literature

Being Guided

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Literature Text

Being Guided

I opened my eyes to escape the hold of sleep, while the sun beamed into the tent through the shadows of tree branches. It must be around eight o' clock. It was warm this July morning. And the river hushed the campsite with a gentle shhhh sound, because a class II rapid flowed behind the tent. "The water is going to good today." I thought.

I tried to get out of the sleeping bag, but something prevented me.
In fact I couldn't feel my arm. Kate was still fast asleep on top of it. So I very gently removed my arm from under her and went outside of the tent.

I decided to have a wine cigar while I recovered feeling in my arm. Soon after, she emerged form our tent with that wonderful bed head. And we shared a walk down to the outpost; which was also my boss's house.

"Look, we've got a lot of guests today," said Roger, "go ahead and put nine rafts on the bus. The first trip goes out at ten o' clock at the latest!" Roger was our boss and owner of the rafting company. He was about five foot ten inches tall and big round belly, that if he even heard the word "fat" someone was getting fired. I was fired quite a few times; but those are different stories. Then Ewok brought out the pump to fill up the rafts up with tried to get everyone in good humor. He had been in the rafting business for fifteen years; knew every twist and turn of this river. He was a shorter man, being about five foot seven inches. Story has it that once upon a time he had a promising career in the NBA, and they used to call him Chewbacca, then someone dropped a raft on his and shortened him. Now they just call him Ewok.

Bill and I worked on filling up a raft while the other guides waited on us to finish. We'd finish, take our raft around, and lift it up on top of the bus while two others filled up another raft. Then we'd change out, all 10 of us. While Kate sat over on the porch rocking back and forth in a rocking chair; just watching us work.

After the rafts were filled up, on the bus and strapped down. Most of the guides would go to the nearest gas station grab a biscuit, and a dollar energy tea. And shoot the bull while we enjoyed the last bit of piece we'd have until about six o' clock that evening.

After breakfast guests would be showing up and we'd get them suited up in the correct gear. Everyone would crowd around the raft barn, and await instructions. To get everybody's attention James would pipe up. "Alright everyone, first thing you'll need before you go out on the river is a PFD. These are not life-jackets. If you put one on and jump in front of a semi, it will not save your life! Make sure you buckle all three of the buckles and have a guide check to see if it's tight enough for you!" After everyone did this Russell would yell out, "Okay, after you've had your PFD checked by a guide, he next piece of equipment you'll need is a Brain-bucket! They protect our soft rocks from your hard heads! They adjust in the back, just like a baseball cap!" After that I would grad an arm full of paddles and yell out, "Guide-beaters! Get your Guide-beaters!" And the other guides would tell me to shut up. Everything we did was for entertainment; just one big joke after another.

James would gather all the guests around a 'safety boat' and give out the 'safety talk'. Making sure they all knew how to hold their paddles correctly. (You'd be surprised how many people can mess this up.) Telling them if they fell out of the boat to assume the 'whitewater swim position' and under any circumstances, DO NOT STAND UP IN MOVING WHITEWATER! After he discussed that and how to hold a throw-rope after it has been tossed to you, we loaded everyone on the bus.

When everyone was on, I jumped on and yelled out, "Who's ready to go Horse-back riding?!" The crowd would act like they were going to say 'yeah' but caught themselves. "What? You look like you're going to go whitewater rafting, or something…" From there I started the 'bus talk'. The bus would go up the interstate about five miles and turn off the next exit. "Okay now at the bottom of this hill they'll be a red sign with four white letters on it, what do you call those where you're from?" I asked. "Stop signs!" someone would yell. Then I'd say, "Well around here we call those 'Stoptionals'. And what that means is after a stop sign has more than one bullet hole in it, 'No cop, no stop'." Then we'd turn onto a bridge and onto a road that would take us to where we put the rafts into the river.

