From Chapter Seven of Pearls in the Mountains

Chapter Seven

I chose to make the Ocoee drive early in the morning instead of the night before. I left at six for the three hour drive, which would put me there a couple of hours before the trip. I prefer it like that. I don’t like chasing after clocks and would rather time catch up to me. I took the long way in, but it was an easy drive and it took me through the gorge. The Ocoee River is a different river in every way. The gorge, the river, the dams and facilities…it is entirely different. Nature in chains, made to serve like some slave. And it is a magnificent wonder despite it all. So many links broken with these dams, yet so many connections made because of them. Captivating, really. I started there. I’ll probably finish there.
I had the outpost to myself for a little while and went back into my journal. Sitting in this same spot seven months earlier I wrote, “These are the best days of my life. Autumn is in the air. The leaves are rustling in the cool September breeze, chilling, while the sun is still hot enough to make my skin tighten. I’m sitting here in nature, taking the day to myself, deep in the mountains, on the back side of adventures that will probably take the rest of my life to really process. Breathing. Swirling unabashedly in one of the eddies of life…
“Long ago I knew a man. He reflected something from within me. In a rare sober moment he said to a group of us, ‘Everything you need to know about life, you can learn from a river.’ We all sat in a whitewater raft, four young men and a fallen river god. We were in the middle of a large whitewater rapid and we had driven hard up on a rock, left of the line and out of the way, parked several feet above the steepest drop where we had the best vantage point of the entire scene – every part and virtually every detail. He continued, ‘You’ve been trained to be river guides, and you have been taught the skills necessary to run any river. But I can’t tell it from watching you. There is a difference between river guides and raft guides. River guides read water. Raft guides just know their lines. They guide their one river like they would drive a dirt road. They’re no good on any river other than the one they know.’ The river raged and roared around us, heaving the raft listing on that jagged rock. My head swam with the way it rushed past us on every side. Sometimes it was hard to tell if we were sitting still or moving. ‘You’ve not been taught to be raft guides…a little to the left there…this angle at that rock…this many paddle strokes at that turn. But you have a long way to go before you can guide like river guides. A long way to go before you can understand the skills you’ve been taught. And so we’re here today to learn this thing like a dirt road now, because it’s summer already. The tourists are in full force. And you’re still flailing. One day, maybe a year or two down the line, things will change. The river will look entirely different. The shapes and contours – all the parts – will stand out individually, and the river won’t look like a mass of confusion. You will be reading water. It can take a while to learn to read water, but when it happens,’ he snapped his fingers. ‘It’s like that. You’re different. And if you want to become a really good river guide, you’ll come to the river, every day, eager to learn. We are never done learning, and river guides are humble like that.’ He talked about the river like it was a woman. Maybe a goddess. A teacher. Sometimes a punisher. And then we finished the trip, and he sank back into his bottles, never to be seen again. But in those moments my journey really began. I can’t say that I agree with the notion that the river punishes. It reckons. It is both the life and the scales that balance the events in life. It is the standing wave…the obstacle…the ride. But it is much more than that, as it is the water constantly moving through the wave as well, making the wave. If I live outside of my integrity, she shows me.”
These are the best days, but what is the magic trick of knowing now what I will know later…so they can feel like the best days of my life in this moment instead of some future moment, looking back? And I want to look forward into some future moment the same way, without staining it with conditions, knowing it is the best moment. Maybe have a party for it. To see it approaching. To wave excitedly at it. Treat it nicely somehow, and try to make eye contact with it before it slips past, gone the instant it arrived. Maybe if I could join that river without losing my place here, they would all be the best moments. Right now. Is it a musical note? I guess there is a give and take with everything, because I won’t give up this place willingly.
My first trip was wonderful. April has a different flavor than August. That was something that I noticed. The season was a baby with every possibility ahead of it. August is angry. Mainly tired, really. Cranky. The kids need a nap. Everything is shiny in April and May though. Vivid. I had every reason to mine deeply into the chambers of joy. Besides, there were a lot of flipped boats. The second trip was with a rowdy group. There were fewer boats on that trip and we cut loose, everybody pushing toward their limits. Flexing and stretching their dusty skills. Five miles of smiles, and mine was among the biggest, even if the shadow behind me was unusually long and heavy. Mary was on my mind a lot – and Sammy – but there was no space here. No time to reckon with…that…in these full moments. Instead I thought of my personal mantra at each intrusion and kept paddling forward. This life is like no other.
