The Rescue

I had to take a one-day course to earn my certification as a Trip Leader, and a two-day course in Wilderness First Aid and CPR. They were very hard, I learned a lot, took studious notes. These courses were for my summer camp job. I'm a counselor, and the camp was paying for me to be the new Trip Leader. So I couldn't be the teenager in math class, half-awake, doodling, pondering when he's ever going to use the quadratic formula during his short time spent in future professions. Lives were at stake. A child's life. A hard-paying customer's child. I learned all the legality behind the responsibilities, the liabilities. Implied consent. The whole nine units of measure. But if you had stopped me at any point during the course, took me aside and asked me honestly if I ever thought I'd have to actually save the life of a camper this year, I'd have said "No, not likely."

And I'm never right about things like that. Especially if I say them out loud.

It was one of the few canoe trips I had to go on, but luckily the camp's other trip leader was there, and he knew much more about the arrangement and undertakings of a canoe trip than I. We're going to call him William. His name is not William, but the dude could have appropriately held the namesake William all of his life. And on this day William arranged a trip down the Saco River.

We tied all the canoes onto the trailer, counted our lifejackets, instructed the kids to get their bathing suits and towels, retrieved the campers' respective medications, Epi-Pens, lunch coolers, etc. Standard procedure for taking a group out of camp mandates we fill out a Trip Ticket form of everyone who's going and return the carbon copy to the Office before we leave. Once everything was situated and the children were all in their seats and seatbelted, we took off.

The Saco was a nice, wide river. Ideal for all kinds of watercraft and large groups of families or summer camps or rec groups to paddle down with a sense of accomplishment and the "outdoors" experience. Or a gang of college-frat twentysomethings and their busty girlfriends tieing their canoes together to form these crude party-barges and drink heavily as they effortlessly float downstream. Those were the two demographics of people on the Saco River this bright July day. I felt like a unique blend of the two, but as Trip Leader, I had my responsible pants on. Well, responsible swimming trunks. These partygoers and headbangers bothered the younger kids some, feeling threatened I guess by the loud attitudes of "drunk people" so we steered and keeled a safe distance from them. Some of the more outgoing "drunk people" even offered me a cold beverage. My brain tossed up the idea briefly, seeing how it weighed, knowing full well of my legal responsibilities and obligations but still being a newly born 21 Year Old who does enjoy beer quite a lot, so the question was a bit more intriguing but the answer was still inevitable. The nine year old boy sitting in front of me, attempting to paddle effectively but not showing the effort, would not approve of my consuming the chill Coor's Light silver bullet. Neither would his parents, my bosses, my parents, or most moral people. William and I had a funny talk about it when we stopped for lunch.

Now I like William. But as my elder and superior in the camp's hierarchy, the great scales of decision making rested on his shoulders. And he made two crucial decisions that lead to the incident I'm eventually going to get to if I could just stop tangenting into details and background. Decisions and choices are things we all do our best to make confidently and certainly, and the difference between a good decision and a bad decision could change at any moment, prior to or at any point after the decisive moment.

Two canoes with older campers rowed up alongside mine. They were discussing the Saco trip last year and the upcoming fork in the river. They said the left way was safe and calm, and the right had large rocks and fast water, thus being more fun. They also told a short story about how Sam, who was on the trip right now in one of the canoes, almost drowned and had to be rescued. This was the example spelling bee's used for the word "Foreshadowing." I instantly made the call, "No, we're going left." As expected, they persisted and tried to change the story to make it sound safer and more reasonable, but I knew their clever 15-year old games of persuasion . Left it would be. I didn't see their next move coming, so one could argue they were more clever than me, but if that's the case I respectively tip my hat to them. It was simple cunning. They asked William. We had to wait for him to kayak up to us since we were the head of the group, during this period I quickly ceded the final decision to save face. William's call: "Yeah, let's go right. It'll be more rapid-y."

More rapid-y. The legs of my initial mandate were immediately severed leaving it afloat, bleeding it's life out as it slowly drifted down the left, more safe, more cautious turn. The path your mom makes you take. The little pussy's path. I had just become the pussy mom. I could already see my kids growing up never cursing, never watching MTV, crippled with lack of risk, danger and experience. These thoughts made me pretty morose, but I quickly had to snap out of it since we were heading the right stream quickly and it was, in fact, rapid-y. My buddy in the front, Pat, told me he was scared. All of the younger boys on trip followed suit. But I assured him that William's taken this river hundreds of times before and we were going to be just fine, maybe have a little adventure is all. A fun story to tell the kids back in your bunk, maybe your parent's on Visiting Day. You'll get scared a little, but after it's over it'll be fun. Like waterskiing. This worked, because Pat liked waterskiing.

