River guides tell stories. Some of the stories are true, some are embellished and a few are just plain made up fairy tales. The following story happened a long time ago (1987) and is as accurate as I can remember it after 23 years of river adventures.
The Garden, Photo by Flickr User ReneS
It was a fine summer day to drive up the beautiful Kennebec River Valley on my way to The Forks, Maine. All the guides were required to be ready to work at 7:00 AM and the early morning air was warm for late June. I got out of my car and grabbed my gear, heading towards the office to let the Boss know I had arrived. On my way over I heard a sort of grunting noise followed by the slap of bare flesh on bare flesh. As I rounded the corner I saw an amazing sight. Eight of the biggest guys I had ever seen were standing in a circle, naked from the waist up.
Now I don’t know about your guiding experiences, but I was fairly new to this profession at the time (my third season) and I didn’t really know what to say or do in this situation. The smallest guy was about 280 lbs and biggest (Jimmy) was 6’6’’, 360 lbs. The activity was called – as I was later told – “Belly Bucking”, which entailed two of these behemoths running at each other at full speed from about 10 yards apart. Close to a ½ ton would then smash into each other, hit the ground and laugh like hell, get up and two more would go at it. Of course, this 6:55 AM action was well-and-fully fueled by copious amounts of the King of Beers, which all members of the circle had in hand.
I walked by this merry band just shaking my head, feeling really sorry for the poor guide who drew this crew for the day. I walked into the office and said hello to the Boss. His immediate reply to me was “Go out and tell those guys they have to stop drinking before the trip.” I said, “Shouldn’t their guide do that?” When he looked at me I knew the answer to that question. Shit! The poor guide was me! And how would I command these guys without getting killed? Well, I just summoned up my courage and marched right out there and said, “ Would you guys mind too much not drinking any more beer until after the trip today, please?”
Jimmy, the giant leader of the group snarled at me and said “Hey! Who the fuck are you?” Before I could say a word he continued in a strong South Boston accent; “We’re security guards at the Boston Garden and there’re only two things in the world we care about: pro wrestling and the Three Stooges.” After some mumbling and grumbling they finished the open beers and walked back to their vehicles (probably to torture some baby animals for fun).
The rest of the pre-trip process was unremarkable and we found ourselves at the Harris Station Dam preparing to launch. My math put the crew weight load at about 2,500 lbs and I desperately looked all over that Avon Pro raft for a weight limit patch so I could distribute some of this crew to another boat. Alas, it was not to be.
“OK” I said, “Everybody in the boat.” A 16’ Avon pro is not a small boat, but with this crew it looked like Cinderella’s tiny rowboat. It was a bucket boat and only had three thwarts, so two people had to sit in the back compartment with me. In those days the boats were equipped with a misnamed device called a “guide saver” which was a piece of rope or strap attached to two d-rings on the floor for the guide to put his or her feet under, then the guide hung straight over the back tube and went to work. The theory was that this rope would allow you to keep your feet, and thereby the rest of yourself, in the boat in the class 3 and 4 rapids of the Kennebec River.
So I found myself in the back, sandwiched between two 300 lbs hunks of human muscle, with my feet tucked in on the floor. Six larger, drunk Boston Garden security guards sat in front of them. Away we went.
My first clue as to how much real trouble we were in came as I shouted the first simple command of the day: “Both sides ahead.” Nobody even put their paddle in the water. They just chatted it up in the relative flat water before the first rapid called “Taster”. We went into Taster sideways and the boat almost flipped right there.
A troubled look came over Jimmy’s face and the rest of the crew now looked at each other with bewildered and nervous expressions. At that moment we came around a bend in the river and just downstream the roar of the Three Sisters, a seriously large series of waves got their attention. Now I was really concerned that we’d flip in the Third Sister and swim a long section of the river known as the Alleyway. Not only would the swim be nasty, I couldn’t even imagine how I would get any of these guys back in the boat. I shouted “both sides ahead, HARD!’ Silence accompanied the blank looks my command evoked. We were 50 yards from the 15 foot wave called Big Momma.
