Water is the Heart
In Wicca, water represents the power of the heart, the power of love. As a double Scorpio, water has always been my favorite element, my home base. When I feel sad, immersing myself in water—particularly wild water, rivers, lakes or oceans—is a sovereign remedy. So it made sense that my son and I went on a five-day river rafting trip down the Rogue River in Oregon the summer after my husband died. Our family vacations had always been of the adventurous sort—skiing, river rafting, camping.
This stretch of the Rogue in Oregon is mostly classed as a 3-4. But there was one long stretch of white water rapids classed as 4-5 called Blossom Bar. For those of you who don’t understand river classifications, 3 is moderate, 4 is intense, 5 is extremely intense, 6 is unrunnable.
We were assigned to a female guide who had only two years of guiding experience, and none of the other people assigned to our boat had ever done white-water rafting before, so I was fine with Zach’s choice to opt out of the boat and into an inflatable kayak. But a few days into our trip, when we reached Blossom Bar and scouted it, I became terrified.
In whitewater rafting, when you reach a large rapid, you get out of the boats and survey the scene. The guide points out the whirlpools and other death traps you want to avoid and shows everyone the route we want to go down.
This set of rapids was by far the longest and most intense I had ever seen. Think horizontal waterfalls, with a few vertical ones thrown in, lots of boulders and dangerous snags and whirlpools that looked like aquatic tilt-a-whirls. I tried to persuade Zach to get in the raft. I did not want him kayaking down this stretch of water. He simply didn’t have enough experience. But he insisted, and as he was strapping on his helmet, I didn’t have the heart to interfere with his fourteen year old confidence. Since my husband’s death I had become very frightened about my son’s well-being. But I tried to hide my irrational terrors, not wanting to hold Zach back or damage him in some way.
So I consented, against my better judgment. Seeing him, poised and eager in his kayak, I found myself praying harder than I had ever prayed in my life.
But the rafts were going down first, so I turned my attention to my guide’s voice and doing everything she said.
Unfortunately, our raft quickly spun out of control and went down the wrong chute and into a whirlpool. Our guide shouted instructions and we paddled furiously to break the water’s grip. Suddenly the whirlpool sucked the part of the raft I was sitting on underwater and I tumbled, ass over teakettle, into the churning foam. The current tumbled me under the raft. I popped up on the other side and immediately tried to haul myself back in the raft. “Help me! Get me in!” I shouted. “Grab her!” the guide yelled.
If someone goes in the water, the first thing you do is pull them back on the boat as quickly as possible. The sides of a raft are high, so the people in the raft need to grab the ‘swimmer’ by the life jacket and haul them back in. We had practiced this in calm water. But the women on the raft were paralyzed, rigid, staring straight ahead. They made no move to help me. Rafters call this condition ‘brain-freeze’. I made my way to the front of the boat, where the solitary male paddler grabbed me by the life vest. The guide was struggling to maneuver the boat through the whirlpool with several of her paddlers no longer following instructions. “Hold on to her!” the guide shouted, “Don’t let go!”
Then the boat surged forward and ran me over. But the guy held on, as he had been told to. Unfortunately, he was now holding me firmly under the boat. I fought my way free and again came to the side of the boat. “Don’t hold me under the boat! Get me into the boat!”
“Grab her! Hold on!” the guide called. He grabbed. The boat ran over me. And once again, the guy held me in a death grip. The problem was, I was underwater, so it really was a death grip for me. I struggled fruitlessly. He held on. Finally I bent one of his fingers back. He let go. Again I thrashed to the surface. “Don’t hold me under the water!” I looked at the four women in the boat, but none of them made eye contact or made any move to help me. I swam back to the guy. “Grab and pull!” I implored. He grabbed and tried to pull; the boat surged forward and once again I was being held underwater by a man who appeared to be determined to drown me.
When I finally freed myself this time I broke away from the boat, having given up on rescue from that particular crew. It wasn’t that far to shore. I thought I could make it. But a wave of water hit me like a charging elephant, carried me down a small waterfall and thrust me down deep. My foot got jammed in a crevice between two rocks. My head was about six feet under water.
Every experienced rafter knows that foot entrapment is the way most people die on rivers. If you fall out of the raft and can’t get back in, you are supposed to put your feet up and head down the rapids feet first, keeping them high. This keeps them out of traps and helps bounce you off rocks without incurring brain damage. But my thought that I could make shore had put me in the wrong position when I got swept down the waterfall.
I yanked at hard as I could. My foot did not budge. I tried to collapse down to where I could undo my sandal. But the force of the water was too strong, pulling my upper body away from my foot. I grabbed a branch sticking out of the pile of rocks, thinking I could use it to haul myself down hand over hand. But the branch was too saturated with water and was flaccid as a reed. It too was caught by the current.
I had not had time to get a full breath before being plunged under the water. And time was running out.
A lovely vision shimmered into view. It is hard to describe in human terms, but the closest I can come is to say that it was like a beautiful, emerald green door. It was so lovely, I stopped yanking on my foot to stare at it. It glistened and wavered in the water. And then I knew that if I went through that door, my husband Elie would be on the other side. I yearned for that reunion with all my heart. All I had to do was take one breath of the sweet surging water all around me and the key to that door would be mine.
You are hallucinating, a coldly rational part of my mind said. You are hallucinating, and that means you are running out of oxygen. What about Zach?
Zach! Oh shit oh shit oh shit! What would happen to Zach if he lost his only remaining parent? Think! Think! What haven’t I tried? I looked around, ignoring the green door and the way my heart wanted to dissolve towards it. I noticed that the current was stronger up higher, closer to the surface, than it was lower. Suppose I stretched out my arms as wide as possible and tried to use the force of the current to rip me off the rocks? It would probably break my ankle, but I had run out of alternatives. I stretched as high and wide as I could reach, willing the river to free me.
The Velcro straps on my left sandal gave way. I spun to the surface, exhaled—and plunged into wave after wave. I got my feet up. My face was only out of the water a third of the time but each time I saw blue sky I took a deep breath. I bounced off rocks and snags with my feet. Somewhere behind me I heard my guide yelling, “Don’t swim, don’t swim—wait until I tell you!”
Sun slashed at my eyes through white foam. Blue sky. White foam. Water up my nose. Water in my lungs. Breathe now! Don’t breathe. Breathe now! It was so cold that when my leg jarred painfully into a boulder I wondered if it were broken and I was just too numb to tell. Finally I heard my guide yelling, “Swim! Swim now! Hard to the left!”
I turned over and swam harder than I had ever swum. A tiny cove opened up between boulders. I kicked ferociously into it and hauled myself up on a low rock. I wanted to check for broken bones but my hands were cramped into frozen claws. My river guide pulled up to the rocks and tied the raft to some bushes. She checked my body with practiced hands. My right leg was turning black from bruises, and the left ankle, was swelling. “I can’t believe you went all the way down Blossom Bar and didn’t break anything!” she exclaimed.
But something had broken. My self-pity, my suicidal yearnings. My refusal to embrace a life that no longer contained my beloved. The opportunity to die was before me and I chose life. At that time I couldn’t yet embrace my own life as something worth living for, but I could commit to my son. It’s easy to die for love. Living for love is harder. But living for love—for your self, for another, for life itself—is what grows us a soul.