“EVENTUALLY, ALL THINGS MERGE INTO ONE, AND A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT.”

Wednesday Morning we woke up bright and early to depart Portland, took some quick photos in front of Multnomah Falls, then commenced the 5 hour drive to Takilma, where the Out’n’About Treesort happily stands. The Dodge Four had previously enjoyed this same Treesort and white water adventure before (See: http://blathersciolist.blogspot.com/2011/08/raft-down-river.html for a trip down memory lane.) and now it was time to share it with the rest of the family. For those uninitiated in what is only one of the most fun ways to spend the night, a “Treesort” is a place where you sleep…in treehouses!

The Dodge Tribe stayed in the “Yertree.” The Yus stayed in the “Mastree.” And the Tais stayed in the “Cabin” – which overlooked the entire vast meadow and ziplines. The moment we arrived the kidlings were chomping at the bit to take a swim in the watering hole, so we gladly obliged their request, and I’d just like to point out here that I didn’t use the term “oblige” merely because it was in reference to a watering hole…I actually use that word frequently in my daily vernacular…just ask anyone…and fetch me a sarsaparilla while yer at it, ya varmint!

 The watering hole was bracingly cold…as in testicle-bouncing, speech-swallowing, thought-erasing cold…as the water that feeds into the watering hole comes from the melting Oregon snowpack, but the weather outside was so hot that we found it refreshing, anyway. Later that night George cooked fresh hot dogs made locally, and we finished the evening off with S’mores! All the kids got to engulf their marshmallows in violent flames, and wildly blow at them in a panic, and nearly set everyone else around them on fire, too…what a beautiful childhood rite of passage! You’re welcome, children. You’re welcome.

What I love about this place is that it seems like everyone’s heart rate slows down just a few beats when here. Everything is calm around you. You can hear the horses in the distant meadows during the day, huffuffling the way horses do — I don’t know why they do it but it’s nice. Then crickets at night, vibrating their jazz to the night sky. It’s not a manufactured calm like you’d find at a spa, but genuine serene tranquility, almost as if a transfer of energy is happening, as if the trees themselves are absorbing some of our collective bullshit for us, allowing our shoulders to rise higher, giving our rib cages more room for our hearts to beat more freely…

Holy shit was that obnoxious! But I meant it. For breakfast, the staff made a variety of quiche and fresh berry muffins, and you eat and just listen to the wood of the main house creak around you. Sure, you have to battle some bugs…George had an ongoing feud with the entire mosquito population…but for me this place has an awesome type of peacefulness that I’m not sure I’ve found anywhere else.

But speaking of mornings, the next morning we awoke to HIT THE KLAMATH, muhufuggas!!! White water rafting. ALL OF US! Tiffany was able to find the guide we used when we rode the Klamath before, the eternally perfect Rael.

 I mean look at him! Look how he sits on that raft as he explains all things “rafty” to us. This guy is as calm as a dragonfly. During the drive to the river he fills you with local history of the area, as well as ecological facts about the region, and he does it in a way that makes it all sound so casual and interesting and meant just for you that you really want to take it in and listen. And that’s the other horribly wonderful thing about Rael. He’s a brilliant listener. He wants to know about everyone. Not just a name, not just small talk, but he asks for real human facts about you, and he listens as you talk as if he cares. And this is a guy who’s only going to be with us for a day. And to boot, the bastard hasn’t gained an ounce of body fat. Not that I was counting…but I was.

Because of our massive number of people rafting this time, Rael was accompanied by Matt. Rael shared with us that Matt is a veteran Green Beret who spent ten years in Afghanistan — but you wouldn’t know it from his youthful face. I’ll never be able to imagine ten years in Afghanistan, but I can imagine that the river is a good place for someone who can. Matt took the other family that came with us on our excursion…four of them, single mom/three daughters, while Rael took the ten of us. (It’s okay, his many muscles did fine helping row us down the river.

So we shot the rapids again!

But this time Rael also brought along a kayak, which George decided to take for a spin. And of course, he worked that sucker to perfection…even down the “Rattlesnake!”

Look at that guy! That’s a real man, right there! Mind you, George has never kayaked in rapids before. And he never flipped it. Not once! I mean, what does pulling something like that off do for your confidence? I kept imagining a scenario where the day George returns to work he struts right into his boss’s office, a glass bottle of milk in his hand (I always imagine cocky people chugging milk from bottles)…George coolly takes the phone handset that his boss is demanding figures into out of the boss’s hand, softly places it on the receiver then TELLS his boss that the boss WILL give him a promotion, because he just shot the god damn rapids in a god damn kayak…and then George chugs the entire bottle of milk, without a single dribble George would never be that sloppy, unceremoniously smashes the fucking bottle against the boss’s wall, and struts out.

(Note: I’m not sure if George actually did that when he returned to work.)

But of course, Chase isn’t one to be left out of the adventure. She rode with George on the kayak for a spell after watching George on the Rattlesnake, and then decided that she wanted to do it all by herself on an upcoming churner!

