couldn’t walk for a year. She seemed fragile. When a rapid spat
Anderson out of her inflatable boat in midafternoon, I held her boat
next to mine and helped haul her back in. Then Herrera, riding in a
double kayak, her right arm bearing her high-tech brace with a GoPro
camera attached to it, went over. I wondered how she would get back
in the high, slippery boat with one working arm; but her partner, a
Higher Ground staffer, stayed in the river and heaved her over the
gunnels.
If these women came expecting a relaxing repose on the beach-
lined river, this wasn’t it. We weren’t even allowed cocktails. Could
they handle this sort of extreme adventure? These women lived in a
constant playback of memories and anxieties. Maybe they should be
home snuggling with their service dogs and using a rowing machine?
Or maybe not. Anderson, a Korean American in her early thirties
with short hair, sat smiling while she ate an eggroll that evening. “I
never thought I’d go by myself down a river,” she said. “I’m
exhausted from the adrenaline.” She recalled the words of a yoga
instructor: “Anxiety is just excitement without breath.” The river was
teaching her to breathe. “I wasn’t sure I was going to go back in and
keep kayaking,” she continued, “but I did, and I was trying to breathe
in every rapid.” She clearly liked being a badass. Who doesn’t?
As for Herrera, who was still relearning how to take basic care of
herself, paddling a kayak was a revelation. She didn’t seem to mind
the unplanned swim at all. She found that she could tape her bad hand
around the paddle shaft and use the other arm for most of the power.
Seeing her in the boat, I was reminded of another one-armed veteran
who made a similar river voyage 145 years ago, Major John Wesley
Powell. Wounded during the Civil War and commissioned to survey
the frothy Colorado, he seemed to relish every minute of it: “We have
an unknown distance yet to run; an unknown river yet to explore.
What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we
known not; what walls rise over the river, we know not.”