On Self-Rescue

Abstract

On Self-Rescue Abigail Greenbaum (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 14] This past summer, I didn't run the Upper Green, the Chattooga, or any of my favorite whitewater rivers, because my kayak skirt no longer fits around my pregnant belly. That's what I say to my boating friends when they invite me on trips. But the truth is I haven't been on rivers since before my body showed its tenant. I've been scared. Pregnant, I've lost my balance. For weeks, I couldn't rise from bed without the contents of my stomach rising also. In the early days, I felt stoned on my own body, a fuzziness around the edges of everything that happened. I lived from sleep to nap to sleep. My body's resources have been focused on growing earlobes, or on maintaining an ecosystem in which fetal eyes can move from their fishlike starting points to their final location. Learning to read a whole new set of instincts and sensations, I feel strange in my own skin. I don't trust the physical instincts I once had. Paddling in actual swift water has felt undoable. I've long been afraid to roll a kayak up from the river water in which it has [End Page 15] flipped, but I still spent several years learning how. The first time I tried to roll, I floated in a north Georgia sporting-goods store's wave pool, with a hired instructor spotting me. I didn't even own a boat. Before that lesson, I'd paddled one river, the Tuckasegee in North Carolina. The wide canyon, flanked by a rail line, eased between tall mountains, its water sifted into gentle but defined channels where beginners practice their skills. I loved the bounce of continuous waves under my hips, I loved how the kayak became an extension of my body, the mermaid tail of my childhood dreams, but I'd been scared when, as I attempted to cross a gentle current, the flow grabbed my boat's edge and pulled me under. Rolling back seemed both important and unthinkable, so I paid the instructor fifty dollars to see if I could do it. He can teach anyone, I'd heard. This felt like a challenge in reverse. If I couldn't roll—and I fully expected that I couldn't—I'd find friends for a rafting trip. I'd never mess with skirted boats again. The store's pool had a wave that could be switched on, but after talking to me for less than a minute, the instructor could tell I wasn't near ready to practice in current. Before we tried a roll, he asked me to flip, then count to ten before I swam from my boat. Hang out under the water, wait, feel the boat settle. There's a mechanical reason for this; a boat still rocking from its flip resists being righted. But he also wanted me to feel how long I could actually wait before breathing. He promised that this was longer than I thought it would be. He cautioned that paddling requires awareness and calm, especially when upside down in turbulent water. He told me this is why potheads make such good boaters. I did not know until then that I could be afraid of water. I grew up in a Massachusetts beach town. I dove into waves and body-surfed them to shore. I steered outboard motors through creeks and marshes, across bays. I tossed anchors and jumped onto docks to tie lines. I swam for hours. Maybe the difference was that in a kayak I would be upside down. And when I first tried to paddle in whitewater, I was no longer a child. I had learned, in other ways, how to fear. I have a strong hip snap, the foundation of any roll. Novice male boaters, I've heard, are more likely to muscle their way up, trying to wrench the boat with their upper body and paddle. You need the paddle stroke, too, but the whole thing starts when you drive your hip toward the surface. In the store...