In a desperate, final act I screamed “Jimmy, if you don’t start paddling this fucking boat right now, I’m going to come up there and kick your ass!” Jimmy’s eyes narrowed and he looked at me like a bear must look at a salmon. Then he looked downstream at the rapid. A theatrical silence enveloped the boat as this drama unfolded in 3 or 4 seconds. Then Jimmy grudgingly took a stroke, then another. The rest of the boys followed suit. We blasted through Big Momma and floated towards the next set of rapids.
My first terrified thought after the successful navigation of Big Momma was “Jimmy’s going to kill me.” I tried to figure out if I could complete the trip without stopping, then leap off the boat at the take-out and run as fast as I could into the woods where they couldn’t find me. Now I should mention that I was (and still am) 6’2’, 200 lbs and in pretty good shape. Also I was (and still am) a high school principal so conflict and violence were not unknown to me. But I was scared. I decided that dialogue was the best bridge to soothing Jimmy’s ruffled ego. “Jimmy” I said, “Sorry about that kicking your ass crack back there, I was just scared.” Jimmy looked at me for a moment, measuring his response and said with little expression “I’ll let it go…. for now.” That didn’t sound so good for my future prospects.
We sat in Cathedral Eddy, talking over the biggest rapid of the day to come, the 16 foot vertical drop called Magic Falls, so named because boats disappear below the horizon line there. I emphasized the importance of a continued paddling effort by all our party or we would stall, surf backwards into the hole and we’d all swim the ¼ mile below Magic Falls before rescue would be possible. My encouragement was met by a stony silence. I began to realize that these guys just wanted to hurt me and couldn’t wait to hit land to do so. Well, there was nothing I could do about that so we shoved off with the gaping maw of Magic Falls awaiting our arrival.
Things seemed to go well initially until Jimmy, who was sitting in the front of the boat about 10 yards above the drop, actually saw the deep hole that makes Magic Falls so visually intimidating. He just stopped paddling; then, so did everyone else. Sure as water flows downhill, we dropped over the edge, smacked up against the wave below and stood that 16-footer straight up.
A strange phenomenon takes place when a whitewater event transpires. Time expands and you have a number of thoughts in a very small amount of time. My first thought, as I watched the two huge people next to me fall off the back of the craft into the churning maelstrom was “Hey cool, these guide savers really work!” That thought was interrupted by a brief, dark flash in my peripheral vision. That flash was the one ton of tdead weight known as my crew doing the backwards dive, ass first, into me – then into the deepest part of Magic Falls.
This happened 21 years and hundreds of runs ago and I have never, before or since, been that deep in Magic Falls. I hit the rock that creates the rapid. I had to fight and scratch my way to the surface, through a lot of arms, legs and bodies. All the way down as I swam I was thinking “They’re going to just kill me on the spot. I am a dead guide floating.”
Eventually, I got back into the boat and hauled the big boys back into the raft. It was easier because it was full of water, thus lower in the river. As I pulled the last person aboard, it turned out to be my old pal Jimmy. This was the moment of truth. My life was about to be defined (continued or game over) in the next several seconds. He was lying on the floor, in the position he had assumed when I pulled him in when he reached up, grabbed me by the front of my PFD, and pulled me down so my face was about six inches from his. What a moment! The lady or the tiger? And then, a wide grin split his face and he yelled at the top of his lungs “Scotty, that was fucking awesome dude!” Then everyone was yelling and cheering and telling each other their very own near death experience and how great it was.
The rest of the day was spent bonding with my newfound brothers in arms. They invited me to Boston (I went), offered to steal a pair of Larry Bird’s sneakers for me (I declined), and finally, at the end of one of my favorite days of rafting ever, I got to watch four of these guys climb up an upright piano at a local ski resort, drop their britches, and shake over 1,000 lbs of booty for a large and appreciative crowd. That was right before the state troopers showed up. But that’s another story…
God, I love this job!