And she never flipped, either! (Point of fact: the mother from the other family did flip her kayak, after humble-bragging about all of her previous experience – some people just can’t handle greatness.) It was pretty insane as a dad to watch my young teenage daughter shoot the rapids by herself. Pride, terror, more pride washed over me. Rael, by the way, trains the military and emergency responders in the art of “Fast Water Rescue” so I knew Chase was in good hands, but still…

As we worked our way down the Klamath, we were able to jump out of the raft, here and there, and simply float down-river, bobbing along in our life jackets, looking up at the ospreys as they flew by, up at a bashful young eagle, turtles cynically sunbathing on rocks. We pulled to shore to traipse a few hundred yards up river to survey the Rattlesnake for George, so that Rael and Matt could help him plot how not to smash up against the rocks and kill himself. Along the way we plucked wild blackberries off of a bush. To be able to pull fruit off of a bush and bite into it seconds later, the juices warmed by the sun…well, it’s not really a modern thing most people do, is it? Tyler took a spill into the bush, scratched up her hand a bit, but wasn’t any worse for the wear. In fact, she took it like a trooper. I probably would have been mewling like a baby for the rest of the trip, but it’s no secret that Tyler is much tougher than me. And hey, I bet she didn’t know that blackberry bushes had thorns before falling in…so see? She learned something the old-school way. Through experience.

And that’s the part that I loved most about that day. Seeing the kids live life completely differently from what they are used to. Being able to happily jump into a river and bob along. Piper officiously inquiring Rael with demanding tones whether or not there are more rapids immediately after shooting through one. Cayden happily jumping into the river water, bold and bubbly and happy. Eating berries off of a bush. Chomping a sandwich outdoors while standing by the riverside. Hanging on for dear life as the raft bucks over rude river wash and weaves between warning boulders in the waters…laughing and hooting the entire time. Being bounced into each other, onto each other. Over the years I realized that there is a very specific feeling of satisfaction a parent feels when their child is doing something that is particularly nourishing for them: When they were babies it’s when they eat. As they grew older, when they read. Recently I’ve also realized I get that feeling while watching Charlie and Chase spar each other in jiu jitsu…because I think it creates a bond that they can’t achieve in many other ways. Watching Tyler, Piper, Cayden, Charlie and Chase  experience the Klamath gave me that same feeling, too. Again, you’re welcome, kids.

During the drive down to the river, Rael told us about a forest fire modestly far away that was/still is burning in such rough terrain that the authorities decided it is too dangerous to try to fight, so they are going to just let it burn…and projected that it will probably keep burning until October. As fate would have it, about midway through our rafting trip, the winds pushed the smoke from that fire down over the river, but didn’t then pick it back up and blow it away. The deeper we traveled, the more thick the smoke became. Everyone commented it was like something out of KONG: SKULL ISLAND. I later reflected how interesting it was that nobody equated it with APOCALYPSE NOW, but I guess different times demand different pop culture references.

It became eerie toward the end, because it really felt like we were floating into the unknown. But as I was floating down river I thought to myself that this situation is the perfect allegory to life. We are always drifting toward the unknown…

For this entire vacation, a recurring thought has stubbornly kept scratching at the back of my brain like a dog that wants in from the rain: In many ways, things will be different the next time Tai/Dodge/Yu get to vacation together, because at this point next year, our Charlie will be heading to college.

Which college is still up in the air, but the dynamic just won’t be the same. She’ll be more grown up than ever. She’ll be locked and loaded, ready and willing for a level of independence that will be shiny and new and scary and wonderful. But the where and the how and the what and the how and the where of it all is still yet to be sought, applied for, responded to, and resolved. And lately, as Tiffany and I have been squinting into that unknown future over the shoulders of our Charlie Girl, we just can’t help but to feel very bittersweet about how inhumanely fast time has gone. There are many days recently where I can practically feel the weight of my 3 year-old girl in my arms. It comes out of nowhere, it hits me unexpectedly. I can practically feel her stubborn cowlick of soft hair against my cheek. I can practically smell that chubby, new skin of hers. I can feel her squirm in my arms, yearning to toddle off to some toy or 3 year-old adventure. I can hear her little chipmunk voice using chatty words. Her little arms squeezing my neck with a monster hug. Her little chubby lips giving me a wet puckered kiss that’s, of course, too hard, so I feel her little round plastic glasses pressed on my face, too. I can practically experience it all again, but not wholly. Because it’s all just memory now. It will never be that way ever again for her and us. And that thought only makes me crave it more. Fucking cruel. Fucking cruel. Fucking cruel…

You can squint and stare directly into the haze and spend all of your time wondering/fretting about what’s hidden up ahead. You can spend your precious time looking behind you, trying to trace through the veil where you’ve just come from. Or you can happily enjoy the company of everyone around you, bobbing along in the exact same direction. Maybe you pass certain points at different times. Maybe sometimes you are closer to some people on some parts of the journey than others, but the truth is we are all moving forward, whether we like it or not. And if you are lucky to be with the ones you love it makes any kind of journey that much better. So together we’ll figure out how to pull each other back into the raft, together we’ll paddle to the shore, and brush the sand off of our feet, and then ride up the highway, up and out of the smoke, back into the blue sky.

And nobody, of course, is the same as when we all started out. Journeys change everyone.

But we did it together.