The Pause
I am on the river and it is not raining. This is noteworthy not so much for the lack of rain–very normal for July on the lower Salmon River, which gathers courage and volume from the Sawtooth, Bitterroot and Lemhi Mountains before wending its way through a high desert canyon to join its former tributary, the now-larger Snake–as for the fact that it was several hours of rain, solid rain, that delayed the start of our trip yesterday. Today it is not raining and I am teaching my brother-in-law to row. In so doing I discover the pause.
I am on the river, and it is not raining. There is just enough itinerant cloud cover (are we rowing through it? or is it reaching out to us as it flies overhead to parts unknown?) to make the day not blazingly hot, and yet, as we are in Western Idaho instead of home on the Northern Olympic Peninsula in Washington, neither is it chilly, despite the morning hour. It is perfect.
Back, flip, dip, pause, pull, lift, roll, back, flip, dip, pause, pull, lift, roll, back, flip, dip, pause.
Never before had I broken it down so completely. After the pull on the oars, with the blades perpendicular to the water, lift them out of the water. Before bringing them back for the next stroke, roll the wrists. Now the blades are parallel to the plane of the river’s surface, and will slice through a wave, if needed, to get back to the starting point for the next stroke. This “back” motion, achieved by pushing forward on the oar handles, can even be done entirely underwater. Now, flip back to perpendicular and dip for the next stroke.
And…breathe. Pause. Before that next stroke. Is the oarblade perpendicular to the water? Is there current there? Or eddy, or slackwater? Is your other oarblade perpendicular? Do you want to in fact push instead of pull on one or both oars? Where is the current taking you, and is your boat oriented how you’d like it? Where is the next biggest wave, rock, or hole to avoid?
Or are there no dangers present, and you can just...pause?
I am on the river, it is not raining, and after yesterday’s morning rain (punctuated by a horizontal squall precisely at dinner time, for which we employed the tarp we’d driven from the put-in site back to Grangeville to purchase) the air is delightful and I can imagine that the brown-and-sagebrush-grey canyon walls are just a little greener and I am not at work and I am with people I love and trust and I can pause.
Later, I will need to row. Through Half-N-Half and Snowhole and China and Skeleton Creek, and down 20 miles of the Snake after the confluence. To catch eddies for campsites and lunchsites, to avoid eddies and follow Ariadne’s thread of current through a labyrinth of slackwater, holes and rocks. So, too, my companions: my brother and his wife, my mom, and my brother-in-law, who is picking up the feel of rowing with alacrity and vim. For now, though, we are allowed a pause.
In pausing I can calibrate my oars. Where is the larger current of my life taking me? Am I oriented in such a way as to be able to pull back from giant waves, or square up to them when necessary? Do I need to eddy out and secure the frame, or scout the next rapid?
Am I even in the right river canyon?
Everything about our lives–let me pause right there. Everything about my life has been forward momentum; in looking around me, I think this is true for a great many of us.
Certainly, the current power structure, the status quo, gains nothing from having me pause, think, question, be goofy. As long as I produce widgets and algorithms and patient encounters (I've never been good at treating patient encounters like widgets; my apologies to my patients for always running behind)...and then soothe my frazzled nerves by consuming property and widgets and algorithm-generated entertainment...the great machine rolls on, and I am but flotsam. I am not rowing, and if I am, it is but to accelerate my blind journey down an unquestioned torrent.
And so here I am. Pausing. In writing I have always found a pause; often, I end up at a place entirely different than what I expected when beginning the exposition. To return to my earlier and unexpected metaphor, I am, like Theseus, lucky, in love and in life. In my friends and family, and most of all, in my wife (who is planning to come with our boys on the trip next summer, and who was so wise to let us work out all the kinks without her this summer), I have my Ariadne’s thread.
In pausing, I can pick up that thread, again and again, and row, and pause, not blindly. With intention.
