The Currents

The wide southern river was running brown and pushy, with frothy waves rising to cover the rocks. We were floating down at three times the normal flow and the rookie raft guides were trying to hide their wide eyes and cold sweat. The rafting guests didn’t quite know how different the river was today, but the skittish energy was animalistic and contagious. The rain was just starting where we were, but it had been raining hard and fast miles upstream. All the creeks that ran down the mountains were flooded beyond recognition, wood and debris changing their shape.

I was the photoboater, ahead of the group in my kayak, stopping to take photos of everyone at each rapid. The rain was getting stronger, so I packed up the camera and paddled behind as the safety boat instead. We were taking everyone out at the halfway point that day, as the rapids below were changing from fluffy Class 3 to technical Class 4+, or even Class 5 as an entire island would be underwater soon, making an almost river-wide recirculating hole.

My calloused hands found their niche on my paddle, pulling it smoothly through the water. My hips were snug in the cockpit of my boat, anticipating the next rapids and leaning into them with my whole body. It felt like dancing- timing strokes through the waves and currents, leaning into a new wave or pulling behind a rock to sit in the swirly flat water of its eddy while everything crashes by on either side, unfazed. Horizon lines brought puzzles to be solved, clues in the currents.

This job was low stress. With no undercut rocks or remote canyons, working here felt like going back to high school as a college kid. Nothing to prove. I picked it because I could live and work right next to the water, near the Appalachian Trail, and in the heart of the unpolished mountain town of Hot Springs. At 27, I had traveled all over the U.S. and Canada seeking whitewater, living out of a tent or a small trailer, not having rented an apartment in years. I had spent the last five years realizing that whitewater was the only lifestyle that appealed to me. I existed outside of social norms, photoboated to avoid guests, and stuck with other ‘lifers’ like me whose lives revolved around water levels, and the next epic adventure.

My 10+ years on rivers were easy to hide. I was a girl and looked young, so people rarely believed I had enough experience. During the last few years, I had marked down every river trip in my river log, from Georgia to Maine to Alaska. I wrote the date, river, water level, accomplishments, misadventures. My log became my most prized possession. It was my reminder of how much I loved this, even on the tough days. Even on the day I thought I was going to drown.

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I was kayaking that day with a few close friends on the Chattooga at low water. It had dry boulders, perfect beaches for sunning teenagers, but a darker past. That exact level was the most dangerous level in history for the ledge in the last rapid of the run. It turns into a natural low-head dam, and claims multiple victims each year. The three of us had forgotten to bring a rope, although we never forgot ropes in the Five Falls, the Class 5 section below, where there are cracks in the rocks, logs, and sieves.

Dani and Eric fired it up first, peeling out to clip the edge of the drop. I ended up bumping a rock underwater and lost my angle, getting pushed into the ledge hole sideways with no momentum. I flipped and rolled up, but was stuck, side-surfing in the hole. The unexpected power of it was chilling. I tried to use my paddle to reach the green water, but it was too far away. After rolling up four times, I knew I had to swim out before exhaustion set in, but then without my kayak, the force of the water held me down deeper. 

I felt so stupid on this sunny day, without even being pressured to run it. And suddenly there was no more air to get. With lungs burning like a balloon about to pop, I fought upwards for the next breath as my vision was going black. With one second near the surface, all I could do was look up before getting pulled under again. In that moment I saw yellow coming towards me. Eric was paddling towards the hole so I could reach his boat. I reached for his bow and he paddled backwards, steady but fast. He pulled me over to the shore and couldn’t stop saying, “Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit….”

I wrote a few stars in my river log that day:

*** 1.3 feet at Woodall, almost drowned in the hole. HOLY SHIT. ***

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We got on the schoolbus with the guests, fogging it up with excitement, and warmth after an unexpected day. They knew they had come through something now, tipped off by the trees bumping and rolling downstream.

 Our bus strained up the switchback road in the rain to get back to base. At the first downhill, there were traffic cones, police, and a firetruck blocking off the road. All of the water was pooling onto the road from the mountain runoff. On the side of the road, more water was funneling into a drainage ditch following the highway, right next to a small bungalow. The water had plowed through the small bridge to the house, racing over the yard and into a culvert below.

