It has been beastly hot. Over 100º in town, I heard. It's not as hot here on the mountain, by maybe ten degrees, but that leaves a whole lot of hot to deal with. Mostly I like to stay indoors with the south windows closed, the north windows open to catch a possible breeze, the fan turning its loyal head from side to side, and a glass of ice water by my side. To get into a car, even to drive to a swimming hole, sounds unbearable.
But a day's float down the river? That's different! When I was invited, at last-minute notice, to join a one-day, two-raft float trip down the Rogue River "tomorrow," I didn't hesitate. The occasion was a birthday party with people I didn't know who had contacted a rafter they knew who asked a friend I know to row the second raft. With an extra place on that raft, my friend invited me to join them. Whatever I was supposed to do "tomorrow" would have to wait. I was going down the river!
Could there be a better way to spend a hot day, especially if your friend does the rowing, giving you an entirely relaxed day? Greg scoffed when I commiserated for his hard work. "This is vacation," he said, pulling easily at the oars.
Certainly it was for me. All day my feet dangling over the raft in the water kept me cool. I let my eyes wander along the slowly passing shore, catching sight of merganser ducks swimming in a perfectly straight line and geese floating in gaggles. I watched rocks slide under the raft with smooth somnolence and white-tailed eagles soar like distant kites aloft in the wind. Occasionally a great blue heron would glide upriver and land with a silent, graceful fold of its wings at the river's edge. Now and again a kingfisher darted across the river. Though I was watching closely, I never saw a turtle, but we did see an osprey land in a snag-top nest, from which came the eeping cry of baby ospreys, and the sleek head of an otter gliding through the water. The steep mountains rose on both sides of the river, the quintessential Rogue River sight—sometimes with a skirt of flat land: the willows, then the alders, then the hill-climbing firs, cedars, and madrones. Oaks covered other hills. Some shores were sprinkled with purple sweet peas. Occasionally I slipped into the river to swim alongside the raft.
A feared afternoon wind never materialized. Greg rowed us serenely through the slow-moving waters, swept us expertly through the rougher waters. The Wild and Scenic Rogue, a four- or five-day float that begins where we disembarked, has a lot of Class III rapids ("medium"), two Class IV rapids ("difficult"), and one Class V ("very difficult"), but our section, from Indian Mary Park to Argo, one stop before the Wild and Scenic embarkation point, has one Class III riffle and eight very fun Class II riffles, which demanded some neat navigating from our captain and pull-in-the-feet action from me, and a bunch of lesser riffles, where the river giggled a bit before slowing down again.
Both rafts pulled to shore at Jump Rock, where all the young guys and the over-seventy owner of the two rafts climbed the thirty-foot rock to jump off it into the river. The over-seventy-year-old didn't jump. He did a back flip. I made a couple of dives off a low rock. My days of high dives are behind me, but I still love the sudden head-first plunge into cool water.
It was late afternoon when we ran through the Class III Almeda Riffle just before Argo. Before Greg rowed us to shore, I turned to him. "Can't we keep on going?" I asked. "Can't we go on down the Wild and Scenic Rogue, stay on the river another four days, camp on the shore, go through the canyons, run the big rapids, follow the ospreys and the eagles and swim with the otters? Do we have to go home?"
He grinned and pulled us ashore.
Earlier in the day, at Indian Mary Park, where I mostly stood in the river while our captains readied the rafts and ran the shuttle, I watched another group of rafters organizing gear. When I inquired of a man standing next to me, he said they were taking the five-day trip down the Wild and Scenic Rogue.
"Oh, you are so lucky!" I said, obviously envious.
"Come with us!" he said.
I wish I had said yes.
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