SARANAC LAKE, NY- 

The plan might have been flawed from the start.

What you might have seen, if you were driving along Highway 84 in Montana that day was a Subaru Outback rental car so new it had no license plates, followed by a Toyota pickup circa 1982, so old it had no shocks and no fixture on which to hang the license plate.

Seven innertubes undulated in the wind, occasionally breaking free and flapping against the rusted side panels of the truck.

You might have been cursing their slow progress or witnessed the convoy pulled over on the side of the road, a huddle of muscled women trying to retie the load with a single, thin rope.

Our destination: Bear Trap Canyon.

As the maid of honor, who was in charge of this bachelorette day, had explained, the plan was to run along the Madison River in Bear Trap Canyon on this sunny July day in order crank up our body heat so the river, still raging with rain and snowmelt, felt bearable—and we would float idly down.

Stress would evaporate; we’d have a moment.

(In small print: There was also a late start to our morning and a 3 pm wedding rehearsal back in Bozeman for which the bride should not be late.) 

It starts out lovely.

Bear Trap Canyon opens wide for us, admitting a line of women running two-by-two along the rock-strewn trail.

In two days, Heidi will get married.

The path narrows.

We fall into single file.

In one place, the river has flooded the trail and we splash through water with a few screeches.

From that point forward, we lift soggy shoes with each footstep, land with small squishes.

This is where we all started: on a trail, running, laughing.

Half naked.

Sometimes fully naked (but that’s another story).

We were college cross country and track teammates, and in the decade since graduating, we continue to gravitate towards this motion—running side-by-side, in formations.

It is where we return time and again.

Rhythm returns.

Some sort of perfect union returns.

Generally, it is accompanied by funny shirts or outfits.

Usually there is a point where someone—or all of us—succumb to the laughter, folding over, crossing our legs lest we pee our shorts.

Amy hikes one side of her black shorts into a wedgie, sporting a half moon for a few strides, to prove there cannot be a run without absurdity.

I step into a blue puddle of butterflies that puff into the air, showering us with wings like violet flower petals.

I squeal.

Blue brushes my legs, my cheeks, and then disperses, blessing each runner as she passes.

Sun heats rock and skin.

My gut turns a bit, unaccustomed to the elevation.

We round another corner, and again, I set off a blue cloud of butterflies.

This is the landscape where Heidi and her maid of honor lived each summer in college—where they came of age.

The strength is here.

We return to the parking lot (and stage the photos you see above).

And this is where our adventure takes an interesting turn.

There’s a vague edit to the plan (time is ticking: It’s now 12:30, it’ll take the truck, which tops out at 55 mph, nearly an hour to make the trip back to town).

 

So, to save a car shuttle, we will leave the Subaru at the bridge, load seven women into the pickup WITH the seven tubes, and drive upriver.

I keep eying the brown river that’s obviously moving fast, but I’m distracted by the sucking on a tube that feeds into a the plastic bladder of wine (pinot grigio), my still nauseous stomach, and the gaggle of girls and limbs crammed into the cab and stuffed between rubber tubes in the back.

 

I grew up a half mile from a river—a situation that elicited countless warnings from both my parents about the hidden strength of river currents.

I would test it: try to walk, swim, or even run upriver.

My father would recount how, when I was an infant, he had nightmares in which I’d get pinned by the current against a fallen tree in the river—how he did not know how to open his eyes underwater; how he could not find me and save me.

He then learned how to open his eyes underwater; the nightmares stopped.

(My father also dreamt the Challenger blew up. And then it did. Needless to say, his dreams concern me.) 

 

We tie seven tubes together.

A plan to launch on the count of three: no stalling.

And we are moving, quite swiftly downriver.

And then, we are moving, quite quickly, towards a pile of rocks on shore.

I ready my feet, prepare for impact, hoping it is, indeed my feet that will hit first.

I make contact with stone, push off with all my might, as does Amy, then Hattie.

Shrieks.

“Paddle.”

(Paddling with our hands does little good.)

Rock in river.

“Butts up.”

When I stretch my legs out, I notice my quad is trembling, and I am quite sure it is not from the run.

Two days ago, Sam in Missoula had noted they’d had a dozen or so drownings; the rivers were running high.

And then our tubes drift to a rock-free line in the middle of the river; the girls relax.

Heidi tells the proposal story.

I keep an eye out for more rocks, head swiveling as the wine rack gets drained.

