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Falling into the Elk River: Life lessons in the Canadian wilds

Thomas S. Bremer – Aug. 29, 2024

White water rafting (Photo by Christopher Jensen via Flickr [CC BY-ND 2.0])

I fell without warning into the river. The moment seemed an hour, a year, a lifetime. As I sunk deeper into the roiling waters, I couldn't know if I would return to air, sun, or life again. The river became a dull roar of filtered light that pressed its wetness upon me. Gravity pulled me down with a heavy, breathless disorientation.I. Water
A suddenly enraged river had spun the raft around. Our guide shouted orders to paddle hard, “LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT.” His voice over the roar of the rapids betrayed a hint of bewildered surprise.Despite our frantic attempts to steer a straight path through the churning swells, the boat twisted sideways. I dug my paddle deeper into the water and pulled with every bit of strength I could muster as we approached a wall of angry water.I was on the left, the front corner of the raft angling into the treacherous wave. My wife, Melanie, was in the rear corner on the right, farthest from me. My brother Jim, our father and his wife, plus the guide, filled out our rafting party.Minutes before, we had been enjoying a pleasant and sometimes exciting ride down the Elk River in southeastern British Columbia. The morning had dawned calm and sunny, a perfect summer day for a river outing.We had traveled to the Rocky Mountains for a visit to Jim’s off-the-grid little farm in the wilds of northern Montana. He had arranged for a friend to take us up into Canada for a rafting adventure.I was not enthusiastic about river rafting, and Melanie was even less so. But signaling any hesitation would have been impolite to my brother’s hospitality. Jim was anxious to share the recreational advantages of his life far from the suburban haunts of our upbringing. He had gone to the trouble of reserving a Saturday excursion with his river-guide friend, so we went along.My hesitation eased as we traversed the rough, deeply rutted, unpaved track along the Elk River. The warm calm of the morning greeted us, and I felt grateful to be out in the woods. My nervousness heightened slightly at the sight of the river, its waters tumbling fast and high, but I trusted that our guide would keep us safe.We entered the river with high spirits. The first calm stretch reassured us that we were in for a pleasant float through a wild country. An eagle, perched high above the riverbank, greeted us as the raft eased its way downstream.We navigated the first set of rapids easily. Smug in our newfound rafting skills, we wanted more. The river, it turned out, wanted more of us.II. Darkness
My initial disorientation dissolved in the awareness that I had gone overboard. A securely fastened life jacket halted the pull of gravity. Slowly, I began to rise, moving upward through the current toward the light streaming in from above. A return to the world of air and sun beckoned.Returning to the surface, however, was not to be. My head bumped against the bottom of the raft. I had plunged beneath the boat. In a mindless, reactive impulse, I pushed with both hands against the raft, sending me again to the watery depths.My second descent brought a sobering realization: this may be the end. Caught in the fury of an unsympathetic river, the mystery of life's journey suddenly revealed its final destination. I would soon be lost to the world in these roaring waters, trapped beneath a boat full of loved ones, far from the familiar landscapes that had formed who I had become. An unceremonious end to an unremarkable life, remembered by few, mourned by even fewer, I was leaving this world.A curious calm overcame me. Rather than panic at the thought of death, I relaxed into acceptance. Fear, regret, resentment, all thought and emotion vanished. Suspended on the cusp of nonbeing, I became pure awareness—no past, no future, only the present moment stimulating every cell of my body in the dim light, the dull roar of the river, the wetness pressing all around me.And then I began a second ascent, pulled again by the life jacket's buoyancy. Sunlight cut through the darkness as I floated upward.Directly above, a shadow blocked the sun’s rays. As I neared the surface, the shadow engulfed me. A second time, I hit the bottom of the raft. Again, I instinctively pushed off with both hands, this time more forcefully.A third descent into the abyss slowed the passage of time. The world came to a standstill as darkness enfolded me. With eyes clenched tight, I had returned to the dark, watery world of the womb.Perhaps this was the afterlife. Without the transitional pause of the bardo, death had delivered my soul to the womb of a reincarnated life. Would I recognize the world when I emerged from the travail of birthing? Would any trace of my previous life remain in the deep recesses of memory?My suspended limbo between lives in the dim liquid world of the river did not last. Again, I rose toward the sunshine and the cool mountain air.III. Air
I came up a third time underneath the raft. With burning lungs, calmness prevailed in a moment that should have been terror and panic. Clarity came with a sudden presence of mind that showed me to the air. Instead of pushing off again into the depths of the river, this time I stayed with the raft. I walked my hands along the bottom of the boat above me. Steadily, I moved toward the sunlight beaming into the water at the raft's edge. Pushing hard with one last sideways thrust, I cleared the raft and popped up into the air. A deep, gulping breath brought me back to life.As I returned to air and daylight, I sucked in a quick series of breaths. The sudden brightness blinded me. I could hear only the pounding roar of the river. I did not sense the terror inside the raft as they frantically scanned the water for any signs of me. Their shouts of recognition never reached my ears.I turned to face the boat and saw my brother Jim leaning over the water. He reached down to grab me by my shoulders. Instead of hauling me up out of the river, he gave me a hard shove downward, not letting go of me. Then, with help from the buoyancy of my life jacket, he jerked me upward. As I came up out of the water, Jim dragged me over the inflated edge of the raft. I collapsed on the canvas floor and lay there panting.As I regained strength, still shaking from my ordeal, I pushed myself up from the raft’s wet floor. I crawled back to my seat at the front corner. Without my paddle, lost to the river, I could do nothing but watch as we continued downstream.The water moved swiftly, but the large waves were behind us. A smoother, calmer stretch lay ahead. The guide decided we should take a break at a small beach around the next bend. We angled toward the far shore as the river circled to the left.I felt weak and exhausted as I climbed out of the raft onto the sandy embankment. A log at the river’s edge invited me to sit and regain my senses. Melanie joined me. We sat together silently for a long while. The steady current of the river swept away our wordless thoughts.

