‘River above the river’ by Leath Tonino

Sasha Chudacoff

SLIPPING INTO THE OH BE JOYFUL FLOW – ON SKINNY SKIS.

By Leath Tonino

‘RIVER ABOVE THE RIVER’

Oh Be Joyful – the stretch of steep, rambunctious creek, the daisy chain of waterfalls spilling from designated wilderness, the secret little swimming holes and mossy boulders and polished slabs and glittery veils of spray, the intricacy and dynamism and power. Of the valley’s innumerable beloved landmarks (watermarks), OBJ ranks at the top of my personal list. Accordingly, I’ve tried again and again – compulsively, enthusiastically – to engage it, explore it, make visceral contact with it: body, mind, soul, spirit, etc.

Camp beside OBJ during the spring melt, listening through my dreams to a thousand singing voices in the surge? Been there. Wade barefoot up OBJ when the water is low and the summer sun is bright, scrambling the cascades, sloshing through the slippery pools? Done that. Read ancient Zen texts about sweet achy ephemerality – about change being the sole constant – while sipping dark beer on a golden autumn evening, breaking now and then to gaze into the eddies and foam? Yup. Shy of kayaking the rowdy rapids (above my pay grade, though I do relish the vicarious thrill of witnessing friends huck their meat), I’ve experimented with darn near everything.

Or so I thought. Then came one of the best Sundays ever: last April, tail end of a decently snowy winter, gauzy clouds

Photos Sasha Chudacoff

and zero wind, solitude out the wazoo. Riding my skinny, floppy, half-delaminated, decidedly wrong-tool-for-the-job pair of Rossignols... I nordorked it! Cross-country skied it! Flowed atop it and flowed with it! Classic style! Yes, classic is indeed an apt word to describe this personal first descent, this revelation, this new version of the cherished, familiar creek. Unforgettable. Awesome. Instant classic.

River rats sporting neon life jackets and scuffed helmets sometimes refer to OBJ as OBC – Oh Be Careful – due to the relentless grade, the copious logjams and the general risk of carnage, but my run, which commenced where kayakers typically put in, a mile above the confluence with the Slate, wasn’t gnarly, adrenalized, dangerous or extreme. Reason: drifts, pillows, soft powder’s mellow angle of repose, the way it fills in rough spots and smooths off hard edges. Inside the gorge, below and between the white fluted walls, the creek was buried, June’s vertical plunges and September’s bony ramps transformed, each infamous pitch a slow-motion arc, a goofy attempt at telemarking, a silky ahhh.

Actually, let me amend the previous paragraph. There was in fact an extreme quality to the descent: an extreme beauty, an extremely impressive and unexpected aesthetic force. Intermittently, windows appeared to my left and right, potholes in the snowpack, portals to black stone and a thin, sheeting, otherwise hidden current. Missing a pole plant and tumbling into one of these surreal wells (four feet deep, trashcan lid- to trampoline-sized) would definitely have been bad news, but they were easy enough to skirt, hardly concerning. Craning my neck, peering, aware that curiosity – nay, that mesmerization – was the biggest risk, I slid past them, slalomed through them, astounded by the juxtaposition of solid and liquid, of old winter becoming newborn spring.

The descent lasted a mere 15 minutes, max. Conifers, blue-gray sky, exposed rock faces and rock faces hoary with frost. All was still, frozen, perfectly pristinely paused – all except for my gliding body and the gliding water.

Okay, leap ahead a year. By chance, the very day that I sat down with my laptop to begin writing this essay, I happened to also read the following mysterious, tantalizing lines in a poem by Ursula Le Guin: “There is a river above the river / like the dreaming or the breathing of the river.” What that means, even within the context of the rest of the poem, is totally beyond my ken (poetry is intended to be absorbed, not understood). Nevertheless, the image registers as somehow true, somehow accurate.

Recalling my initial, unforgettable OBJ ski, that classic, that mini-tour I’ve since repeated and plan to repeat whenever conditions permit, I realize that in this case the river above the river (the creek above the creek) is twofold: there’s the snow superimposed over glinting, glistening bedrock, and there’s the man shussing and quietly laughing over the snow. As I put it earlier: flowed atop it and flowed with it. And though it may smack of woo-woo econonsense, I’m tempted to add that I have flowed as it, gravity working on me, tugging on me, pulling on me, a man made of watery cells – watery brain and heart and muscle and bone.

Oh me, oh my, Oh Be! Utterly freakin’ Joyful! b