White Water

Some close friends of mine were on their way to a summer getaway in Aspen recently. They’d been there before and didn’t need any advice from me when it came to finding nifty things to do in the Mountain Time Zone.  (And if you can’t find something fun to do in Aspen in the summertime, you’d better head for Cemetery Lane.)

But as we were reviewing their itinerary, I asked if they had ever gone whitewater rafting.

Negatory.

“You’ve got to try it,” I urged.  “It’s fun.”

They were enthusiastic so I gave them a few basic pointers- who to call, what to wear- and told them to get in touch with the rafting company pronto.

End of story.  For them.

But as for me, I was already miles- and years- away paddling down the Roaring Fork.

My first close encounter with that river came back in 1976.  I was in Aspen on my honeymoon- along with the groom, his three semi-grown daughters and Dorothy, a friend of the oldest.

The six of us showed up riverside one early July morning raring to go.  It fell to me to make the introductions.

“I’m Ellen Ross.  This is Bill Ross,” I introduced our gang to the raft guide.  “And this is Amy Ross, Patti Ross, Julie Ross and Dorothy.  We’d like to go together please.”

The guide looked over our crew.

“You all can’t go in the same boat.  Not enough room.  One of you girls will have to go with your father.”

This got a mean snicker from the kids.

Sidebar:  With the exception of Amy- then nine- all the girls were taller than me.  And we were all wearing bathing suits, tee shirts, sunglasses and baseball caps.  It was hard to tell how old anybody was.

“I guess I’ll go with my husband,” I volunteered.

(Over the years, I have come to cherish that moment in ancient marital history- as you can well imagine.)

But my memory of that first rafting trip contained much more than a flattering age mix-up.  Certain moments stand out indelibly etched

(Like when Amy pulled on that brand-new invention, the pull tab, and got a face full of soda pop.  Was she surprised!)

But my most vivid recollection was of was an older couple with a very young son in our flotilla.  He must have been a menopause mistake because they looked sixty and he was eight.

I can’t tell you anyone else’s name from that raft trip of thirty-seven years ago.  But I’ll never forget his- because we all heard it so often.

His name was Emerson.

He was an out-of-control Dennis the Menace and this brat had his hapless parents over an old age barrel. He tirelessly raced around the put-in, the lunch rest stop, and the raft, creating pandemonium wherever he went.

And wherever he went, his mother and/or father would timidly call “Emerson!  Emerson! Stop that!”  Or “Come here, Emerson!” Or “Put that back, Emerson!”  Or “Don’t touch that, Emerson!”

Ad nausemerson.

He completely ignored them, raising Cain and ruining the pastoral communing-with-Nature moments that Colorado and her white water were eager to share.

But he didn’t ruin rafting for me and I’ve been back to give it an eddy a few more times since.

I remember one trip down the Colorado River that was so cold that then-twelve year old Nick turned blue. When we got out of the boat at the end of the trip, his hands were shaking so uncontrollably he couldn’t even pull off the soaking frozen popsicle wrapper his dry suit had become.

But he still had a rad rafting experience. He just learned to pick a sunnier day next time to brave the icy mountain runoff.

Then there was the time that I took my brother Kenny down the rapids.  The day started out fine and warm (Nick wasn’t the only one who learned not to go on anything but a hot day) but halfway through the voyage, it started to quickly cloud up.  (As it does in the Colorado summer.)

By the time we reached Woody Creek Canyon, it was pitch black and thundering to beat the band.  Impressive flashes of lightening lit up the sky.

Kenny paused in his paddling, looked around appreciatively and said, “Gee, these special effects are great. They seem so real.”

He was kidding of course.  But when the lightening got serious, our raft was put in at a make shift put-in. And we were put out.

The last time we went rafting en famille was memorable.  We headed down valley for a long bus ride.  Nick, his dad and I were going to tackle the Browns Canyon rapids that were longer and wilder than the user-friendly Roaring Fork we’d take the newbies on.

We stopped at Circle K to buy grub.  I got a Diet Coke, fifteen year old Nick grabbed a Mountain Dew and some food-like junk (I nixed his request for cigarettes) and we made our way to the boats.

Where we were promptly teamed up with an Amish family from Pennsylvania.  Right out of Kingpin.  

But they were not as tolerant as Brother Hezekiah.

They were offended by the Diet Coke, the Mountain Dew and us in general.

Our language, our clothing, our big city ways- they were scandalized by everything non-Amish that went into that raft.

At first Nick thought it was funny.  But when his father and I got into a sniping contest- bickering about the movie Clueless of all things- he joined Team Amish in his disapproval.

The argument:  I maintained that you had to be pretty darn slender to wear the cute clothes that Alicia Silverstone et al rocked in that flick.  His father thought the actresses didn’t look all that slim.

They were THIN, for pete’s sake.  Skinny in fact.  You had to be to pull off those teensy kilts and ankle socks they wore.  But my then husband insisted that they were just regular-sized gals.

This marital spat went on and on.  Bill accused me of always having to get in the last word.  I was deep affronted by his extremely unfair and slanderous character assassination.

The argument escalated.

Finally, I dared Big Daddy into taking a seat in the front of the boat.  And, as the river’s cold spray washed over him relentlessly, I’d laugh.

(Passive aggressive, I know.  But it was funny.  He was royally p.o.’ed but still had to pretend that he was a good sport.)

Nick saw it all.  He tried to stifle his annoyance at our babyish antics but he got sick of us. Fast.

“Chill out, dudes,” he counseled from his position at the back of the raft.  “It’s embarrassing.  Let it go.”

Nick has a pretty high threshold of embarrassment so I guess we were behaving pretty obnoxiously.  I nobly gave up trying to have the last word.

My son was right, after all.  Marital discord has no place in a raft going down the rapids. It’s all about harmony and working together as a team.

So just grab your loved ones, a water-resistant wind breaker, some old gym shoes, a water-proof camera (although they do have guys poised on bridges to take your raft photo.  Which can be yours at extortionate Aspen prices) and head for the Colorado.

All your workaday woes will go right down the drain as you paddle for your life and think you’re Meryl Streep intrepidly saving her family on The River Wild.

Or you can be Brad Pitt dare-devilling it over the falls in  A River Runs Through It.

In fact, feel free to be anyone in the movies you’d like.

But if you want to be in Clueless, you’d better be skinny.  Now let me tell you, those girls were really thin…