A calm stretch of the Elk River in British Columbia, Canada (Photo by waferboard via Flickr, cropped and enhanced [CC BY 2.0])

IV. New Life
Our guide confessed that the river surprised him, running much higher and faster than he anticipated. Not exactly apologizing, he attempted to explain how we found ourselves in waters far beyond our skill level, perhaps more than even he could handle. He speculated that the dam operators upriver must have unexpectedly released water from the reservoir that morning.When we resumed our run down the Elk River, the lighthearted cheer we enjoyed on the first leg had evaporated. The jovial recreationists enjoying a summer day on the river had become more solemn, even somber—the unspoken "what if?" occupied our thoughts.Even now, I shudder to contemplate the “what if?” – if the current had sucked me into a hole behind a submerged boulder; or if my head had struck a rock as I tumbled into the water, knocking me unconscious; or if I had panicked and could not find my way out from beneath the raft.My watery entombment under the boat lasted probably a minute, two at the very most. It seemed much longer. The passage of time halted at the moment I fell into the river. It felt like hours before I made my way back to the surface.In truth, it lasted decades. For years, a recurring dream had me back underwater, unable to find the surface. My only escape was to awaken myself.Those nightmares eventually faded. I now realize that my plunge into the turbulent waters of the Elk River gifted me a new beginning. All that I have done, everyone I have known, and whatever I have achieved in the more than thirty years since that moment has been an undeserved extension of a life that could have ended abruptly on that fateful day. From the instant Jim pulled me back to safety, my life has been a gift.The changes were not drastic or even noticeable at first. But something imperceptible had shifted inside me. I did not recognize it in the days and months immediately following. Only much later did I realize that the river had altered who I was. I still have no words for how I changed. But I feel it deep inside in a place that has no language.On that summer day long ago, sitting silently on a weathered log beside the water swirling past, I saw the river with new eyes. Its waters revealed to me a new understanding of life. Each of us emerges from the waters of the womb to be swept up in the currents of one’s life. Through calm pools of serenity and raging rapids of calamity, life’s river teaches the precarity and impermanence of our time on this earth. We live as rivers flowing toward unknown seas.

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