23 Seconds Under Lava

23 SECONDS UNDER LAVA, 1980

(exactly how long it takes to run Lava Falls)

            Blinking salty sweat from our eyes, standing on the massive black basalt scout rock in the searing sun. We’ve been deliberating for over an hour – a boater’s nightmare. As we bake, the surrounding desert air shimmers, as fluid as the river. Churning bowels inspire us to action. We listen to the background freight-train roar of Lava Falls as we scout a passage through that glorious maelstrom, but the debate drones on, everyone pretending we have really any say whatsoever in our immediate future, especially here, at this singular spot on the planet.

Well, I suppose we do – we could just hike out (and probably die of dehydration).

            But we won’t.

            Our preference of course is to get into our boats and float into that relentless tongue where there’s no turning back. It’s precisely at that point that our troubled river-rat souls calm for just a few moments, leaving the future to the capable hands of the River Goddess (hopefully with a little help from craftsmanship). Looking at it from shore and watching eyeballs stare and fingers point (as if our tiny craft will heed any of our feeble plans rather than The Plan), the tension builds, the challenge beckons, the indifferent rapid crashes and roars. It aint’ gonna get any better dammit.

            Half the crew have arranged themselves unconsciously behind Wanda to her left, the other half to her right. We swelter in flops, shorts, straw hats and print shirts, wishing we could just get back to our boats, take a ritual dip in the eddy, and slide downstream. But Wanda is not ready. The group to her left lean in, offering a sort of reproachful encouragement…

            “You don’t have to run it if you don’t want to! Don’t let them try and force you!”

            The group to her right respond by bellowing “GO GIRL! GO!... WHOOHOOO…”

            Wanda is a novice kayaker. She’s been dreaming about, fidgeting about, agonizing to anyone who’d listen about Lava Falls every single day since we put in at Lees Ferry, sixteen days and a hundred rapids ago. She wants it, really, really bad. At the moment, however, she’s quite paralyzed.

            I happen to think she’s a real good paddler. She’s got a solid Eskimo roll… mostly in flat water. Impressed the hell out of me, anyway. But like so many others she gets psyched out in moving water, loses the plot, ends up swimming, her lonely kayak bobbing away. She hates it; knowing she can do it, wanting it, juiced for it, but something inside takes control at the critical moment and she bails. Been there – done that. During the course of the trip, she’s managed to improve, regaining a roll in the tailwaves. But if she turns over in the middle of a rapid, there’s that panic again. She pulls the pin, swims, cries, stomps her foot, fists on hips. Patience is critical when upside down in a kayak in a rapid. Tuck, wait, hold… feel the water... HIPSNAP!

Wanda has lots of wonderful qualities. Patience is not one of them.

            She’s been sitting here on the Lava scout rock, the place she’s dreamt and nightmared about for weeks, sobbing and stuck. We all love her spirit, but all of us also happen to need to get on with the job, whatever the hell Wanda ends up doing. Time for action. So, me being me, I propose “So, uh, Wanda…how long can you hold your breath?”

            All fall silent, turning to me with puzzled looks. I’m sitting on a knob of rock just above the rest, legs crossed like some raggedy Buddha with red shorts. I hadn’t participated in the show until now. This being my third time down, I’m the “old-timer”. My belly’s still healing from three surgeries, so I’m kinda taking it easy – just an innocent passenger glad to be down here where I belong, grateful for another chance at it without the weight of being responsible for my own craft. It was touch and go for a bit there. Being down here means I’ve survived the metastases, the Middle-Ages torture chamber chemo. I’ve been doing a bit of holding my own breath, come to think of it, losing half a lung and various other bits and pieces. Lava somehow doesn’t rise to this new standard.

            Wanda wipes her tears with her sleeve, whimpers “I don’t know… Why?”

            “Come on. Let’s see.” I push a button on my watch for all to notice. Wanda starts to hold her breath.

            “Pretty good. Fifty seconds.”

            “I could have held it a lot longer.” Pause, then, a bit irked, “Why?”

            “Well, this rapid is exactly twenty three seconds long, top to bottom.” I point towards the roiling, accelerating tongue. “Even if you turned over in that eddy fence at the top of the tongue there, in twenty three seconds you’d be in the tailwaves. Hell, you’ve got a solid roll in tailwaves, don’t you?”

            She rises wordlessly, mouth set, turns on her heel, bruskly strides back down the trail towards her waiting kayak.

            All eyes follow her, then turn back to me.

            I shrug, palms up, smiling my most angelic smile. Of course I just made that shit up. It worked, didn’t it? We all turn back towards the river to watch and wait for our wonderful Wanda.

            Soon, her lone craft floats into sight from behind the tamarisk trees lining the bank at the upstream parking eddy, paddle resting on her deck, head bent in some inner meditation, drifting slowly into the infamous right run.

            She looks up at the Eye of Odin (I’d suggested that little offering last night), readies her paddle, hits that very same first eddy fence, and instantly goes upside-down.   Everyone’s eyes widen, mouths open, and all spontaneously begin to count out loud in unison…

            “ONE-one thousand, TWO-one thousand, THREE…”

            The bottom of Wanda’s boat, meanwhile (we presume she’s still attached under there), proceeds into the first huge diagonal, careens through that and the next few waves, slams into the V-Wave where it totally disappears, resurfaces a bit downstream and rushes directly into the Big Cahuna. All we ever see is the whirligig of her white plastic hull.

            “Twenty-THREE-thousand…” our entire tribe chants in unison from the safety of our perch.

            And in that same exact instant, Wanda rolls upright in the tailwaves.

            Applause and rowdy whistling adds to the roar. My trademark cackle lightens our mood as we meander back towards our own fates.

            Wanda paddles into that first eddy below the Black Rock (a.k.a. Cheese Grater), tosses her kayak onto her shoulder, scrambles all the way back up the rocky trail, and runs it again after we belatedly set up to spot her in the safety eddies, saying not a word. Makes it to the V-Wave this time before going over, rolls once again in the tail as we watch, whooping and applauding.

            At Tequila Beach that evening, like our comrades before and since, spirits soar and libations flow.

And that’s how Wanda and I know exactly how long Lava Falls is.