“You can drift like a leaf or pick a line. We all have but one place to go.”
Once gear was put up, the ritual commenced. Swim beer. A poorly kept secret in the industry. As a guide, you owe beer at the end of the day if you swam. Consider it an effort to keep guides honest. At that outpost it was a 12 pack for coming out of the raft. A case for flipping. Double everything if you were the trip leader. And holy shit… The tables were stacked with box after box. What a wonderful little trip that first one was. There were guides there that spent more money on that trip than they made. It works out like that sometimes. We are all just in between swims in this river life, as we say.
Swim beer is piss poor beer though. I can hardly stomach a single one of those cheap things. I admit that I’m a snob. I admit it. And I have no shame in the matter. I bring my own beer to the festivities, but my beers were up at my cabin, along with dry clothes and the dogs. I just wasn’t ready to go there yet, so I joined in on a couple of safety meetings and two of those nasty beers, letting that space stay filled a little longer. Staying distracted. I’m no mountain.
I liked that things weren’t crowded down there on that river, especially upstream of the gorge with the castaways. And that actually makes a difference. Crowded, that was a good one. That outpost wasn’t crowded for me. That’s why I eventually built the cabin. I thought I found my people there, and among them, the quiet giants – river mystics, grateful disciples of Grace. I started to notice that I was haunting the place though, drifting in and out of conversations and not taking part. I was just standing nearby, my mind trekking off to far away places and then back again. Might as well get changed and hang out with the dogs a while. Go sit with that space that I hadn’t had time for…that I had been putting off. Take the ride.
Back at my cabin I was thinking, “Man, stillness can have one hell of a sense of presence.” Can I get myself to just sit and look at it? Maybe that is the reason for all the noise…racing mind…all the things, the shinier the better – to avoid the horror in the stillness. The sheer size of it. My own horror. I remember being on a run once. I got ahead of my partner and waited for her to catch up. We took a short break.
“Do you think you’re running towards something, or away from something?” she asked. I still don’t know. It always felt like it was for balance, but I don’t know which direction. I could see how all that was connected. We don’t make more space. We try, but we can’t. We can run as hard and as fast as we want, it makes no difference. If we want more space, we just have to move the things out that are filling the space. It’s right there. Everywhere. Always. I just needed fewer distractions, because there was something that could only be avoided for so long, and it was in that space; in the nature of the space, not the things in the room, the things filling it. I’m not going to let something chase me. Not knowingly. And so my horror, in that stillness, is my destiny. A thing that has caught up to me. A thing I have caught up to.
“Norwood!” Of course, I thought. “Someone’s looking for you. She’s down at your bus.” That would be Mary. Agreements… And so maybe I had already decided that I wasn’t going to get to resolve that thing in that space yet.
“You want a beer?” I yelled out.
“Dude, is it cold?”
“Yeah.”
“Hell yeah. Thanks Norwood.” I stepped out and handed him a bottle, and he walked back down the trail, barefoot with no shirt. Hair already growing out. These people are highly educated and worldly. Bohemian forest-dwellers, talking late into the night about all things existential. Pushing the edges of the envelope in philosophy in some moments; then turning pick-up trucks into hot tubs, or dressing for costume parties in themes that range from pirates to prostitutes, or watching oiled up girls wrestle in rafts the next moment. I think all of us see the bigger picture, and on some level we would like to slip between the cracks if possible. To avoid the consequences we were promised would always attend the hedonistic life. But the river will take everything if you aren’t careful. It might take everything even if you are careful, and we see the broken examples, circling their own past moments in globes. Broken and penniless. We play with fire, so many of us already burnt, trading the effort of ‘tomorrow’ for one last dance in the flames of ‘today.’
