A magic, moving, living part of the very earth

“A river seems a magic thing. A magic, moving, living part of the very earth itself.”

Or so wrote Laura Gilpin, an American photographer who ironically had my same birthday, April 22, but way back in 1891.

Gilpin, I’ve discovered really had it right.

For the better part of the past 40 years I have been wedded to the moving water of rivers. It’s also as long as I have been married.

Not long after our wedding my wife took a trip to Portland, Ore. to visit her college “bestie.” She returned home with a gift, a book called “Oregon River Tours.” Little did she know I was introduced to a rival suitor of sorts.

Up until that time I’d been a pretty avid outdoorsman and backpacker. But river running — or “discovering gravity” as I call it — ultimately worked much better than my legs did when it came to still being able to explore spectacular backcountry.

My beginnings in the rafting sport were pretty auspicious and might have chased a lot of people away.

Some buddies and I — and my little finger — survived the 1978 Kettle River Raft race in a little red Sevelor raft that was pulled out of the rafters of my mother-in-law’s house.

The last digit on my dominant left hand somehow found itself smack dab between rocks on the Kettle’s Gorge rapid and a paddle. It’s still hurts to think we had eight miles to go without a first aid kit and no suitable “pain killer.”

The next year it was finding the right overnight beginner’s raft trip out of that John Garren book. Off we went, down to the Grand Ronde in Northeast Oregon.

Talk about being embarrassingly unprepared and naively venturing forward.

We were going to cover some 80 miles of river in two days in low, low July flows. Why so far? We had to because that’s the mileage that separated us from our launch point in Minam, Ore. and our other vehicle at Boggan’s Oasis, located at the bottom of the Rattlesnake Grade on State Route 129 south of Asotin, Wash.

We had no pump. Instead we used gas station air to inflate the three boats whose six-man capacity was very much over-inflated, too.

And when we found out why we really, really needed a pump — and more than the string bikini-sized factory patch kit – following running over some kind of sharp metal in the river, we were already nearly 10 miles into the journey.

But that’s when we first were introduced to the giving and helping nature of what we sometimes call “river people.” Their names have long escaped me but those frosty Schlitz malt liquor with the blue bull on the can did not. Neither did their kindness offering duct tape to fix the rip and loan us a pump. We rewarded them the next day with some extra beers.

In the end we never made it the entire 80 miles on the river, aptly named we found for the many huge horseshoe bends along its course. There were plenty more stories we all still love to retell.

We were able to shorten our journey with the help of other rafters who shuttled back to the put-in when the road-less section ended at the Rondowa Bridge.

So fast-forward to 2014 with several dozen fabulous and legendary streams under my belt, among them the Main and Middle Forks of the salmon, the Selway, Lochsa and more.

Now most every Friday night in the spring and summer, you’ll find me floating the Spokane River with groups from the Northwest Whitewater Association. I get to introduce many new people to what I discovered decades ago.

After the often tumultuous trip through the Bowl and Pitcher and Devils Toenail rapids of Riverside State Park comes a welcome stretch of relaxing flat water just above the takeout.

As I float I’m always amazed to think that within a few minutes of this thickly tree-lined shore lies the edge of city of several hundred thousand people. But I can daydream and pretend I’m also in the middle of the Frank Church Wilderness, too.

Yes, Gilpin, who passed away in 1979, may or may not have rafted any rivers I have. But she certainly penned it correctly. “A river seems a magic thing.”

Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].