We pass fishermen in flat-bottomed boats, who look at us half-ogling the preponderance of exposed female flesh, with what I take to be a skeptical – “crazy girls, what are you doing tubing the river” look.

We cover a mile or two of the Madison with swift efficiency.

 

A bridge appears, great gray columns piercing the water.

“Um, guys … ” I say.  “Um … we’re gonna hit a column.”

Someone notices that the ramp for our pull out is approaching, as well.

“We need a plan. We need a plan.”

“What’s the plan?” 

And still, no one paddles.

Or we try, and nothing happens.

We fly past the Subaru. 

Hattie unties the tubes, and we break apart like a rack of billiards.

We spread out, arms still reaching for each other.

We flail, each of us, on our own.

There are piles of rocks sticking out of the river, growing larger by the second.

Watch out, I cry.

The water is only waist high now, but still, each time you try to set your feet down, they pound against the river bottom like a jackhammer as the current drags you downstream.

I learn to run with the current, cutting a gradual line towards shore.

Hoping there are no leg-beating rocks or logs under the murky water.

A desperate cadence extends to my limbs.

Finally, I stumble onto shore.

Claw my way through the weeds.

And finally I remember to look, to check for the other six.

It’s unsettling how each of us kicked into self-survival mode.

Amy is 100 yards down, still flailing towards shore, her flip flops continuing down towards Three Forks and the Gallatin River.

When she steps onto dry land, we have already begun to laugh—the lunacy, the pinot grigio, the river, the tender-footed woman trailing us who can run a 2:47 marathon, yet who’s hobbling down the dirt road, back to the car, begging for shoes.

We do not ask, “What would we have done if …?” 

We sit in the sun, eat, rehydrate, rehash the scene. 

Because everything this week in Montana seems to work out.

Have faith is Heidi’s motto.

We did not lose the bride.

Or the bridal party (all of whom made it to the church on time).

We only lost shoes.

And even that does not matter because there are cowboy boots for the wedding; for dancing; for two-stepping and drunken three-legged races; for tossing into the sagebrush when, 12 hours after the wedding ceremony—no longer able to fully balance on two feet—I unroll my sleeping bag out under the stars and declare, “I’m going to sleep like a cowboy.”

It turns out, in Montana, plans are best half-hatched or not at all; just don’t wear your cowboy boots on the river.

This allows for 13 women hitchhiking, en denim masse, to a bar one night (a large pickup truck was quick to rescue us).

It allows for tickets to a rodeo magically (or divinely) appearing at the 11th hour.

It allows for romping and stomping on plywood dance floor built by the groom, which then becomes a speedway for wheelbarrow races and potato sack races (thanks to a stray box of garbage bags).

All this means you might have to create a new superlative for such adventures: “Most likely to end up in the clinic.” 

Except no one does.

Which is why, when we left Montana—each of us departing on separate lines of flight, leaving our Heidi in a yurt with her husband, her dog, and a coop of chickens—we leave with only splinters of plywood in our flesh, a few grains of dirt still rolling in our hair, some blisters of poison ivy, and a couple of flipflops short of a full suitcase. 

 

And then, I arrive home, raving about my last day in Bozeman and the mountain bike ride I took on Bangtail Ridge—the long switchbacks, views of the snow-capped Bridger mountains and the valley below at each turn, purple lupines carpeting the forest floor.

Breathing elation.

Back in New York, I learn that while we were packing up bikes in the parking lot that day, a man, Daniel Nemcek, didn’t make the turn on one of the switchbacks above.

He crashed.

One of the wedding guests, an EMT and search and rescue person, went on the call in a helicopter.

Daniel died in the hospital that night.

He was 22.

As a teenager, he beat leukemia.

And then, a single turn, on a mountain in Montana, swept him away.

Some moments are blessed.

Some are not.

And now I remember what one should always remember in the mountains—beauty does not exist without the possibility of grief; this is what makes it all the more beautiful.

JENNIFER DUFFIELD WHITE lives in the Adirondack mountains of New York; some days her heart beats a little wildly for Montana wildness. You can contact her here on the comment board or at adkwriting@gmail.com.  

 

Tags: bangtail, bozeman, daniel nemcek, montana, rivers, tubing, wedding

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 3rd, 2008 at 7:45 pm and is filed under Accidents, Alcohol, Cars, Death, Dreams, Environment, Friends, Luck, Nature, Philosophy, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.