“Hi, Mary.” I surprised her. She didn’t hear me walking down the trail. She spun around and looked at me. So brave, I thought. One thing that I admired about Mary was how she could communicate in so many ways. She was a true dancer in all senses. She didn’t pain the moment with words. She just looked at me with those big, mystical, green eyes, and I measured. We were together. I didn’t pain her either. I gave her a half smile and motioned for her to follow up to my cabin.
“Joe,” she said, but I stopped her. I was struggling to get my lighter up inside a deep candle.
“I’d like to just sit with you in silence. No words. OK? Just…anything but words right now. Let’s do that. Thirty minutes? No words?” She smiled briefly, approving. And we sat there. Close, and very with each other. Looking into each other. I kissed her tears, and her wet, salty lips. Gliding. I felt her fire, so close to the surface, matching mine. So much closer like this. She chose me. She had ached too. I led her inside, silently peeling away her clothing. My mouth wanted to consume every part of her, and she was every bit as hungry. Pillows and blankets fell to the floor, one by one. We struggled against the limits of our bodies to be closer. Finally we made a circle of ourselves, our mouths finding their destinations, the energy circuiting, jumping like voltage, accelerating forward in electric waves towards higher peaks in frequency. Pleasure became the lamp guiding us. Communicating. Giving. Taking. Synchronizing. Then we exploded out, radiating, an arclight ahead of the percussions of our muffled groans, mouths full. And I was gone, like on the river…I had no past. No concept of the future. For a long moment. I like to think we are still coiled together there in that place and time in the universe. In that space. Fucking make up sex…
We slipped into the dark woods, our feet finding the way carefully on the soft, new trail. I like to take in the details, and without a light to be guided by, I was straining for them. I highly recommend that. I haven’t owned a flashlight since the war. We found a large rock on the edge of the trail a few yards before its end. I was making a habit of stopping there on that rock. Checking in. Setting my intentions. And remembering that agenda isn’t my master. The reward is now. I shall not willingly let ideas steal my life from me.
“Why don’t you let me apologize, Joe?” She spoke so softly.
“I told you. Everything you said is true. Except you didn’t say that I try. I try, Mary. But why feel sorry because you see me more clearly? This…us…it’s impossible, but I want it so badly. Even if we only have a week left before you go to Europe…before you’re gone from my life…I’ll take every moment. Eight more nights against your skin. Your skin. Mary’s skin. I’ll take this train wreck…the disaster and the dark nights beyond the void of you. I’ll take the whole thing. I want to be seen by you. And heard. Now we see each other more clearly.”
“Atlanta isn’t that far away from here, Joe.” She empahasized “here.”
“Your life is a lot further away from here than Atlanta is,” I said. She knew that well. She had a point, but I did too. Mary spent more than half the year traveling to very very distant places. All cities. Atlanta might only be a couple of hours from the Ocoee, but she was usually much farther, among the wealthiest kings and queens. Different worlds. Mary took my hand and stood there quietly. “I’m happy you’re here,” I said. She pulled into me, leaning.
“Joe, I want to be home.”
“Where is that, you think?”
“I don’t know.” She ran her other hand up the inside of my arm. “I’m trying…too. Searching. Listening to my heart. Listening to my gut. I think it will become clearer. I want to feel home, but I don’t. I’ve been looking.” We had talked about that before. “It seems closer.” She kissed me then, validating what she had said while at the same time, punctuating it. She was always searching, reaching out with her attentiveness. A dancer, expert at moving and responding, and so her kisses were beyond intimate. Yes, parts were very clear to both of us. She held her lips close to mine after pulling away so slightly. “Clearer,” she whispered into my mouth. I grazed her lips with mine, and then kissed the pieces of them tenderly and hungrily, taking and giving.
“Clearer,” I whispered back, infernos raging up from underneath and behind. All around the fires circled.
“Where is home for you now?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t think it is on Grandfather Mountain anymore. I went back two days ago. And I saw it. It was like you said though. I was haunting it, not ‘being there.’ I’m home when I am on the rivers though. I know that.”
‘Yes, I feel like that on the rivers too.” It kinda shocked me to hear her say that. I struggled for a moment, my mind racing.
