I spent the last few days with my son, Max, one of my best friends, Amy, her two daughters, Grace and Alice, her brother, Adam, his son, Levi, and their parents, Bill and Janie. Bill and Janie had the enormous good luck to spend the entire month of July “ranch sitting” for friends on the most gorgeous piece of land I have ever had the privilege to visit.
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| Max on the Back Porch of the Ranch |
I rolled out of bed at 9:30 Saturday morning. It was a little late, but I didn't really feel too bad. Amy and Adam awoke after me. We had to scrap the possibility of the three of us driving to Yellowstone, but none of us cared very much because you could just sit on the porch all day and be the most content you’d ever been. Still, there were kids to entertain, and more nearby beauty to see, so we, myself included, were completely game when Bill yelled, “Ok, we’re going rafting on the river now.”
At about 11:30, sprayed with sunscreen, which we left back at the ranch, and carrying a water bottle each, a couple of snack sized bags of chips, and a few granola bars, we jumped onto our rafts and tubes and headed down river. Amy and I were each in a tube. The others were distributed between two inflatable rafts.
The trip was way more than the one and half hour ride we had all envisioned. Bill had us start so far up the river, we didn't get off the river until after 4 p.m., more than four hours after we started, with most of us burnt on some part or parts of our body having consumed every drop of water and morsel of food. The worst part, though, was that half-way through the trip down the river, I became horribly motion sick from the tube I was in spinning, just spinning and spinning and spinning down the river. I moved from the inner tube to a raft with Max and Amy, but it did little to improve how I felt.
Soon after moving to the raft, our little group several yards and a few bends down the river from the others, with my stomach still churning, we beached the raft on a small island in the middle of the river and I walked downstream, down a small embankment into water about chest high, took off my bathing suit bottoms, and shit in the river. Fortunately, the current was strong.
Sure, the bourbon the night before couldn't have helped the situation, but it truly wasn't from being hungover, honest. It truly was an awful case of motion sickness, possibly made worse by bourbon. I can't sit in the back seat of a car without getting horrifically sick so spinning and floating in a river for four hours was never going to end well. Still, I have never in all of my 39 years crouched down in any body of water and shit. Ever. I've never even considered it. Like if someone told me these exact circumstances and asked me what I’d would do, I would never have said, “Well, of course, I’d get up out the raft, walk down river, and I’d shit in that river, I’d shit like shitting in rivers was my business.” I don't even use the hotel room bathroom when I travel with friends. I wake up in the wee hours of the morning and hit up the newly cleaned lobby restroom where I take care of my very private business privately in private with lots of privacy, and by that I mean away from people. And generally rivers.
After shimmying around in the water for a few moments doing my best to clean away the shame, I pulled my swim bottoms back on and climbed back onto the raft just as the rest of our party came around the last bend in the river. I felt better, almost victorious. My stomach felt a bit less queasy, Amy was the only one that knew what happened, and I knew she would never tell. I had fucking shit in a fucking river. I was invincible. A half hour later I was violently puking off the side of the raft.
The puking became so bad and so violent, and I was certain puke water was sloshing back into the raft and up and around me, my best friend, and my five year old, that I jumped out of the raft and floated in the water puking, puking and puking and puking. Just puking all around me in the water. Then dry heaving and dry heaving. It was awful, but Amy and I were laughing so hard. I had just crouched down and shit in a river and, because that wasn't bad enough, I’d followed it with a puke marathon that ended with me floating in that same river as I puked bagel, Chevre, coffee, bourbon and juice all around me.
Rather than get back in the raft, I just started floating down the river holding onto it, because when I was in the water was the only time I felt near okay. But it was mid summer, the river had dried up, and, though deep in parts, in some parts the water level was as little as two inches. As I was floating, I was bruising myself up and down my legs as they hit against the river rocks.
Before getting on the river earlier that day, Grace, Amy’s eldest daughter, and I had driven my rental car down to where the trip would end, dropped my car off so I could later drive a few people back to get the the cars parked where we started, and jumped into Bill's truck with Bill and Amy to drive back up the river. For quite sometime, all that kept me going as I floated down down down the river, my legs banging against the rocks, was that eventually it would end and I’d be able to get into my car and drive back to the ranch.
There I was, still feeling sick, floating down the river bumping my legs against the rocks, when someone on one of the other rafts or tubes yelled, “Karen, where are your keys?” Before my eyes replayed the earlier scene of dropping my car off and getting into the truck. I had my keys in my hand and I always lose my keys -- I MEAN I ALWAYS LOSE MY KEYS -- so I announced very loudly, "I'm going to stick my keys right here behind the driver’s seat, in this pocket," and Amy, the responsible one, the one without ADD, said, "Good idea, good job."
I’m told the look on my face the moment I realized I didn't have my keys, that they were up river in Bill's truck, after I had just shit and puked my guts out, was priceless. I was all, “Fuck, this nightmare is never going to end.” We had to wait for another group to come down the river and beg them to drive Bill and Janie back to their cars while the rest of us sat in the sun, hot, hungry, and tired. Myself, I was covered in goosebumps from still being sick and felt about two seconds from passing out.
While we all sat there waiting, Grace asked me if I had gone pee once while we were in the river. I smiled a bit slyly and said, “I did more than pee once.” She asked innocently, “Did you pee twice?” Amy responded for me, "Karen became one with the river today."
