End of the Rope

by Jan Redford

  Troy looked under the car. “Lose your muffler?” He must have heard me coming around the corner before he’d even seen my headlights.

  “Nope. It’s in the backseat.”

  “The road’s not that bad. You should have had enough clearance.”

  “Guess not.”

  “I’ll back up to the last pullout, then you can follow us back to camp.”

  “See you there,” said Brad, and it seemed like we exchanged one of those unmistakable looks. Which surprised me, on account of Becca and Shelly, and the fact that I was never going near a man again.

  5

  LEARNING TO ROLL

  My planting bags thumped against my legs and butt, the one on my back and the other two on either side, the weight trying to squish me into the ground. The rough needles of the tall pine seedlings scratched the soft undersides of my arms, even through my sleeves. I bent over for about the seven-hundredth time that day, screefed the thick duff with my caulk boots down to mineral soil, speared the ground with my shovel, grabbed a tree from my bag, tucked the long, spidery roots into the opening with the blade, kicked the hole closed with my heel and continued walking, without straightening up, pacing out my next tree and looking for the next spot at the same time. For a few trees, I could almost pretend I was one of the more productive planters, a highballer.

  Cheryl, a UBC student from Vancouver, was a few paces off to my left. We’d been paired up because we were both lowballers. The block spread out before us, patched with snow and covered in so much slash, half-rotten logs and stumps that it looked like it had been logged that morning. The closer we moved toward the line of trees in the distance, the steeper the pitch.

  Every muscle in my body felt like it had been put through a meat tenderizer. I had trench foot and my heels were rubbed raw. My hands were claws with blisters the size of bite-sized Ritz crackers, I was starting to get tendonitis in my wrist, and I had black fly bites on top of mosquito bites on top of no-see-um bites. Even worse, I’d finally remembered something I’d forgotten thousands of miles away in Jakarta: tree planting sucked.

  I straightened and pushed my red bandana up my forehead with my pesticide-soaked glove. Cheryl stopped when she saw me stop. We were both always looking for the slightest excuse to take a break but we’d only just refilled our bags.

  I leaned on my shovel, shaking my hair like a horse’s tail to discourage the swarm of mosquitoes homing in on me. The sky was grey and thick as dishwater.

  “Time for a smoke break?” Cheryl asked.

  We dropped our planting bags. Minus the weight of the trees, I felt like I’d been set free, floating like a helium balloon. We plopped down on a wet log, pulled out bags of Drum tobacco and started rolling. If I was going to breathe in pesticides all day, I might as well throw a bit of arsenic, tar and nicotine into the mix. Besides, it warded off the bugs, gave me an excuse to take a break, and kept me from chewing tobacco.

  I took a drag off my cigarette, blew the smoke into the swarm of black flies and mosquitoes. The sweet cigar aroma of tobacco blended with the half-bottle of bug dope I’d soaked into my clothes. DEET perfume.

  “So, how’s it going with Loverboy?” Cheryl asked, elbowing me.

  I groaned. “Oh my God. He makes me so horny.”

  In my five sexually active years, no one had ever affected me like Brad. I fantasized about him all day long. I was so wound up my metabolism burned faster than a hummingbird’s and I’d dropped all the weight I’d gained in Asia, and then some.

  Two weeks earlier, we’d had our first date, kayaking on an “easy” section of the Chilliwack River after a day of planting. I’d paddled a kayak only twice in my life; once on a lake, and once the previous summer on the Similkameen River when I was an assistant instructor with Outward Bound. I’d dumped in the first thirty seconds and gone for a harrowing swim, pinned to the boat by the windbreaker I’d wrapped around my waist under my spray skirt.

  The Chilliwack took me for a similar romp. I dumped in the first few seconds, got back in my boat, then dumped over and over again for the rest of the evening. By the time I flipped the final time, it was dark and I was so disoriented and hypothermic that I forgot how to get out of my boat. Instead of leaning forward, I arched back, scraping my face through the rocks on the bottom of the river before I finally remembered how to exit. I came up bleeding. After Brad hauled me out, he kissed me and said, “You’re a tough one. I like that.” The next day, I packed up my pup tent and blue, half-inch Ensolite pad, and moved into his eight-man canvas tent with the six-inch foamy.