“Would it be like that if I wasn’t in the picture?” I asked.
“Yes. I need the rivers.” I was surprised again. I knew the rivers were calling her to them. I could see that. But I was beginning to see Mary a little more deeply now. There were currents down there that I hadn’t felt. Currents I wouldn’t expect. But I was certain that I would be feeling them soon. The river is a salve.
We crossed the parking lot and could see the guides down below us, dozens of conversations taking place loudly under one roof. They were all gathered at a pavilion, and the swim beers were kicking in. Mollie and Ellie had gone ahead of us and were making their rounds among the guides. I could see them, tails wagging, saying hello to each person in turn. “Are you OK?” I asked. I already knew Mary was highly intuitive and perceptive. I was respecting her sensitivity much more now, and I wanted to check in with her before we got into the fray.
“Very OK,” she replied. “It feels very different here. You never came here with her. Did you?” I smiled and pulled her forward with me. No, this place wasn’t stained.
Every whitewater river has a scene, and just as every river has its differences, there are differences in the scenes too. The Ocoee Scene is much louder than the other rivers I had Mary on. Every night is Friday night, but there it was more electric, and in the early part of the season the story telling is still fresh. Full force revelry. I don’t think Mary expected to be meeting so many successful professionals from so many different fields in this environment. Royalty too. We have our own sort of royalty. This was a particularly amazing place to work at, in my mind. The ages ranged from the early 20s to 70. I loved that very often I was one of the youngest, least experienced guides on the trip. We got into a few situations where our faces hurt from smiling so much, and we actually begged for mercy more than once. It was a wonderful thing to reconnect after so many months apart.
We left the scene fairly early in the evening. She wanted to go when I wanted to – at a decent hour with an easy head. People would be up for hours still, but Mary chose to hook her arm through mine and walk back with me to the cabin. “I love all the rivers, but I don’t feel like I’m in anyone’s shadow here. I like it here a lot.”
“It’s the people there.”
“Something pretty terrible happened, didn’t it?” she asked.
“Love can be terrible.”
“What happened, Joe? Why did it end with you and her? That’s what it is, isn’t it? I feel like it is all about how it ended. I feel like they are all on edge when you’re around. It doesn’t feel free.”
“That’s what it is, Mary. I’ll tell you, but not tonight, please.” We had returned to the cabin, and Mary was helping me light a few candles. We shared a beer and she loaded a bowl.
“I want you to trust me,” Mary said. She sat down with me. “What happened? I want to know what everyone was seeing at the other rivers – what I was feeling from them.” I smiled.
“OK, Mary. It isn’t anything really special. It happens all the time. It was at a party at Sammy’s. It was just a normal evening at first, and then it ramped up. Lots of booze. I had been in a long conversation and went to the bathroom. As I was walking in, I heard someone say her name through a closed bedroom door. I got really alarmed, you know? My neck got hot, and my heart just jumped out of my chest, and I didn’t even know why yet. Then I heard her name again, and it was all right there. In the voice. I was wrenched. The door was locked, but it was one of those flimsy, hollow doors. I busted it in. They froze there, with her on top of him. Just finished. Drunk. Plastered, drunk faces, staring stupidly. Senseless.”
“Oh God, Joe. I’m so sorry…what did you do?” Mary was sitting up straight, mouth open, wide-eyed. Genuinely concerned. I admired that about her. I was usually too numb to be very concerned.
“I just left. I don’t know what I might have done if I had stayed, but I couldn’t stay. That’s why everyone felt strange to you. That’s what they weren’t talking about. One stupid little thing stained it all. I knew they were both into each other, but so what? I would have never thought they would hurt me for something so stupid. Not for…sex. Not for something so plain and common as sex. I’ve seen a lot of people trade gold for glass beads though. A lot of people were hurt that night. The two of them hurt themselves as badly as anyone else. I’m sure the alcohol was the final straw, the culprit in a way, but they were also the ones that chose to get so hammered. Really…just super boring.” We didn’t say anything for a while. Very polite. Mary loaded the bowl again. Did she bring her own herb?