A Near-Death Experience

Yesterday I had what is called a near death experience.

I was kayaking in the tidal salt marches of the Pamunkey river.  The narrow channels wind all around like a nest of snakes.  Sitting in a kayak at water level, with the salt grass growing six to eight feet above my head, long distance viewing is impossible. 

It is simply not possible to see where you are in relation the deeper channels.  It is the most complex maze nature can devise.  And, it changes completely according to the tide.  At low tide the passible channels are easy to recognize and follow.  At high tide there a thousand of what appear to be open channels everywhere.  And, it is very easy to misread the tidal channel flow because the undulating underlay topography is completely hidden by the coffee colored water.

The underwater visibility is less than two or three inches.  From the level of the kayaker’s head, the actual depth of the water is completely hidden.  Under the marshes there is not sand, but layers upon layer of rotting grass and clay mush.  Going down several feet there is only muck without a solid surface of any kind.

And when disturbed it smells like a rotting sewer.  Just a thickness of mush of rotting vegetation and various trapped crab and fish bodies.

At low tide it is possible to walk on salt marshes if you employ a kind of outward swinging duck gait.  Folding over the grass with an outward swing of your feet, creating a kind of a snowshoe support with each foot.  However, at high tide there is about two feet of water above this mucky surface and this technique does not work, at all, because the muck is a saturated goo. The grass stems just squish further into the muck below.

Each foot placing sinks down into the muck up to near the knee, putting the upright body chest high, or more, into the marsh.  The muck pulls at your feet and legs, sucking off any shoes or boots, never to be found again.  Forward progress in an upright position is fruitless; actually impossible.  You are trapped like a mastodon in a tar pit.

The only solution is to lay flat and sort of swim.  And to do is reach arm’s length forward grabbing onto rough sandpaper-like stalks of the saw grass.  Pulling forward like a tug-o-war rope.  Kicking your feet to increase your forward momentum is also fruitless as the grass behind prevents any push you might initiate.

With your vision now right at the water level with six to eight feet of grass reed directly in front is even more compromised.  Staying in the kayak is no good, since you can’t swing the paddle with thick grass all around.  Attempting to paddle is an exercise in stupid pointlessness.

All that can be seen is the sky and clouds threatening chaos above and impenetrable wall of stalks of razor blades surrounding this victim of misjudgment.  Confusion. “What the fuck am I doing Here.”

I’m 74 years old, I have advanced osteoarthritis, my joints are turning to play-dough.  I shouldn’t be here in this ridiculous place.  I could die from exposure.  I think I’ve sweated at least several quarts more than I have been able to drink.  But I’m covered head to toe with brown muck.  Bleeding from a thousand razor cuts on my legs and arms.  Pushing my boat ahead of me.  It’s a plow.  This is a long boat, an open water kayak.  18 feet of bulletproof plastic.  Heavy as wet mattress.

I have left one side of the marsh.  Tall wetland cedars and pines.  A slice of more trees is dimly visible ahead of me.  Tickling in the dark back of by brain says, “That tiny slice of trees ahead is the other side of the main channel (the Pamunkey River).”  This boat is so long and heavy it cannot turn in this saw grass.  If I just keep pushing it, it has to come across the river.  There is no other way, no other thing I can do.  I can’t pull it, since I can’t stand upright in this swamp and even if I tried to do that I could wander around in circles and never get out.

I have to trust the basic physics of the situation.  Being pushed, the boat can’t turn, it has to go straight.  I can’t stand up, so I have to stay belly flat on the water and grass.  Grab a handful of the grass with one hand and push the boat forward with the other.  The grass cuts across my face, pulls my hat off leaving it disappeared in the muck.  My shirt fills with muddy soup and creates a backward drag, but I can’t take it off and have my belly, shoulders and back lacerated even more.

It goes on forever like this.  Reach down for the grass roots, pull, push, reach further ahead, roots, pull, push.  I must be bleeding from every square inch of skin that is exposed; including my bald spot.   Am I wiping mud from my eyes or blood.  A mixture of both I think.

I’ve done some dumb things in life.  Put myself in really tight spots before.  When I wasn’t a worn-out old man, alone.  Now probably only yards from release and safety I am exhausted without the reserves of youth, without the presence of mind of a tough athlete.

And I was a very tough athlete.  During one month in Arizona, I did two 300 mile bicycle marathons.  In the second I did it in 23 hours and 50 minutes.  Every fiber of my 32 year old body hurt.  I had lost all feeling in my right hand and shoulder.  My feet were going around in circles on the pedals, out of habit, just mindless habit.  Thinking, “That’s what we do on a bicycle.  We’re feet attached to legs and we go round ‘n round.  In my mind is one thought, “Don’t fall over.”