  “What about Becca and Shelly?” Cheryl asked.

  “Over. Shelly’s moved in with some guy in Canmore, and Becca moved out a while ago. To Revelstoke, I think.”

  “Just be careful. He likes the women.”

  I looked down at my boots. I wanted to stick my fingers in my ears and go la-la-la-la-la-la but I didn’t want pesticides in any orifices.

  Troy had told me the same thing but I’d chalked it up to jealousy. There were only eight women in camp this year and we’d all been snatched up during the annual tree-planting mating ritual.

  “Brad’s a free spirit. He just doesn’t want anyone trying to control him.” As an afterthought I said, “And so am I.”

  One last puff from my cigarette, then I squished it into the wet log. The ember went out with a hiss. I forced myself to my feet, strapped on my bags, grabbed my shovel. The weight of the wet trees dug into my shoulders, dragged down on my hips.

  * * *

  —

  The calm water of the eddy rocked my kayak gently as I stared downstream at the logjam. Years of dead trees and branches—the length of five railway containers—were piled high like a massive complex of beaver condos. Sweepers. One of the most dreaded hazards on a river.

  “That looks nasty,” I said.

  Brad bobbed in his kayak beside me, his blond curls stuck up through the holes in his helmet. This was my sixth time on the Chilliwack. We’d been paddling after planting but we finally had a day off so we were doing a longer stretch of the river.

  “Just don’t come out of your boat. Get aggro. And don’t forget to lean downstream.”

  He powered through the eddy line, sliced across the current, and ferried into the middle of the river, still pointing upstream toward a surf wave. He caught it, started to carve back and forth, perfectly balanced, his kayak almost an extension of his body. Electricity jolted through my lower abdomen and almost winded me. He was so beautiful to watch.

  A small tree flowed by in the rushing spring melt-off. It made a beeline for the logjam and got pinned there, blending in with the rest of the pile. I pulled my eyes away and studied the turbulent eddy line near my boat, visualized myself leaning downstream. Downstream, downstream, downstream! If I leaned the wrong way, the water would grab an edge and flip me.

  After I’d set my boat on an angle, pointing upriver, I took three hard strokes with my paddle to cross the eddy line into the current. I did an upstream sweep to initiate the turn, but it shifted my weight in that same direction. Upstream, instead of downstream. The river flipped my kayak so fast I didn’t have time to take a breath before I was over. The frigid water shocked out any air left in my lungs. I hung upside down in swirling blackness, plunged into a muffled roar. Leaning forward, I pulled the cord on my spray skirt and slid out of my kayak into the river.

  When my head broke through the surface, I grabbed the end of my boat, but couldn’t find my paddle. Brad was always telling me, Never let go of your gear! I twisted my body to look downstream, and there was the wall of logs. I was heading right for it. I let go of my boat, spun in the water, searching for Brad. He’d save me. He had always been right there, ready to pluck me out of the water. But he was paddling full-bore downstream, looking back over his shoulder at me, like a skier watching a partner disappear into an avalanche. I floated, like a piece of debris, at the mercy of the river.

  My kayak got sucked under first. Disappeared. I took a
deep breath before I, too, was pulled down, like an astronaut getting sucked out of her spaceship into the cosmos.

  Everything went black. A churning, roaring black. My body tossed and scraped and sifted through branches. Water punched into my mouth, up my nose. I didn’t know if my eyes were open or closed. Just before my lungs exploded, my head thrust through the surface and I gulped in air, then the sweepers swallowed me again, pulling me deeper under the branches. I popped up again, took a deep breath, and down I went, back into the abyss. Branches grabbed at my clothing, my spray skirt, my feet—like a sea of writhing, grasping arms. Up again for air. Slits of daylight, high above through the jumble of trees, teased me before I was sucked back down. Knocked back and forth like a pinball, my body squeezed its way though any opening large enough to allow it passage.

