Disaster Falls

by Stephane Gerson

  I also reconsidered my upbringing within a social group—the middle class—that believes in its ability to master uncertainty and nature because it is convinced that life will always keep improving, that risk can be reduced or even eliminated, and that days will follow one another without unforeseen disasters. An essay by the critic William Deresiewicz seemed to capture my unwitting assumptions before the accident: “We’re going to live a long time, and the world is not going to take us by surprise.” There are other ways of thinking about the middle class, but this one resonated. I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, an era of unprecedented peace in the West. To be sure, Soviet missiles were frightening to anyone living in Belgium during those decades. But the Berlin Wall came down just as I graduated from college. Why not believe in the end of history and a right to happiness, or at the very least my right to happiness? Down deep, I must have felt that things would always turn out fine. I certainly did not approach the guides—agents of an ostensibly benevolent corporation—with the fine-honed skepticism of people whose life experiences had taught them how dangerous such trust could be.

  These explanations, though persuasive, did not suffice. After the accident, I also lived with questions, such as, How did we come through 9/11 and then lose Owen after all? I lived with the reductive yet powerful notion that Owen was a casualty of our self-indulgent quest for a wilderness experience that has long been commercialized for tourists. I lived with Julian’s statement, uttered in passing a couple of years after the accident, that I should have listened to my instincts. I lived with the conviction that, after child molesters perhaps, delinquent parents are the worst sinners in our society.

  —

  Yet I also lived with gratitude: Alison and I had made this decision together, and for this, perhaps perversely, I was thankful.

  Although we made the decision together, we did not make it alone: Owen participated in the process as well. Owen died as a child—too small to battle those elements—but he was until the end an autonomous being, determined to overcome his anxieties and fashion his own sense of self. Things did not merely happen to Owen at Disaster Falls. As much as we manage our children’s lives, they also shape their own destinies. This jumped at me when I finally wrote about the scouting, although it took me awhile to make peace with the notion that my child was in any way involved in his own death.

  —

  Alison and the boys took their time walking down the hill. Owen and Julian joked about what would happen if one of them died. Who would get the PlayStation? I could not hear them because I hurried down to the water. Julian told me about this banter years later. He cherished this last memory of Owen—laughing with his brother.

  By the river, travelers were taking sips from canteens and applying sunscreen while the guides pulled the heavy rafts toward the water. I walked over to the edge and crouched next to our ducky. Invisible to the others or perhaps all too noticeable, I stared at the rapids with enough intensity to etch their course into my brain and muscles. Then, still crouching, I shut my eyes.

  The air was still but heavy with the rumble of the river. Without leaving the shoreline, I descended Disaster Falls, or rather Owen and I ran Disaster Falls, straight down the middle, between the boulders, and then sharply to the left, far from the rocks we could see and the others that lurked below the surface.

  Colin Fletcher had once stood there and traced his own itinerary. An expert outdoorsman, he knew just how tentative his plan had to be. A mere expression of intent. I’d have to feel my way down, making moment-to-moment decisions, obstacle to obstacle.

  My gut told me the same thing, but all I could summon was the advice in the outfitter’s brochure: relax and let nature take over.

  Kara: Were there rocks beneath you?

  The gauntlet went fine; the gauntlet was mayhem.

  We proceeded in a line, rafts up front and duckies in the rear. I paddled with purpose from the moment we left the beach, eyes locked on the center point between the boulders. This is exactly where I entered Upper Disaster. The current propelled us over the chute, an abrupt but smooth dip—first the bow carrying Owen, at a fifty-degree angle, and then the stern. Balance seemed more important than skill or agility. After all that mental preparation, we were on the other side of the drop within a fraction of a second.

  The rafts continued toward Lower Disaster except for two of them, which the guides stationed on opposite sides of the river. Julian and a guide sat in one near the right bank; Alison and Kris were in the other. Alison chatted with Kris—he told her about Powell’s expedition—and snapped what turned out to be the last photograph of Owen. It is all grays and browns and greens: water, rocks, trees. In the center, a shiny yellow ducky carries two blurry yet erect figures with yellow helmets. I am thrusting my paddle into the water, but Owen is holding his horizontally. Though I had asked him to help out, he was not open to instruction right then. He was eight years old.

  In that photograph, we are passing a boulder twice our size, with two others like it in the background and more ahead, along with several smaller jagged rocks. The photograph does not capture the strength of the current except around the rocks, where the frothy water rises unevenly. Owen appears to be taking in the scene. I cannot tell whether he is grabbing his paddle for support, like a ballet barre, or clutching it with glee, like a roller-coaster lap bar. Either way, he seems small.

  Alison took this picture as we glided along the surface. We had made it past the main obstacle, and for a fleeting instant it felt as if we were hanging above the water. Without saying anything, Owen and I shared the moment like two warriors reliving a glorious victory.

  —

  It is at this exact instant that things fell apart. It began behind us, as the other duckies went over the drop. I heard a commotion, loud voices, and the sound of a whistle. An eleven-year-old boy had fallen out of the ducky in which he rode with his father. Kris yelled, “Swimmer!” All eyes were on the kid as he climbed back in. Meanwhile, a teenage girl lost her paddle in the rapids and somehow made it to Alison’s raft for assistance. Soon there was another boater in the water. It was either the traveler from San Francisco or his friend. One of them, kayaking solo, had capsized.

