Disaster Falls

by Stephane Gerson

  The image that came to me was of Berl’s mother swimming on this spot at the age of eight. When I shared it with my father, he mentioned that his mother and her friends would swim naked, boys and girls apart. Long ago, she had told him about this, he said. But he did not say anything until I brought it up that afternoon; he may not even have remembered.

  —

  For a long time, I wondered whether I had taken my father to Belarus or whether he had led me there. Then I realized that both were true. I had inched closer to Berl by the Berezina; he had also drawn me in. He must have needed someone nearby, someone who would mention his mother and watch him summon her to his side. This trip was not only about what Berl would see; it was also about others seeing him. Perhaps this was why he had never gone on his own.

  Berl, in turn, had brought me to a land in which those who failed to save loved ones did not necessarily live in shame or guilt. They could continue to lead full lives alongside their parents and children, dead and alive. My father and I both needed our sons on this trip, but for different reasons. For Berl, it was about the past. See where I came from, he seemed to say. For me, who had made sure Julian stood with us by the Berezina, it was about the future. See who I can still be.

  —

  When Alison looked back on the second year, she said that life had lost its sharp edges. Owen would not return; this was real now, she said. His death was fading behind the veneer of normalcy, something she had expected since the funeral, when her certainty that Owen would in time vanish from the world compounded her desolation. “One day he’ll be a speck in Julian’s mind,” she once said. “The loss will become more important to him than Owen ever was.” Two years in, we had become caretakers of Julian’s memories, teaching him about a relationship that was slipping from consciousness.

  Still, my grief and Alison’s remained distinct. While I continued to feel that I had left Owen behind, Alison continued to notice his presence around her. This presence was not truly Owen, Alison said, but it was something. My inertia still frustrated her; her manic energy still frazzled me. Without deeming her way superior (“perhaps there is something wrong with me,” she let out one day), Alison complained that I no longer fought for anything. During one argument, she called me gutless. It was difficult to object, difficult to tell her that such words took me back to the river, and difficult to understand why she would continue to make her life with such a person.

  And yet, something imperceptible changed between us after Belarus. One winter afternoon, we took a walk outside Woodstock, on a quiet road that rises up a hilltop and then slides toward a lake. It was a bitter day, with cold wind sweeping down the barren mountains. As soon as I saw the dark water, I thought of Owen of course and so did Alison, though neither of us said anything. We simply agreed to remain by the edge for a few minutes.

  Standing in silence, standing together as if bereaved parents were the most normal beings in the world, we felt the immensity of Owen’s absence just as every day Alison felt the immensity of Owen’s presence—absence and presence necessarily entwined. It was nothing more than this, a quiet moment by the water. But during the months that followed, it gained density alongside others like it, moments during which the only thing to do was to stand still.

  Do not feel compelled to say anything to Alison.

  Do not ask whether Owen’s death was the worst thing in the world.

  Do not expect to understand this inscrutable event, soften its edges, or make it your own.

  Do not step away when you feel what it is like not to understand.

  Do not expect anything more than stopping by a lake with Alison and feeling together what you will never understand.

  —

  I had to go off without Alison in order to stand quietly with her upon returning and feel that this was enough. Likewise, I had to discover distant rivers and forests in order to tell Alison about yet another encounter with the Green, one that I had been keeping to myself.

  It happened twenty minutes or so after the accident. While searching for Owen, I ran upstream until a bend or perhaps a tributary blocked the way, preventing me from reaching the place in the river where I had last seen him. I stood at the edge, wanting to cross but kept in place by the rapid current. Within minutes, a guide arrived and stepped into the water, his chest cutting a furrow across the broken-up surface. He told me to stay put, which I did because he was a professional and I was not, and also because he still wore his life jacket whereas I had discarded mine. People die all the time while trying to save others.

  Still, how could I be sure that I had not been too fearful to make this crossing? How could I know that I would have sacrificed my life for my son if this might have made a difference?

  Alison did not question my actions when I told her about this. Nor did she bring up her own decision to remain on the bank when she had arrived at the same bend. This was a separate matter altogether and clearly not a problematic one for her, probably because she had long recognized what I could not grasp until Belarus—that we could have made it across and run between the trees and perhaps even glimpsed Owen on the other side of the river and still been unable to save him.

  Julie: What kind of boat was it?

  Alison stood by the bedroom window, her body barely discernible in the early morning half-light. Fuck! Silence, and then in a softer voice, almost a whisper, a confession: “Sometimes I go back to the river.”

  She moved from the window to the bed, sat next to me, and apologized for bringing up the accident. There are topics that, from the earliest days, each of us tacitly agreed not to spring upon the other. Evoking sadness in general terms, mentioning a difficult moment that had occurred that day—these things were acceptable. But we did not allow ourselves to measure the void of Owen’s absence, or wonder out loud whether we would make it, or say things like my life is finished. Nor did we drag the other, unprepared, back to the accident. The image of Owen alone in the water was so painful that, from the start, I refrained from imagining it. What happened during those last minutes on Disaster Falls became a dark hole in the recess of my mind.

