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Untitled
by Molly Smith
In Las Vegas, I went into Sephora, a makeup paradise, with some friends. We wanted to glam up before a big night on the town after camping for two months.
I felt lost. I stood still, blankly staring at the endless rows of black tubes and at the colorful pallets. My mind and fingers had forgotten what to do. I sipped my strawberry margarita and let my friends color my face.
But here on the Green River I am at home in a place I have never seen before. My canoe is loaded and balanced. I am in the stern. Camera and water bottle rest at my feet. Map spreads out before me. Wind blows in my face. Paddle rests in calloused hands. My muscles, although sore, rejoice in the rhythm of paddling. It takes a day for my eyes to remember how to unlock the secrets of the river.
My first night in a tent was with my family in our yard. I was four, my brother was two, and my dog was a full grown puppy. My parents wanted to introduce us to sleeping outside before our weeklong family canoe trip. I haven't stopped sleeping in tents since then. Family trips concluded each summer until I was twelve years old when I started canoeing with Camp Widjiwagan-a YMCA camp based in northern Minnesota that offers wilderness adventures to teens. I have paddled around 1500 miles in the past nine seasons and have been at the mercy of the weather for 163 nights.
I don't have a clear explanation for this madness, but in the seventeen years since my first canoe trip, I have caught glimpses of answers.
The scarf I wear is not a designer scarf. Made by hand, it is technically a sash to be worn tied around the waist, a fashion passed from the traditional fur trading voyageurs to Widjiwagan campers and counselors bound for a six week pilgrimage to the Canadian Arctic.
Orange. Yellow. Green. Light blue. Navy. Purple. Six colors for six women. Teal, Tricia, and Jill are the blues and purple of river. Kate is the green tundra. Andrea, our leader, is the yellow Arctic light. I am the orange streak that stains the sky as sunset merges to sunrise. The colors of women, earth, water, and sky flow vertically; symbols and yarns bound together by navy water. "A river runs through it all" (Norman Mclean).
A river wraps around my neck keeping me warm in the chilly desert air. I press the wool against my face and I am no longer sitting on the cement floor of a laundry mat. I am with my arctic sisters.
I lay my sash on the ground. The ends lie flat, but the middle wrinkles up from wrapping it around my neck. I try smoothing the creases with my hands, but give up. Suddenly this memento of the arctic represents every paddle stroke I have ever taken.
On a day trip with my family, I threw a tantrum when I realized we were going home. I wanted to camp out. I begged and pleaded with my parents-"we can sleep under the canoe!" I cried. My cruel parents paid no attention-I slept in my bed that night.
I canoe because it is an obsession. It is something wholesome and needed like bread.
My eyes float down the river of wool. Riffle, strainer, canoe munching hole, eddy, standing wave, ledge; I read the twists of current like a roadmap. Power stroke, draw, cross draw, pry, back paddle, peel out, ferry, back ferry, eddy turn; my canoe hides in an eddy of a desert river, floating and facing upstream. I show a friend a peel out, how to enter the current from the eddy, using only the flow of water and my lean to spin the canoe downstream.
I love dancing with rivers. I have learned not to fight the power of river, but to follow its lead.
I climb up the rise of green yarn. I stretch my body out on the rock, the contours of land matching back and thighs.
The wind strokes my hair, sending it cascading down past my shoulders. The strands are silty and soft, yet tangled in Class 3 rapids.
Muscles ripple across my back fluid motion. The hills are muscles, too-flexing on a geologic time scale.
Smooth stomach.
I lie here naked and exposed.
Vulnerable.
Sephora is a distant memory; I don't need to hide behind a mask of face paint. I belong in wild landscapes.
From my vantage point I look out at my surroundings. The river is such a dark blue it almost looks black. Spring had arrived and the tundra was changing from a reddish color to a vivid living green. The sky is mostly dark gray and cloudy, but a few rays of sunshine managed to escape and dance on the water before disappearing again. Tears fill the corners of my eyes, but I blame the wetness on the wind whipping my face.
I find beauty in empty horizons.
I love canoeing because of the way the sun warms my skin, the way the wind feels on my face, how the mud feels on my toes. Because when I live in tents little things matter, like new underwear day or a spoonful of Crisco at lunch.
My sash represents the women I have traveled with, the river and tundra we lived in, the forested lakes and desert canyons I have explored, the skies overhead, the cold, the scrapes, the bruises, the adrenaline highs, the tears, the beauty, the silence, the roar of water, the aching muscles, the muddy portages, the challenges faced, the way companions laughter splits the silence. These experiences make the warp, the vertical yarns, of my sash and life, all bound together by a weft of blue wool.