  I turned around and saw this swimmer not far behind. Since no one else was close, I thought I should help him out. But the guide in Julian’s raft shouted commands from his side of the river. I resumed my course.

  —

  Bad things could happen anywhere on Upper Disaster, not just on the gauntlet. Colin Fletcher was scanning downstream for obstacles when one of his oars hit bottom in the murky water and jammed so tight that it slipped out. Fletcher dipped his hand in the water and, almost miraculously, recovered the oar. Another kayaker I read about ran into more serious trouble. One of his oars snapped as he approached a big midstream rock. To avoid a wrap, he oriented his bow toward the obstacle and, when he got close, used his other oar to push the kayak away. Afterward, he felt fortunate to have made it out of Disaster Falls.

  —

  I veered left, toward the channel that would take us to the eddy and our rendezvous point. But in the midst of this commotion—swimmers in the water, oars floating away, guides yelling from their rafts—the current had drawn us toward the right bank. Fractions of a second, the slightest of distractions: that’s all it took, a minute change in location with immediate consequences.

  We were now heading for a large boulder. It was my turn to make moment-to-moment decisions. I paddled hard and told Owen to do the same. He followed my instructions, but he was not strong and even if he had been, there is little we could have done against the current.

  We hit the boulder head on. This was better than sideways, even though the rapids lapped at our ducky from all directions. I pushed against the boulder with my paddle, a few quick thrusts that got us back on course.

  Owen and I continued to paddle. We had entered a treacherous zone, peppered with rocks of all dimensions. Another boulder stood in our path, the same size as the
first but only a few feet away, leaving no time to prepare. We hit it at an angle, which made it impossible to dislodge before the current pushed the stern forward and left us perpendicular to the flow.

  Owen and I had wrapped around a rock just below Upper Disaster.

  —

  One of the bloggers I later read, an Englishwoman living in California, ran Disaster without a hitch, but saw one of her friends flip in the rapids. The ducky was pinned against a huge rock, and then someone came to the woman’s help. All of them, the blogger wrote, now understood “the value of having our safety kayaker, Brian, along for the ride.”

  —

  On her raft, Alison realized that we were stuck. She told Kris, who was still tending to the girl who had lost her paddle. Kris yelled out to the guide who sat in Julian’s raft, across the river. Alison does not remember what Kris said.

  —

  Afterward, things unfolded like this: fast, then slow, then fast.

  —

  Fast. Water swarmed in, first a series of wavelets and then a steady flow that filled up one end of the ducky and pushed it against a rock that provided no traction whatsoever. Alison and Julian both saw the ducky shoot straight up, with the bow toward the skies and Owen hanging above the river.

  Things happened quickly, a violent passage from one state to another, all faculties summoned to process the new reality. The images I carry are spotty and out of focus: water, stones inches away, the ducky twisting to its side, lost paddles. No sound.

  Julian recognized the purple water bottle clipped to our bow. The bottle, too, was up in the air.

  Two more swimmers.

  When Alison told Kris that this was a lot, she heard him say that it was the most he had ever seen or else the most he had seen in a while—one of the two. Alison felt her stomach tighten.

  If someone blew a whistle, I could not hear it because I was underwater.

  —

  Slow. As soon as my life jacket pulled me to the surface, I saw Owen in the water. He was facing me, between ten and fifteen feet away. The ducky must have done a 180 because we had switched positions.

  He was now upstream, his back to the gauntlet, his face toward the rocks and Lower Disaster and the flow of a river that had many miles to go before meeting the Colorado. I was now downstream, with Julian to my left and, behind Owen, the traveler from San Francisco or his friend climbing into a ducky. All I could see was Owen’s face against the water, a white and yellow buoy on a green river.

  It was just the two of us, close and out of reach. I had been unable to grab Owen when the ducky twisted and could not do so now either. Over the years, I had taken his hand in subway stations and atop canyons, but at this moment we could not touch each other, not even if we stretched our arms. Worlds can come undone in infinitesimal increments.

  Owen and I were suspended in the water, his eyes locked on mine and mine on his. The force of the current was bearing down on his back and my chest. Everything was already in motion, nature and history reasserting their rights with impatience. Still, we remained in place, our gazes denying the past of Disaster Falls while keeping the future at bay.

  When I peered into Owen’s eyes, I did not see fear or anguish. Owen did not panic. He did not open his mouth or flail his arms or blink any more than usual. He was concerned, he seemed to grasp the seriousness of the situation, but his eyes remained steady, assessing his circumstances and weighing options. He appeared to know that everything had changed and that he would have to find his way on his own. Later I would wonder what he had seen in my eyes, and also whether I had conjured up a soothing image of Owen—the only image I could bear. If I did manufacture such an image, then I did so right there in the water, when time stood still for an eternity that could not have lasted more than a second.