The rapids were not rapids by any leaps or bounds. I've been whitewater rafting a few times, and the smashing effect of water cycling back on itself in the large gap caused by a large rock under the surface of the river is a thrilling but very dangerous thing. The rocks on the Saco were small, the river was shallow, but it was moving fast and creating the same rapid effect, just way smaller. I saw them and was relieved. No one was going to get hurt on these. A few canoes bumped into the rocks, but no real damage was done to camp equipment. Pat's and my canoe went up and got stuck on a round rock. I just stepped out of the canoe and lifted it off, then got back in. Children's laughter filled the air, mixed with the gurgling of the river. William had kayaked up ahead to what appeared to be the largest of the rapids and got out. He was standing behind a really large rock dividing the river. Rapids lay on both ways but there were gaps, definitely wide enough for a canoe to gracefully ride through. I looked at him and motioned which side I should go down. And once more, his choice was right. Well, my right.

I turned towards the right, but as the canoe went sideways, the water pushed it more. The canoe turned all the way to the right and went towards the gap sideways. I fought hard with my paddle to steer it back but realized what was going to happen. The front of the canoe bumped into the side of the river, a very large boulder. This became a pivot point as the water swung the back end of the canoe around, hitting the rapid on the other end of the gap. The canoe took on a dam like effect and the water built up against our metal obstruction. Pat was scared, but I knew all I had to do was get out of the canoe, pull it back a bit then straighten it out and go on through. But that's not how it worked. The water pressure building on our starboard side flipped the canoe on it's side, dumping us and everything in the canoe into the river. I hit rocks and soft mud, but did not submerge, the water was only about a foot and a half deep. I rolled onto my butt and sat up.

Pat had been dumped right beside the boulder. The narrowing end of the canoe became a funnel for the river previously dammed. And Pat, short nineyearold chubby Pat (a cute chubby) was pulled off his feet by the current and got stuck under the canoe-funnel. He was looking back at me. His eyes read only one distinct and powerful word and emotion. Fear.
A canoe behind us struck another rock and also got stuck between two hard places, but did not swamp. The river began to surge up and down, the water rising up over Pat's face then receding, only his hand raised high above the waterline. I grew very calm and stood up. The current was strong, but I took the two steps up towards the canoe's stern and bent down to Pat. Grasping both shoulders of his lifejacket, I pulled him out from under the canoe and stood him up next to me. He didn't want to stand though, he was crying with a force. So I lifted him up and sat him on the boulder. While calming him down and assuring him he was alive, well and breathing, he divulged he had also hit his head off the boulder in the canoe-funnel. I inspected his head, no prevalent bumps or abrasions. If there were any damage inside, there wouldn't be signs until later. My next priority was getting him off the boulder, into the canoe and down to a safer, quieter spot of the river as soon as possible.

The other canoes each had their own taste of thrill and adventure, getting stuck on the rapids, getting swamped or losing a paddle, et cetera but nothing emergency related. There were lots of shouting. Pat's older brother was on the trip and was screaming my name in the tone of bloody murder during the entire event. Didn't help. William had made his way over to my canoe, so when I saw him I took a break from interpreting Pat's sobs to properly lift the canoe out and return it to it's natural floating not swamped state. This also acted as a tool to show Pat that the canoe was still alright and safe to get back in, accompanied by pointing out there were no more rocks for the rest of the river. He agreed to get back in the canoe, so I took us to shore right nearby, where everybody stopped and rested after the solid 15 minutes of adrenaline kicks. Pat's brother helped me console him and he eventually stopped crying.

Pat didn't want to paddle the rest of the trip and did a fair share of whining but I don't hold it against him. He did not agree to take a life-risking trip. He had wanted to go left. The rest of the trip was drawn out and slow. I was in a slightly snappy mood with the older campers but I don't think I hurt their feelings or anything. William at one point made a joke about me not knowing how to canoe which I took and bore. Holding my bitter thoughts back behind my clenched grinning teeth. We should not have taken the right way. Some of these kids were nine year old kids and never canoed in rocky water before. None of the group had any idea what to do in that situation. I've been trained in Lifeguarding, CPR and Wilderness First Aid but using those skills is never that fun. They tell you that in the course. To my shame, I did criticize William when we got back. Decisions go from good to bad awfully quickly. In this case, 15 minutes down the more rapid-y part of the Saco.

Pat recovered fine and made a larger deal out of it than I did, except in a more positive light, bragging about his peril. He'd come up to me and thank me for saving his life for the rest of the season. It got old after a while. On Visiting Day, he paraded his family up to me. I shook the hand of his father, the executive producer of Amityville Horror, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the remake), and most recently, The Hitcher. His gorgeous wife thanked me for rescuing her baby boy with sincerity but calm composure. They all lived in LA. Nice upperclass folks. The tiny quiet naughty part of my brain almost expected a tip from them, but no such transaction was made. I didn't really care though, the experience enough was worth more to me than their gratuity.

So naturally, in hindsight, I realize how not big of a deal the whole thing was. Yes, he would have drowned, but only if I had not been there. A counselor doing his job. Nobody was going to just sit in that river and not take any form of action. Who does that?