Story part two

My head hit a rock. My helmet had been suck off in my initial dip into this beautifully deadly river. The bright light of a hard head impact and the jolt of my body, didn’t happen. I must have just grazed it. I was completely vulnerable in here. The frigid embrace of this lifelike mass living was a jail cell. My sentence was undecided but death seemed likely. My crime was taking lightly the power, the majesty, and the fear of the river. 

Perhaps it was not a death sentence. Maybe it was a gift, the opportunity to truly experience the river. That is why I got into kayaking in the first place. The gorgeous movement of the river is entrancing. Even as a kid I longed to experience the river. I wanted to travel under it, and see it from the perspective of the rocks. I wanted to swim in it, to dive in the current and see how it moved. 

In smaller rivers I welcomed the very experience that I was fleeing from. The rapids were smaller and very safe, but I love to feel the force of the water swing my legs over my head, and push my body this way and that. I would take off my life vest and dive to the bottom of a rapid. I would feel the water churn above me while I sank into the cool, dark, calm below. My senses were activated by the river. The cold, the dark, the churn, but mostly the noise. It was so loud under the surface. 

What was at one point a comforting roar that awakened the deep memories of a heart beat in my pre-birth days, was now a monster. This monster was not hiding in the closet anymore, it had swallowed me whole.

I had almost no fight left in me. Thankfully my head hit something else, yes the surface. I had enough time to breath and glimpse at my surroundings. There was some calm water just down to the right. With the advent of a goal, hope was energy to my bones. I was in a calm stretch and my head bobbed above the surface. The occasional wave would dunk me but this was welcomed compared to before. I am not sure what happened but I found myself sitting in a small pool. The fear and danger seemed like it was miles away. In a sense, it was. It took the river no time to sweep me miles from those initial rapids. I was far from my friends, my camp, and my boat. I had to plan what to do. But the river hadn’t taken me.