When Herrera flipped, she even had the presence of mind to
salvage her combat-medal-bedecked Gilligan hat. “I was really happy
that I was able to contribute and not have everyone do work for me,”
she said. “It was neat to do something physical. At home, I can barely
get my own mail.”
The rafters, too, had a good day. Anjah Mason, the expressionless
Army vet who had told us she wanted to stop zoning out, described
almost having a panic attack on the boat, but then talking herself
through it. She’d learned how to adapt to a wholly new situation, and
she was pleased.
Everyone was hungry. No one stayed up late. Manic Pam Hana
finished a cigarette and then fell asleep in front of her tent under the
still-bright northern Rockies sky at 8 P.M.
I began the next day with my signature outdoor ailment, a bee
sting. Catalina Lopez administered rubbing alcohol and Benadryl and
told me to keep tabs on the swelling. A former Army nurse, she had
served for fifteen years in the Balkans, Somalia and Iraq, and was
haunted by recurring dreams of blood and severed body parts. Once,
while I was eating lunch, she had described watching an unconscious
guard’s brain swell and swell in the hospital. She told me normal
intracranial pressure was 10, but this guy’s meter was reading 20,
then 30 and then 85 “and then I could see his cranium start to move.”
I looked at my sandwich.
“You see where I’m going with this.”
I nodded.
“Do you want me to stop?”
“Yes, please.”
That second day, I joined the increasingly sociable paddle raft. At
some point, Tania Herrera, sitting on the raft tube across from me in
the bow, started singing, “I kissed a bug and I liked it.” She told
stories about being in Iraq. She was part of an all-woman transport