  Suddenly, I jolted to a stop. The water tugged on my body, trying to pull me downstream, but I wasn’t going anywhere. My helmet was jammed between two branches. I was stuck, totally submerged under a ton of dead trees. I wrenched my head back and forth, trying to twist free. I grabbed at my helmet, but my hands couldn’t fight the onslaught of water. Terror gripped me, but I couldn’t scream. Instinct took over and I snapped my neck back, like I was head-butting an attacker. My helmet wrenched free and I was moving again, sucked on through the churning blackness, till finally, my head thrust back through the surface. Air rushed into my lungs, screams rushed out.

  “It’s okay. You’re safe. I’ve got you.” Brad was there, beside me in his kayak, and I was bobbing away from the logjam. “Grab onto my boat.”

  My arms flopped against the fibreglass, useless, like prosthetics. I hooked one arm through the loop of rope in the stern and let it droop. A cut on my hand bled into the water.

  Brad paddled for shore.

  * * *

  —

  “You’ve got to learn to roll,” Brad said as I stuffed a cream cheese and blueberry Danish into my mouth. You’d think I’d been the one to smoke a fatty that morning, not Brad.

  We were sitting on the patio in the sun at my favourite bakery in the world, in one of my favourite rock climbing areas, Leavenworth, Washington. I’d been taking Brad climbing, and he’d been taking me out on the river.

  A few days ago in Hope, we’d woken to snow—four inches of it on the lowest cut block. We couldn’t plant until it melted, so we’d loaded Brad’s orange Ford pickup with all the toys: kayaks, climbing gear, a unicycle, bike, juggling pins and a hacky sack, and headed south yelling, “Freedom from treedom!”

  “As soon as you get your roll, you’ll be able to look after yourself on the river.”

  I wasn’t the only one rattled by the incident on the Chilliwack. Brad had readied himself to retrieve my body, just like a friend of his had had to do when his girlfriend accidentally went over a deadly waterfall near Whistler. I forced myself to paddle the next day because I knew if I didn’t, I’d never paddle again. At first I was as stiff as a Barbie doll in my boat, but I loosened up eventually. Down here in Washington, I’d finally figured out upstream and downstream, which way to lean, how to ferry across the river, and yesterday I’d kayak-surfed my first wave.

  “Don’t you think it’s pretty cold for rolling?” It was early May and there was still snow in the mountains.

  The thought of intentionally flipping my kayak and hanging upside down in water wasn’t too appealing. For three nights in a row after getting sucked under the sweepers, I’d woken up screaming from nightmares of being buried alive, sometimes in water, sometimes in snow. I’d discovered that one big difference between Brad and me was that I’d rather die falling off a mountain, and he’d rather drown.

  “I can’t keep rescuing you,” he said.

  * * *

  —

  Brad stood up to his waist in the lake in his wetsuit holding a paddle, while I sat in the kayak. The water felt like a melted glacier, which is exactly what it was, and I was supposed to tip upside down, reach around underwater and grab the paddle for leverage to flip myself back up.

  “This is fucking freezing.”

  “Good incentive to learn quickly,” Brad said.

  He had such even, white teeth. With his wild, wiry blond curls and soft blue eyes, he was completely unlike Jim.

  Tucking my head and body, I leaned forward and flipped my kayak. As soon as the water closed in around me I was back in the blackness, under the sweepers. I panicked, started thrashing around under water until Brad managed to hoist me back up. I spluttered and coughed as water poured off me.

  “It’s okay. Calm down. I’m right here.”

  My head pounded with an instant ice cream headache.

  “Try again.”

  Staring into the water, I took a deep breath and flipped. I twisted my body, reached up, grabbed the paddle with both hands, and pulled. Brad still had to do most of the work.

  “Try again. This time flick your hips more. Your head’s the last thing out of the water.”

  I tipped myself over again, and instead of trying to escape the cold as quickly as possible, I hung upside down, my eyes wide open, focused on Brad’s paddle, a wobbling line beyond the blue-green water. I reached up, grabbed the paddle and snapped my hips. My head came up last. Water streaming through my hair rushed into my huge grin.

  “Fuckin’ A!” I shouted.

