ANNA OBERG

The Raft

It’s the end of that unforgettable April, the sixth week of isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic. I walk alone to the river through the RV park behind the house we just moved into, the one with the yellow door that I will begin to call home. The sky threatens rain. It is supposed to be a warm week. Snow from the mountains is melting. The river rises by the day, and when the wind is calm, I can hear it through my bedroom window. 

A cold drizzle starts to fall as I stand on the edge, for a while, listening. The sound of the current lapping over rocks makes me remember the frigid strength of water, the power of it surging over me, my head washed of every thought but pointing my feet downstream, as the river guide said. 

It is fifteen years ago, now, the summer of 2005, when I fall out of the raft into the spring-swollen Arkansas River, just outside Buena Vista. 

***

The idea to go rafting is a whim tacked to the end of a trip to Denver for a Rockies game. I am working that summer at a guest ranch in Colorado’s Elk Mountains, outside Gunnison. The four-hour drive to and from Denver is an excuse to party. I’m with three guys from Wisconsin who have been friends since they were five, and woven to the inside jokes they tell is the knowledge that I will learn something new about the world from them. 

We wind up and down the steep mountain roads in a charcoal gray, stick shift Volkswagen Jetta that one of the guys bought when he graduated college and got his first real job. He is taking the summer off, to work at the ranch and see what he wants to do next. He drives fast, sometimes drunk, and later that summer, he’ll get pulled over after the fireworks on the 4th of July. I’ll take a bunch of pills to ease my worry while he spends the night in jail, sleeping it off. 

After the Rockies game that night, we drink late at some Irish pub then fall into bed, three deep, at a cheap hotel near downtown. Someone sleeps in a chair. The next morning, hung over, we drive west, back toward the mountains. 

***

In the dressing room at the rafting provision company, we pull on wetsuits tight as black sealskin. We can see each other’s bodies. In the coming weeks, each of these boys will interest me. There is the one with the laugh so magnetic it ushers light into the room, who will decide he wants to be my friend after we make out a few times, and he divulges his girlfriend is coming from Wisconsin in a few weeks. Or the tall one with the square jaw and slightly receding hairline who will decide I am not casual or thick-skinned enough for him. And, the third—the one I will date for a while, a year or so. It will end badly on a visit to his parents’ house north of some west coast city with rainclouds rolling in off the Pacific. He will tell me he never loved me, and we will move on. 

***

We sit up straight in the raft, oars balanced across our thighs while the guide uses his to push us from shore. The river takes hold and our boat is carried in, immediately moving fast on the current. I cram my feet under the inflated middle beam of the raft as I’m instructed. The sky is heavy with pending rain, but it doesn’t matter if we get wet. We’re soaked already. 

The river grabs onto the boat, bucking it over waves that seem to belong elsewhere. It’s as though someone has threaded a wild and stormy ocean into the narrow strip of water in front of us. We ride the turmoil, plunging downstream. 

After one set of rapids, my feet come loose from under the cross beam, and I struggle to wedge myself in properly again. I see it coming as we charge onward, the swoop of river ahead, as though the water pours down into the earth then rises up into the steepest wave I’ve ever seen. The guide signals for us to go around it, to drop to the left, into slightly gentler water, but we can’t steer the raft from its course. We hit the trough head on. 

I think: this is okay. I’ll be okay, as the nose of the boat heads sharply down, then begins to rise. But, it’s at that crest of the wave, the very top where I feel myself gently bounce over the side. My feet release from under the beam, and I’m tossed from the raft, oar and all—into the cold, cold water.

***

A sense of the dark disorients me, but my life jacket assures I bob to the surface. I surge down river under a sullen sky. Feet downstream, feet downstream—my head screams to me, on repeat. I manage to rotate my body in the swirling current and point my toes toward whatever else is coming. 

***

Standing by the river, I jam my hands deep into my pockets and turn for home. It’s raining now, and the April wind is raw. I hike quickly up the hill through the RV park toward the house with the yellow door. 

As I walk, I remember that boy’s outstretched arm pulling me back onto the raft. I nearly fall short of his fingers. I nearly drift right on by. 

Anna Oberg is a professional photographer based in Estes Park, Colorado. When she's not arranging family portraits with the perfect view of Long's Peak as backdrop, she focuses on writing tiny memories and small stories. She has been published in Cleaver Magazine, Burningword Literary Journal, Causeway Lit, and HerStry blog.