  I could say only one thing within that split second, which meant that I had no time to think about what it would be. I told Owen to keep his feet above water—something I remembered from the morning’s safety meeting. The guide had taught us what to do in case we flipped, which was presented as an unlikely possibility. Raise your hands if you need help, tap your helmet if everything is fine. Most important, turn your body so that it faces downriver, and keep your feet elevated to avoid entrapment around underwater rocks. You don’t want to end up in a strainer sieve, an opening between trees or rocks that lets water through but collects branches and bodies.

  I do not remember raising my hands in the rapids while facing Owen, but this may be what he saw as I urged him to keep his feet above water. I said this as loudly as I could, with the stern intensity of the parent who senses but does not yet know, or cannot yet admit, that he is losing control over his child’s fate.

  Keep your feet above water: These words had to be said, but they now seem so prosaic, so mundane. This continues to make me sad. I wish that my last exchange with Owen had entailed something besides advice.

  —

  Fast. The rapids drew me under. I tried to keep my feet up but could not even raise my head above the surface. The river was flipping me like a twig, propelling me from one submerged rock to another, flesh and bone crashing into inanimate matter. Eventually I repositioned myself in a semi-seated position that made it possible to kick off the boulders. But the effort and the lack of oxygen exhausted me.

  I thought that I might die. This, I now know, was no outlandish notion. A few years earlier, a father and child had capsized in Class III rapids down the river. The child survived, but the father drowned after his foot became trapped. The possibility of dying filled me with disbelief: Death in these circumstances? Why are we even here?

  And if I am about to die, then what is happening to Owen?

  The rapids suddenly let up and dumped me into the eddy below No-Name Island. I swam to the closest raft, Delma’s, and asked if she had seen Owen. She had not; nobody had. Julian and his guide joined us within minutes. They had picked up our ducky but had lost sight of Owen after the accident. Kris and Alison never saw him either. As they made their way down the river, Alison had peered into every raft, hoping to find in one of them the boy who had vanished during the confusion at Upper Disaster.

  —

  Owen’s body was found hours later near the right bank, in a sieve. He was still wearing his helmet and safety jacket. In the tent, Alison deemed this recovery a blessing. Otherwise, she said, it would have been a search without end, countless days on the river, lingering uncertainty about Owen’s life or death.

  We will never know what exactly happened to Owen. On some days, I remembered him as strong and tenacious and told myself that he died in the throes of a valiant battle. At the very least, he was doing something he loved, like the high-wire artist Philippe Petit, the man who walked between the Twin Towers and once said that if he were to fall, what a beautiful thing it would be to die in the exercise of his passion. On those days, I pictured Owen’s face on the river and saw equanimity.

  Such thoughts did not come easily. Owen’s could not be a beautiful death. But I listened intently when Alison’s mother and her partner confided that, a year before the accident, Owen had told them something he had never shared at home. He had said that even though he looked like other children, he could see things they could not. Shortly thereafter, a family friend disclosed that Owen had told her about a benevolent force that always accompanied him. He saw it from a corner of his eye. Because Owen knew that our friend had worked as an ER technician, he asked her what happened to people when they died. He was especially curious about near-death experiences and survivors of prolonged comas.

  Our friend said that Owen talked about such matters without apprehension. This made me think of one of my favorite photographs of Owen and Julian: a three-quarter shot taken in a park when they were six and nine. Julian smiles, mouth half-open, eyes darting to his left. He is fully immersed in childhood. Owen’s cheek almost touches his, but he does not lean on his brother and there is nothing childlike about him. His mouth is shut, without a smile; his eyes a
re melancholy yet focused. He is staring at the camera, into the camera, past the camera, as if he had discerned a secret expanse across some distant horizon.

  Our friend expressed the hope that her talks with Owen had brought him some comfort on the river. “Perhaps he understood…” She did not finish her sentence, but if Owen could see things that we could not, if he was never alone after all, then it was possible that he had forged a connection of his own with the broader world, a connection that made his dying something more than stark, definitive agony. Maybe Owen had some acquaintance with death, maybe it was less foreign to him. I had not spent enough time out West to imagine Owen as some version of the rugged frontiersman who, as Theodore Roosevelt once put it, faces death “as he has faced many other evils, with quiet, uncomplaining fortitude.” But after that conversation I allowed myself to believe that Disaster Falls had not caught him by surprise.

  —

  Owen had disclosed other things in his conversations with my mother-in-law, her partner, and our family friend. He had also said that strange thoughts went through his mind and that he sometimes saw red flashes and odd shapes on the carpet and walls. He could not stop such thoughts.

  Alison and I had never known about this or considered that, as he posed next to Julian in that photograph, Owen saw something that unsettled him, something he could not escape. Maybe he struggled to fall asleep at night because he was confronting these flashes and shapes along with the prospect of final solitude.

  This yielded a different mental image of the accident, one that for a long time I never put into words. But whenever I now heard a child cough up water or saw a father throw his son into the air, my chest tightened and my breathing accelerated just as Owen’s must have on the river, when his fear of abandonment became reality and he found himself alone in the water. Unless I removed myself, I ended up in the sieve with him, both of us pinned against a rock, like the red dory whose name we had made out as we passed by earlier that day. The Great Unknown, it was called.