  “All right! You’ll be rolling in no time.” Brad thumped me on the back. “Let’s try it a few more times, then I’ll show you how to set up with the paddle.”

  Five submersions later Brad handed me the paddle, but I was shaking so hard I could barely hold onto it. To warm up, I paddled hard into the middle of the lake till I felt my muscles come back to life, turned and paddled back.

  After Brad showed me how to set up—my paddle in the water, parallel to the boat—I leaned my body forward and tipped upside down. My hands punched through to air, and Brad guided my paddle in a skimming sweep across the surface of the water, from bow to stern. When my body was stretched out, almost lying back on my kayak, I flicked my hips and I was up.

  “Oh my God! What an incredible feeling. Let’s do it again!”

  But after ten more tries, with Brad supporting my paddle less and less, I still couldn’t roll on my own, and we were both in the early stages of hypothermia.

  “Hot cocoa and peppermint schnapps.” Brad’s words quivered through blue lips.

  “One more time. I know I can get it.”

  Plunging back in the water, I swept my paddle across the surface and I was up.

  “I didn’t touch your paddle that time,” Brad said. I could hear the approval in his voice.

  I was shuddering with cold, sporting a headache worse than any hangover I’d ever had, and the words I love you banged against the back of my chattering teeth. But I fought them off. Even I knew three weeks was too early for that.

  I threw my arms around him instead.

  6

  BUGABOO

  Scrambling along the knife-edge Northeast Ridge of Bugaboo Spire, I eyeballed the two thousand feet of air between me and the glacier. Oceans of white surrounded us, as though we were marooned on top of a pointy, barren island of granite. I felt a brief jolt of panic as I fought off a bizarre urge to jump, and forced myself to focus on where I wanted to go, not where I didn’t want to go. It was what Brad kept telling me on the river.

  Ronnie edged along carefully just ahead of me, the coiled rope over his shoulder. We’d finished the technical climbing, about twelve pitches of solid hand and finger cracks, and we were now scrambling, unroped, between the north and south summits.

  Ronnie was Brad’s best friend. I’d paddled with him a lot, but this was our first climbing trip together. Brad was scared of heights so he hadn’t joined us. A few years earlier, he’d almost died climbing with Ronnie. Brad and a girl they were with had slid right off the edge of a mountain and Ronnie had managed to dig his axe into the ice and save them both. Brad had followed me up a few rock climbs over the summer, but he would never go into the
alpine again. So he was back at his place in Fernie.

  Fernie is a cute little mountain town in southern BC. When I finished tree planting in June, I’d gone straight there with Brad, and now I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. It had a ski hill, mountains and rivers. It was the dream home I’d fantasized about on my drive from Calgary to Hope.

  Ronnie and I moved quickly along the ridge. Many parties got “benighted” up here, and we didn’t want to be one of them. We’d left our campsite six hours earlier and still had the tricky descent down the Kain Route ahead of us, with some very airy downclimbing and several rappels before we would even reach the glacier. And then there was the bergschrund—a huge crevasse—to cross before we could do the snow descent back to our tent. But I was feeling strong. The climber in me was back. We’d swung leads on the roped section, and I’d led the crux pitch. Up here I didn’t feel like a rookie floating behind an expert like I did on the river with Brad. Up here I was “one of the boys.”

  We stopped at the gendarme, a tooth of rock jutting out from the ridge.

  “We start rappelling here,” Ronnie said.

  With my head stuck through a “V” slot, I looked down. The rock was overhanging. It would be a steep rappel. The blood in my temples pumped against my helmet. I could count the beats of my heart without even taking my pulse.

  The guidebook had said that bugaboo meant “an object of obsession, usually exaggerated fear or anxiety,” but this wasn’t fear. Just excitement. It was the same rush I got when I could hear the roar of rapids around a corner on the river, but climbing didn’t have the same bowel-releasing quality. It was pure, pleasurable adrenalin. Like a fix. This was what had been missing in my life. I’d spent the spring and summer paddling with Brad and my roll was now bomber, but I was always on the edge of my ability. I felt like a climber in a boat, not a real paddler. It was Brad’s sport, not mine. I needed the mountains.