When we arrive the guides would get off the bus and take the rafts off the top and sit them on a ramp stretching down to the river. Get everyone off safe, and over to the ramp. Then go over brief commands on paddling, locking their feet into the raft, and generally how to stay in the raft.

My group was a seven load, the maximum amount of people we could legally carry in a raft. They were an African American family from Michigan, here to get in a little vacation time before school started back.

I put the boat in the water and blew Kate a kiss, because she rode with Ewok, since I had a full raft. When given the signal to shove off, I did so. "Alright, let's get three stokes forward! …This first rapid is a class III called Powerhouse, named after yours truly!" I yelled, hoping they could here my witty banter over the roar of the water. And a few looked back and laughed. After the second drop in the rapid, on the left side we approached a little platform with about four people with cameras and a rainbow colored umbrella standing up. "SMILE FOR THE CAMERA!" I yelled. I posed in a macho fashion with one arm flexed and the other straight out, with the others laughing and smiling as we got a great hit into the last drop in the rapid with water splashing all over the front four guests.
After I very small stretch of flat water there was a giant boulder resting in the middle of the river in front of us. "What do you think we call that rock…?" I yelled, "That's B.F.R. Big –Friendly Rock!" And the adults giggled lightheartedly to themselves. Coming up beside B.F.R. the next rapid was dead ahead. "The next rapid is a class II" I said, "named Full-of-Water, sometimes called Full-of-Bodies! Let's get two strokes forward!" Another amazing splash when the boat hit that twirling whitewater. "Okay, if you had your mouth open through that rapid congratulations cause you're now apart of the Pigeon River Diet. When you lose about twenty pounds in the next week, say Yay tapeworm! …Don't worry folks I've swallowed a lot of this water, not on purpose mind you, and I'm still hefty." I said. And their look of endangerment passed, and faded to more smiles.

We hit three more rapids before coming to our first 'swimming stretch.' As we gently flowed along on the placid water I raised my paddle up gave a whistle with a dropping tone and promptly smacked the water with the blade of my paddle with a loud 'POW!' sound, like a bottle rocket. As the family looked back at me in with a look of astonishment and confusion I ever calmly said, "Beaver-sharks, real menaces." The child asked if they were real and what they looked like. So I plainly told him that they looked like a beaver, but with leathery skin, sharp teeth, as I demonstrated by holding my hands up to my mouth, and ten times as mean as any shark. And they try to pop our rafts. So when I see one I just bonk it on the head with my paddle.

I 'J-stroked' and guided us along the serene water, until I saw the bridge we crossed to get here. "Look, a bridge!" I yelled. "Hey, what did I tell you?" Russell snapped from behind us. "Sorry, I forgot" I proclaimed, "Some of us call it a home." I said to my guests. And they laughed. That bridge was also our first mile marker. "One mile down, four more to go!" I said, as we passed under the bridge.
From there everything went smoothly: Big hit in Vega-matic, smooth ride through Big Bend. Got the 'Dragon's bite' in Snap-dragon. We spun the raft through Rollercoaster. And we even missed the Show-stopper rock in the 'S-Turns'. Because all the guides know if you hit that rock, "the show's over…"

The next rapid was Lost Guide, our most feared class IV rapid. All together it had a five foot drop comprised of two drops. I'd been through it a hundred times, I knew the river. I knew to get the boat right in the middle of the 'Pour-over' rock and the rock sitting out of the water on the left side. My line was perfect. I called for two more strokes right as soon as we came upon the first drop. But something wasn't right. Those strokes weren't enough to put us in the middle of the rocks. Instead, it put us right on the left edge of Pour-over. We hit. We stopped abruptly for a split second. The elderly man that I had purposely sat in the back with me, in case anything happened I could just grab him, had popped out of his seat and plopped down on the rock to the left of us. Pour-over knocked us into that rock with so much force the raft slammed into the rock the elderly man was sitting on. The raft tilted. "HIGH-SIDE!" I screamed. The family just started to slide to the right side of the raft with a look of terror on their face. The raft capsized; one drop down, one more to go. Thank God the water was higher than normal; I've felt the rocks at the bottom of this rapid before.