This day, today, I am an old fart waiting to become a fossil record in a saltwater river marsh.

An anthropologist’s dream.  Best of all I know it.  Turning over and looking up at the sky, straining to remember that, at this moment I am still alive.  And again, out of habit, I kind of do want to remain that way.  What is driving me?  Embarrassment.  Shame.  The embarrassment and shame of being so stupid.  Actually, giving up and possible dying is less a reason, than being shown for the idiot that died in a swamp, with a boat in his hands, less than a hundred yards from safety.

I cannot allow that to be my epitaph.

Seems like weeks later I push out of the grass and slip into a deep-water channel   About five feet wide and maybe five feet deep.  I can’t tell if it connects with a larger channel or not.  But it is deep enough to float the boat and wide enough to paddle.  As I am completely drained now, I have to actually find a way to get inside the cockpit.  A big water kayak generally has a small opening for the paddler.  Kayaks can be very tippy and flip over easily without good kayaking skills.  How am I going to get my arthritic exhausted legs up over the side and in through this squeaky tight little hole?

Can’t stand in the muck.  I’m waist deep in suck mud, just my shoulders and head above the water surface.  The paddle pry entry, where you put one blade across the cockpit and slither up the paddle handle braced against the water surface, well, that won’t work.  Because I, at that moment, discovered I had also lost my paddle somewhere back in the swamp.  Along with my wet shoes, my $400 GoPro camera, hat and pride.  

The only solution was to invert the boat in the deep water and do an Eskimo Roll.  (I know the word Eskimo is no longer polite, but that is what this maneuver has been called for decades and decades)  Once the boat is upside down, you push your body up into the cockpit, extend the paddle as far out as you reach and pull down on the outside extended paddle blade.  As hard as you can, then swivel your hips in a hard-counter motion.  This can also be done with just your hands spread like little flippers.

I am too old, brittle and uncoordinated to pull this off.  I know it.  I knew it before I tried it on this day.  It was shame, embarrassment and the habit of staying alive that somehow brought together a miracle and it worked.  Now I had a kayak full of water and mud.  Karma (I guess) had secured, saved my kayak pump from being lost.  While I thanked the God Ganesha for saving the pump, my arms were so tired pumping out fifty gallons of water took somewhere between thirty minutes and a year and a half.  Somewhere in that time slot.

It was after I got the boat fairly pumped out that I realized my habit of always strapping a spare paddle to the read deck had been a really good idea!  Also, my habit of stashing a spare water bottle behind the seat, along with a sealed baggy of raisins, almonds and rice crackers, paid off.  So, I reduced my sense of shame by patting myself on the back for always following a routine checklist.

I have strapped that extra paddle on my rear deck for over thirty years of paddling and never once needed it.  I have weeks after a paddle found that food packet molding away behind the seat; completely forgotten.  Sometimes two or three food packets.  Uneaten and unopened.  But the habit of always stuffing a new each time I went out, saved my bacon (as it were) that day.  And as to bacon, I’ve been vegan for over fifty years, so bacon is not truthfully a thing.  I downed the spare water in one chug-a-lug.

While I was having my near-death adventure in the swamp, the wind had picked up and the tide was going out.  So … when I did find my way back to the main river, I had a mile and half into two-foot rolling waves and a headwind.  This is when I put into play my one and only survival tool that had served me for years beyond telling.  That is, “Put your head down and keep paddling.  Each paddle stroke, a perfect stroke. Focus on the stroke.  Perfect motion makes the boat go forward.  Going forward gets you where you need to go.”

“Don’t look up and get discouraged by the distance yet to go.  Focus only on moving towards that goal.  No thinking, just paddling.”  Arms and shoulders are not allowed to be tired and sore.

Draw all your strength from your core, tight abdomen; crunch the stomach gut muscles. Every stroke moves you forward another yard.  Yard after yard.  Suddenly the bow crunches up against gravel at the put-in; at the starting dock.

It’s over.  Not shamed, not embarrassed, no one else saw this fiasco.  Alive for another day, another adventure (maybe).  Only when you get old, do you realize that often the most challenging test you have put up against yourself, you only survived because your mind and body were young.  Not at all because you were anything special, you just had the reserves afforded to the young.  When all that is gone, the problem is that it is not forgotten and when you’re old and you try to fall back on that youthful reserve, it just isn’t there.

Now you have to think your way out of stupid.  That’s the real lesson.