Last weekend Alexis and I celebrated our first anniversary by going on a whitewater rafting trip up in Maine. We spent three nights in a luxurious suite at a great place (www.crabapplewhitewater.com) that organizes rafting trips down the Kennebec River, and, when the water is high enough, on the Dead River.

I know, isn’t the name itself kinda imposing? The DEAD River? Yeah, sign me up!

Apparently the Dead River is their most difficult river, but it only runs on certain times of the year because the flow is controlled by a dam. And, on about a handful of days during the spring, there are special dam releases that flood the river with very high water at fast rates. During those particular days the river has several Category V rapids sections and becomes their most challenging and difficult rapids raft trip. Since the days on which the dam releases will be that high are known in advance, people specifically schedule their trips for those particular days.

Yep, Saturday was one of those days. And, yep, we had signed up for that day months in advance.

Now, let me add a qualifier here - my WIFE picked that day. You see, she had gone rafting before, but on a much calmer river in western Massachusetts (a category I-II), and she was eager to experience a much more exciting ride.

I can’t swim.

Not that I’m afraid of water - I actually like water very much, it’s just that I don’t know, technically speaking, how to stay alive in it.

But I’m reckless, right? So I said “sure honey, that sounds great!” and promptly signed us up for it.

As the day approached, I read up on dam releases and water flow and all the jargon that goes with it. Apparently whitewater type people speak a language that uses the term “CFS” a lot, meaning, I guess, cubic-feet-per-second, i.e. a measure of volume of water flowing at a particular rate. The more CFS, the higher and/or faster the water.

I looked up the dam release numbers for the Dead River and when the river is calmer (during the summer), it’s at about 3000 CFS, but in the spring, during the dam releases, the water flow is at about 5500 CFS. And, during the special “high-water releases”, the water gets to about 8500 CFS. We were scheduled for a 5500 CFS dam release day, which was less than the “high-water release” days, but still, a LOT of water.

So, I’m like, yeah, whatever, thousands of CFS may break my bones but…

Right, so we get there and it’s been raining all week. Bright and early on Saturday morning, we are in line to pick up our wetsuits (yes, it was still raining), and we hear the guides excitedly telling us - “Oh yeah, you guys, it’s going to be HIGH water today! The Dead’s flowing at about 8000-10000 CFS!!”

Everybody’s nattering about how the extended rainfall is flooding the river, and the dam release has only flooded it even more, which means that the river is running higher than even the guides expected (some of them had not seen the river that high), which means that all the difficult sections are now even more difficult and unpredictable because the water is just churning like crazy through them.

Yahoo.

So we put on our wetsuits and listen through the safety lesson (”if you lose your balance and fall into the river, you guys, just float with your feet up and facing downstream because you don’t want to get your feet caught in a root underwater and drown… just float and we’ll toss a rope out to ya”) and I tighten my lifevest straps as I hear more stuff like that.

So we get on the bus and ride out 16 miles up river to the spot where we are going to launch and we gather around our raft guide. There are eight of us assigned to the raft, four on either side of the raft, plus our guide who will sit at the very back of the raft and steer.

Our guide is a rugged outdoorsy woman named Hannah, no-nonsense but with a way of putting us at ease. She explains that there are only a few things we need to know - when she yells “ahead!” that means we are to paddle, all together and in sync. When she yells “take a break” that means we are to stop paddling. When she yells “dig it in!!” that means to paddle like there’s literally no tomorrow.

So we got into the raft and took off. I’ll have pictures soon, but for now you’re going to have to do with the generic images of whitewater rafting that you can find on their website. The water was HIGH and DEEP!!

At first it was all good, and then we hit our first rapids, and the raft was crashing into waves, and there was water everywhere, and we were getting tossed around, and Hannah is yelling “AHEAD!!” and we are paddling like crazy, and then she yells out “take a break you guys” and we stop paddling and look around and we’re rafting!

It was SO MUCH FUN!

And that was just the first ten minutes - things got pretty difficult after that, there were some rapids that were just a whirlwind of whitewater and raging currents, followed by spots of flat peaceful water.

When we hit the rough spots, we would hear Hannah yelling “AHEAD!!” over and over, more insistent in tone each time, sometimes adding a “DIG IT IN!!!!” to clarify her intent, and for the first time in my life I understood that you can say a whole paragraph in just a single word.

During those times, we eight in the boat had absolutely no idea what was going on around us, we dared not look up to see the water, we were completely focused on one thing: PADDLE. We had to paddle in sync with the people on our side of the boat (otherwise we would just be flailing like crazies without actually moving the boat anywhere), and it was TOUGH to paddle against the crazy river, it took strength and focus and effort and all we could focus on was the paddle of the person in front of us, to make sure we were paddling in time with them.

And all we had to go by in terms of direction was Hannah screaming in our ears: “AHEAD!!!”

Because she was the guide, she could see the river from her vantage point, and she knew where the boat had to go, and how we needed to get there. Her paddle acted as the steering oar that determined the direction of the raft, but the boat needed our combined teamwork to propel it.

Sometimes she would yell out “TAKE A BREAK YOU GUYS!!” right in the middle of a churning rapids section, and we would relax but in a bewildered manner - we were right in the middle of it, shouldn’t we be DOING something? We would look around and Hannah would be wrestling with her paddle, twisting the raft around to catch the current that flowed in the middle of the rapids. She knew that we were wiped, and that there was nothing we could do by paddling at that point, and it was up to her to steer the raft past the danger she had seen earlier by catching the current she was aiming for. We just had to sit tight and enjoy the ride!

Sometimes she would yell out “AHEAD!!” as we were in a flat spot of river, chatting with each other, and we would start paddling IMMEDIATELY. I would glance up to see just why she needed us to paddle when we were in a calm section and I would see rapids coming up, and Hannah would steer the raft so that it would enter the rapids at a particular angle or at a particular spot. Then I would understand.

So, Alexis and I celebrated our first anniversary by experiencing a microcosm of the faith journey out on a river In many ways it was symbolic of the faith journey we had experienced together our first year of marriage - scary and unknown to begin with, people tossing around all kinds of jargon that we had no experience of, then reasonably calm and fun at the outset, getting to know our guide more and learning to paddle when we heard “AHEAD!!” and learning to rest when we heard “take a break you guys”. Then when we hit the rough spots we knew what we had to do and we just had to do it, which took a lot of effort but we gradually got better at it and gradually grew in our trust of our guide as we did so. And then we actually started even enjoying the ride - enjoying the calm spots when we could simply relax and chat and hang out, and enjoying the rough spots when we got to work as a team together, and even learning to appreciate the view when our guide told us to rest and leave the steering to Him.

Because our guide knows the river, knows the current, and knows when we need to start paddling (even if we think we are in a calm spot) and knows when we need a break (even if we think we need to paddle flat out because we are caught in a churning frenzy) and knows when we need to know nothing except trust the guide’s steering, and knows when we need to know what’s coming up ahead, and knows when we need to simply enjoy the thrill of the ride.

Here’s to another year of marriage and another year in this crazy faith journey that Jesus calls “life”… Maybe next year we will skydive…