  I did not write about the accident for many months, even though I knew that those memories, too, would eventually fade. I could not figure out what story to tell, or if it was all right to turn Owen’s death into a story, or whether I could write about it with the requisite honesty. Words that are indispensable—a testament to those we love—can also prove insufferable. Could I follow Wladyslaw Szlengel, the Warsaw Ghetto poet who penned such fierce, unsparing verses about unimaginable terror? “The hot steam will begin to suffocate you, to suffocate you, / And you will scream, you will try to run.” Shun metaphors, avoid innuendo, refuse flowery language. Cut close to the bone, as close as possible to the substance of things.

  Once I finally sat down to write what I could remember about the day’s events on the Green—sometime after returning from Belarus—I began with the lead-up to the accident and its aftermath before moving to the history of the rapids. All of this drew me closer, but still not to the heart of the matter.

  When there was nothing left but the accident itself, I wrote about that as well. I did so slowly and meticulously, as if granular precision could counterbalance the blur of my grief and allow me to touch that time and place without trembling. Only then did I realize that I had been living every day with what Alison and I did not see and then did not let ourselves imagine: Owen at the moment of his death.

  —

  We arrived at Disaster Falls in the middle of the afternoon, after running the Class I rapids that had alarmed and delighted Owen. Before entering this stretch of the river, the lead raft directed us to the left bank, where we dragged our vessels onto the sand and then walked up a short hill. From that height, we would scout the rapids.

  All of us walked in single file, up the narrow path. The bottleneck resembled a rapid except that, on land, constriction slows things down, whereas in water it creates turbulence. By the time the four of us reached
the top, a crowd had formed around Delma, who was talking. Maybe she had only cleared her throat; maybe she had told a joke; or maybe she had provided a warning that some of us would not hear. I have no idea, but when I later tried to establish when things first went awry, this is where I ended up.

  After the scouting, Alison and Julian would reembark on rafts that guides would pilot. I was slated to run Disaster Falls with Owen in a ducky—not the same thing. During our initial get-together the previous evening in Vernal, Delma had asked who would want to use a ducky at some point on the trip. Many hands went up, though no one asked on what sections of the river we would use duckies or how, in terms of stability and maneuverability, they compared to rafts. This might have been because the outfitters’ brochure had already provided answers. It said that duckies were easy to handle in low-or mid-intensity rapids, even for beginners. Riding in a ducky would, it promised, provide a sense of what it was like to be a river otter. There were half a dozen kids eight and above on the trip. All of them would no doubt have loved to become otters for a day.

  When we reached the lookout point, I knew that I had to hear Delma’s instructions. As I made my way to the front of the group, I gained a clearer view of the river. It stretched out for a few hundred feet before contracting into a channel framed by two large boulders, one on each side. The boulders heralded a drop into rushing waters. This was Upper Disaster. Afterward, the rapids slowed down, with no more drops, although the water soon gathered speed as it circled and slammed into rocks of all sizes, including the largest one—No-Name Island, which bifurcated the river. This went on for a quarter of a mile, into Lower Disaster.

  —

  Delma presented the initial gauntlet, framed by the boulders, as the greatest challenge. She told us to enter the rapids straight on and to follow the raft that preceded us. Upon reaching the calmer stretch below, we were to hang left and make our way to an eddy, where the party would regroup. While focus was required throughout, things would grow easier past the gauntlet. My gut feeling, however, was that nothing about Disaster Falls would be easy. The margin of error seemed slim on rapids that had little in common with the morning’s Class I’s. They represented an exponential shift, a portal into a different realm. I felt this on the lookout point even though the magnitude of the shift and the precise nature of this realm eluded me.

  Something did not feel right, but I could not be sure. The brochure had presented Upper Disaster as a Class III, ideal for children. Some of the guidebooks I later consulted agree, but not all. William McGinnis’s Whitewater Rafting says that Upper and Lower Disaster are rated Class IV and II in low water. The River Runner’s Guide to Utah labels the entire Gates of Lodore section of the Green advanced, meaning that it requires “fast maneuvers under pressure” and may make self-recovery difficult. The book recommends training on the type of kayak or canoe one will use. “How rough are Dinosaur’s rapids?” asks Belknap’s Waterproof Dinosaur River Guide. Not as difficult as the Grand Canyon’s heavy water, but “tricky enough to challenge veteran river runners.”

  One of the many things I did not know during the scouting was that experienced kayakers have spent considerable time on that spot, preparing to run the rapids in vessels not dissimilar to mine except that they were nimble, one-person, hard-shell kayaks rather than unwieldy two-person duckies with a child in the front.

  The environmentalist Jeffrey St. Clair and his party once scouted Disaster Falls for an hour, considering rocks and boulders that waited to “trap a foot, rip a raft, smash a skull.” Colin Fletcher, the backpacker, once stood for a long time where I now stood, scoping possible routes. If you ferried left down the smooth tongue above the rapid and established momentum toward the far bank, a few fierce strokes at the proper moment should take you beyond the boulder that formed the left flank of the chute and into a small, relatively slack patch of water. From there, an apparently easy route bypassed the main drop. Below, a short stretch of water without major obstacles would give you time to set up for the rapid’s second part.