The elderly man jumped into the water, to catch the rest of us. I gave up regard for my own safety, aborted the whitewater swim position to grab my guests. Luckily the other boats were in the 'eddy' behind the rapid to grab them. From the water I quickly jumped out to climb on top of my over turned raft. I flipped it back over and grabbed two of my guests, parked the boat in the still water of the eddy and regained my composure as my guests climbed from boat to boat and made it back in my raft.
The child and his mother had been crying this whole time. Ewok parked his raft beside mine to calm them down. "You know, rides like that people usually have to pay more for. You should count yourself lucky to experience that excitement" he said. But they weren't having it. They wanted to ride with Ewok, he being our most experienced guide. So they climbed into his boat, while a look of guilt and shame beset my countenance. The other guests thought that a ride like that was awesome, trying to cheer me up of course. But that old man was genuinely excited that he got the opportunity to experience that. And that got to me. It was a careless mistake that could have been prevented. But in the long run I'm glad it happened.

In all the excitement I had lost my paddle and spared the elder from his paddling duties. That reality check must have had an effect on me because the rest of the trip was flawless. I told them jokes in 'Baum's Lake'. No one got hit by branches in 'Duck-n-Run'. We never even touched a rock in 'Rock Garden'. We had a perfect hit in our second class IV 'Double Reactionary'. Our boat didn't get in the way of the usual crowd of rafts in 'Superglue'. And even went down the 'Elevator Shaft' in our last class IV, 'Accelerator'. We all swam in the last swimmer's stretch, and we didn't hit 'Elvis' in 'Rock-n-Roll'. I even showed them our campsite that was right on the edge of the riverbank.

After the last turn we made it to shore. And pulled the boats up, and everyone took off their gear. We took the boats up the bank and carried them back to the outpost. I complemented my guests for being such good sports. And they said they'd come back next year. Kate gave me a hug, and a kiss to ease my feelings. The other guides congratulated me for keeping such a level head, and reacting so quick to fix my mistake…that and telling me what the wanted for breakfast the next morning. That's a thing we have between us guides; being a guide, you fall out; you fix breakfast the next morning.

Needless to say, I didn't get a tip that trip. But I gained valuable knowledge. Two things; with making a mistake like that, but when the guests are good sports about it, losing in an odd way is winning. And the other; If you ever think you know the river, or think nothing bad can happen to you cause you know what to do; the river is very wrathful and she'll show you what's up. Ewok told me that.
I didn't have anymore trips that day so I got Kate and me a tea from the gas station, walked back to the outpost and sat with Kate on the front porch and read a book by Richard Bach. The other guides suited up customers, they left, and in about and hour and thirty minutes they returned. We repeated the same thing as before, but this time it was late and we deflated rafts, and dipped the PFDs in a cleaning solution before we put them up. They tend to stink of river and sweat if you don't; and trust me it takes your breath. And after we completed our finishing chores Ewok and I went behind the raft barn to have a cigar, God knows if we smoked anywhere near the front porch Roger would kill us.

And that night I stood on the rock jutting out into the river by our tent and looked out upon her; and thanked her for that lesson she showed me today. I went back inside the tent, zipped it up. Then I curled up in my sleeping bag with Kate and closed my eyes to surrender myself to sleep once again. And while doing so I thought about how great tomorrow was going to be. Until, sleep…
Funny; being a guide, I can truthfully say: Sometimes, not being in control is the most beautiful thing in the world.

Just a ROUGH short story, with a ton of filler originally for my creative writing class.
Gives you a peak into the everyday life of a raft guide.

I know it can use ALOT of work, but I'll do something with it one day.
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GuardianAsian's avatar
Besides from the grammatical errors it was a good explanation of every day life of our busy season.