Just Lucky

From Grand Canyon story after I had started my swim: Soon I began to hear a growling noise up ahead and knew that I was nearing Badger Creek Rapids. As I got closer, I could see a line where the river dropped out of sight with white spray leaping up beyond it. Being at eye level to the river, I could not tell where the worst rocks were, or more important, how big they were. Since it was my first rapid, I decided to stop and take a look. I kicked over to the bank on the right side, tied up, and pulled off my fins because they were very difficult to walk in. The shore was rough, but I was able to walk up far enough to take a look at the rapid. It didn’t seem to be a very big one. There were some rocks at the beginning and a lot of white water. A big boulder stood up out of the water near the middle. I thought that, if I could miss it, I would get through the rapid okay. I walked back, slipped into my fins, and pushed away from the bank. The drums trailed 30 feet straight out behind me, and I was kicking as strongly as possible toward a spot slightly to the right of where I thought the boulder would be. When I reached the crest, I could see the large boulder was on my left and that I was going to miss it as I had hoped. I tried to slow myself down as I went over the crest, but it was hopeless. It was a mistake anyway because my metal drums were right behind me. I went charging down into the white spray and churning water. I managed to get a lung full of air just before I went under, and I quickly found that there was nothing I could do to help myself. I glanced off of the first rock, no problem, but as I spun out of control, the next rock got me squarely in the middle of the back. All of the air in my lungs escaped as I was bent backwards around it. I felt the coils of my towrope wrapping around my legs as I swept past the rock and struggled to the surface. I barely had time to inhale a mixture of air and foam before my drums came crashing down on top of me forcing me under again. Thankfully the rapids didn’t last long and in a short while I found myself in fast but smooth water. I untangled the towrope from around my legs and swam the short distance to shore on the right hand side. When I tried to climb out on the bank though, I felt a sharp pain in my lower back. I sat down, pulled the drums up close to the bank, and tied the towrope around a rock. I laid down where I was and tried to ease the pain, but it would not go away. I knew that if I didn’t get out of the wet suit, I would soon melt, so painfully I wrestled myself out of it and crawled over to a shady spot next to a boulder. I felt like I was going to be sick. The sun was very warm and the sweat rolled off of me as I lay there. I would have liked a cold drink of river water, but it was 20 feet away, and I didn't feel like making the journey. At Lee’s Ferry I had heard one of the guides tell a passenger not to drink the river water, but I had been doing it anyway. It tasted wonderful. I stayed in the shade of that boulder all day, just moving when the shade moved. When the sun went below the canyon rim, I crawled over to the drums and took the lid off of one to get an energy bar. That was my supper and all I really wanted anyway. The lids on the drums were very hard to remove, so I decided not to get my sleeping bag out because it was in another drum. My back wasn’t too painful as long as I didn’t move, and sand makes a pretty good bed in a pinch. It was a beautiful night, nice and balmy, with a carpet of stars so close overhead that I felt I could almost reach up and touch them. The steady roar of the rapids close by and my lack of sleep from the night before soon put me in dreamland.