  Fletcher then walked a short distance to scout the rest of Upper Disaster. Its main channel ran for perhaps three hundred yards, right of No Name Island, in an almost straight line. But it ran broken and confused.

  After stopping for lunch, Fletcher looked some more and reread parts of a book entitled River Rescue, which warned about places in the river where “the undertow could suck you and pin you there, helpless, until you drowned.” He then awaited the arrival of another party to ask their opinion and call on them if needed during his run. Only at that point did he feel ready.

  Enter right of center, try to ease left until winging close to the island; then, just beyond a big angular boulder, move back center for a clear final run to the tail.

  St. Clair and Fletcher went ahead, but others did not. One blogger I came across scouted this stretch of the river and then deemed it more prudent to run the rapids in a raft instead. We had never anticipated that Owen would run Disaster Falls or any other Class III rapids in a ducky or a kayak. It just so happened that Julian had boarded the ducky in the morning while Owen did so in the afternoon, until we reached Disaster Falls.

  —

  Now we had to decide. Owen could stay in the ducky, or he could board a raft.

  —

  As people milled about and began walking back to the beach, I took a few steps toward the edge. It was difficult to analyze the situation without rafting experience, training, or prior knowledge of these rapids. Yet the flow of the current, the sound of the water, the droplets in the air made Disaster Falls feel as formidable as it must have in the 1860s. Its name no longer seemed a relic, a metaphor, or a marketing gimmick. I thought about the red dory pinned against a rock. The force of the current had stalled efforts to dislodge it for more than two weeks.

  But there was such bonhomie within the party. The first rapids had been so much fun. Our friends had had such a good time on this same stretch of the river a year earlier. And these were duckies everyone was talking about—duckies on a river named after a color, duckies in a national monument called Dinosaur.

  As I write this, I cannot tell whether I am transcribing what went through my mind on that hill or telling a story I composed during the years that followed. What is certain is that Alison and I talked it over on the point and decided to ask the guides whether it was safe for an inexperienced boater to kayak Disaster Falls with an eight-year-old.

  I caught sight of Kris and took him aside. After listening to me and asking about Owen’s swimming abilities, he said we could safely run Disaster Falls in a ducky. It would be fine, he said, and then he walked away, leaving me with the rapids at my back and before me a human current sweeping down the hill toward the river. Kris had not stammered or hesitated. There was no reason to question the judgment of a guide who spoke with such authority.

  And yet, I still harbored doubts. So I found Delma and took her aside. After listening to me, she, too, said Owen and I could safely run Disaster Falls in our ducky. It would be fine, she said, and then she walked away. She spoke with as much authority as Kris, without stammering or hesitating.

  It felt as if we had entered a world in which everything pointed in one direction only. The guides’ separate yet identical recommendations, their expertise and assurances, the collective expectations of the group gathered force until running Disaster Falls in a ducky with Owen seemed not only permissible, but perfectly reasonable.

  We still had to decide.

  —

  Owen and Julian had, like Alison and me, listened to Delma’s instructions while viewing the rapids. Now they were part of our conversation, which veered between unarticulated forebodings and the assumption that everything was under control. Owen dithered; Julian offered to switch places with him; and then Owen no longer hesitated. He now insisted upon running the rapids with me in the ducky.

  At Arches National Park a few days earlier, Alison and I had told Owen that it was too dangerous to make that steep run down t
o Delicate Arch. We could have overridden the guides and done the same at Disaster Falls by telling Owen that he would have to ride in a raft. But we could not say no every time and still instill confidence and prepare him for what life had in store. Saying no would tell Owen to choose a safe and protected existence over an exposed and passionate one. Saying no would deprive him of the freedom for which, at his age, I had yearned. Saying no would allow my cautious, protective nature to rule yet again. Saying no would stifle Owen on what he called the best day of his life.

  Still, we came so very close to saying no at Disaster Falls.

  —

  In the early months after the accident, Alison sometimes wondered whether she had approached life with too much nonchalance. In her Regret.O.Gram (part of a project in which people were invited to pen missives of atonement for Yom Kippur), she apologized to Owen for allowing him to push the limits on that day. Alison kept guilt at bay, however, by repeating what she had first said in the tent: revisiting the past would do no good. Alison never brought up the scouting.

  My approach was different. I reviewed this sequence of events from multiple perspectives to understand why we had ultimately said yes. Surely there were reasons for this.

  I began with the notion (which I had read somewhere) that people usually make smart decisions when given good information, but often struggle to secure such information from experts. The guides had answered the question I had posed, but not the ones I had failed to ask, such as: What was the probability of flipping over on this rapid—in a ducky as well as in a raft? What was this probability for novices? And what would flipping entail in this current? I wondered if the guides had known. It was difficult to consider this without succumbing to anger, so I told myself that if such information was available, I had not known how to draw it out.