so we would know where to aim for when we had our boys.
As for me, I could not find the boy I’d gone after. Rewind. You can do that – rewind – I discovered, in liminal spaces. The pieces don’t always join together in logical, left-brain, rational ways. Maybe the layman’s terms for liminal is surreal. The time between the 'what was' and the 'next’. We go back to that time to try and make sense of transition, of not knowing. It was slow and fast at the same time for me, that day in June. The same is true now as I go back… I feel the speed of the water pressing my kayak away, feel the cold-shock temperature of the Bow – a surprise given the sun’s sparking on its surface. I thought it would be warmer. Gentler.
Before. Amy and Juni and I were talking about inane things, like how uncomfortable Juni’s sit-on-top kid’s kayak was and what it would take for her to be hard core enough for Amy to buy her a grown up one. I remember Juni saying her legs were going to sleep because she was like the letter T with no back-rest.
We debated what Amy could do to re-jig Juni’s kayak.
And then a teenager yelled from the shore, “Hey kayakers! They are drowning!”
I do not remember looking at Amy or Juni. I think we all switched gears. Channels. Does Netflix have liminal?
We were all three paddling to one bobbing head and then Amy yelled “Go Left! There’s another one!”
So I cut left. I did not see him, so I picked an imaginary point in the now dark water… No sun sparkling….
Across the current, and yes, his face and waving hand come up, and then up again… but lower now with this next bob. And the next. Lower yet. Just up to his wrist. Dig, dig. Don’t hesitate or think. Pick the angle. Lean into the current. I focused on the place where the tips of his fingers had disappeared. By the time I got where the water ran hard, there was no sign he’d been there. Ever. I spun my kayak over the spot, the liminal spot, and then saw, like a faded picture, his sinking.
Stop.
Liminal.
Seeing a boy sinking.
Time stops and there is no time and it is all fluid and flowing (no pun intended) and there is no panic in this strange liminal space. Only peaceful actions. Do this, then do this, and this. No thought about which action or how. Just “free from danger. From violence of cold current.”
Below the water, his arm is still raised, but he is not kicking for the surface. There is no more bobbing that I can count on for a second chance. Later I will think about the timing of arriving when the sinking is within reach. Now, I lean over, reach in, grasp his forearm, dig my fingers into his flesh. But the current acts like a big person holding my waist and using its full strength to pull me back… and this boy, he has no strength left, is not even gripping my arm in a mutual lock, and without any protest from him or the river, his arm, then wrist, then fingers slide through my hand. And the current pulls my boat sideways, father away from his sinking.
Stop.
Liminal.
He’s a boy. 18. And it’s over.
Except in liminal space you don’t think. At all. Its intuitive and slow and strange.
Fast forward, we are on the bank and Juni gets towels to pile and wrap around him. He is not okay. We, or me, do a full body press; as in, I wrap my legs around his hips, pull his head to my collarbone and try to cover as much of his back with my arms as I can. Splay my fingers for maximum surface area of warm on cold. Say, not that he cares, but just for the record, “sorry if this is weird.”
The river rescue boat comes. All three boys live (yes, there was another rescue happening on the other side of the river.)
There is more.
I was rescued in this river. My kayak upside down and hurtling down the current. That was a few years ago, after my kayak instructor gave the three lessons about staying upright when it’s wild.
And.
There are other rescue stories. Ones that happen we are not in the river.
Drownings and liminal places.
More about that later.
In the meantime, I will keep pushing off the banks into beauty and awake. And I will try to remember:
#1: When heading into current, dig in. Don’t stop to analyze it. Go. Pick a spot on the far bank and head for it hard. And.
#2: Angle is everything. Pick your line.
#3: Lean into the current – you’ll feel you're capsizing but it’s what’ll keep you upright. Trust what is counterintuitive.