We pulled up and the police officer motioned to open the door. 

“Hey, do any of y’all have experience with whitewater rescue? We’ve got an older man and his family trapped in that house- he’s on oxygen and they can’t get past the creek.”

I had known right away it would be up to us.

“I do,” I said, telling him about my Wilderness First Responder certification, as well being a Swiftwater Rescue Technician.

He was happy to hear it, and said, “Alright, let’s go figure this out.” 

I looked at Jess, the third-year trip leader, and said, “Get help to get a raft down, and all guides get your throw bags and get your gear on again.” The mostly second year guides had stopped joking around. For the first time they were being called on to use their experience for something other than earning a tip.

I asked another guide to hold a rope and stay downstream of the broken bridge before the culvert, praying that his rope throwing was as good as his hatchet-throwing. 

We braced into the raft with the EMT and shoved off at a 45 degree upstream angle. With a few strong strokes, we ended up at their door. The flooding had already swept over the steps and into the house. The old man was standing at the door with his oxygen tank, his daughter holding his arm, both of them trying to stay strong. Her young son held her other hand and stared beyond us at the disappearing landscape of their yard . They had seen floods while living here before, but hadn’t thought today was going to be the day they´d have to leave.

We got them into lifejackets and into the raft, paddling as far above the culvert as we could. We ferried over, the guide upstream throwing us his rope. Jess caught it, swinging us into the eroding bank. With wary eyes darting upstream, we guided the family into the arms of the firefighters.

The man was too overwhelmed to talk, but his daughter did in her rural North Carolina accent. “Y’all were right on time!” she said, biting back tears with a wavering smile, hugging her son’s body tight.

She understood now the helpless raw fear from the suffocating pressure of nature and its unbiased destruction. The fear of depending entirely on someone else's decisions.

“You’re welcome ma’am, it seemed meant to be,” I nodded.

As we were packing the gear away, a reporter and his cameraman approached us for some comments. He looked at me in my soaked gear: long wet hair hanging down below my helmet, my sunbleached dry top, and my all my kayaking gear still on. A world away from the guys on his crew, his wife, his friends. He asked me how long I’ve been paddling whitewater.

“Well, I’ve filled up my third river log now, so about 10 years.”

"What's the most important thing to do in a situation like this?" he asked, maybe making a mental note.

"Keep your eyes on where you want to go, not on what you're trying to avoid. To commit and go with it."

“What’s your name miss?”

“Liz Hawley”

“Thanks miss Hawley, it was lucky you all were passing by.”

“Yeah, it really was.”

Getting back on the bus, the adrenaline mixed with relief made us giddy, with the guests asking for every detail, and all of us ready to go out for at least a few strong beers.

A few days later as I was hanging up my wet gear after work, the outpost manager came up to me with a small package.

“What’s this? “ I asked. I had a P.O. box and only a few friends and family members knew where to send me mail.

“No idea,” she said.

There was no return address and my name was written on it with the outpost’s address from the website. Inside there was a small black book with blank pages, a typed letter, and an untraceable counter check. For $20,000.

“Umm, wait, what? “ I said, never having seen a check for that much in my life.

“What is it?” she craned over my shoulder.

I read the letter out loud:

I saw on TV what happened with the flooding this week in Marshall.  My father passed away in a flash flood last year and I wish there had been someone like you there that day. Please keep this with one condition- use the book for your next river log.

Sincerely,

A Fellow Lifer

We all went out to the bar I worked at that night, soaking in the spirited music of all-girl string band. The rounds were on me and I hopped back behind the bar to get everyone’s drinks all night, dropping bills in the tip jar for my fellow waitresses, and buying a bottle of honey whiskey to share.

Looking around at the glow of the string lights, seeing the regulars, and getting lost in the music, I knew what I wanted to do. Half tipsy but with my mind made up, I decided I wanted to get certified as a swiftwater rescue instructor, so I could start my own company and offer free classes to river communities.

The fiddle, banjo, and mandolin’s sounds dipped and danced, curling melodies around my thoughts like smoke, daring me to dream all night long. Dream of a road made for more than just wandering, dream of a path cleared for more than just me.