Take Me to the River by Will Hobbs

weighted it all around, and crawled underneath. There wasn’t enough room to lie down, just a place to huddle, hemmed in by bristling cactus. What can I say; it was a long night.
    Dawn came slowly, under a leaden sky and a steady rain. There wasn’t a trace of our Comanche wickiup to be seen. It was on its way to the Gulf of Mexico. The high sandbar we had camped on was entirely underwater. The river was in flood, a turgid yellow-brown, swollen by the runoff from thousands of washes draining hundreds, maybe even thousands of square miles of desert. “We’re in the big-time now,” my cousin said.

Chapter 15
Hello, Dolly
    W E MIXED SOME POWDERED milk and ate cold cereal in the rain. It streamed off our faces and into our bowls. Dolly was parked right over us and going nowhere fast.
    Staying put wasn’t an option. We needed to get back on the river and find a place to wait out the storm.
    â€œToo bad my dad is missing this,” Rio said. “The river is really cooking. I hope you can handle the canoe. It’s going to be a challenge.”
    â€œI can handle what we’re looking at from here,” I told him. “Around the next corner, I’ll have to wait and see.”
    â€œHey, don’t feel like you have to try it. We can hide the canoe. When my dad gets back from Alaska, we can come back for it.”
    Rio was trying to keep it light, but he wasn’t looking me in the eye. He didn’t think I could handle the canoe on this much water.
    I took another look at the river. It was fast, real fast—pushier than I’d paddled back home, but not by much. And besides . . . I’d come out here to do some whitewater canoeing, and what I’d seen up to this point didn’t even qualify.
    â€œI’ll let you know,” I said with more bravado than I felt.
    â€œGood for you. I’m sure it will be a blast.” Rio didn’t look convinced.
    â€œWe’ll see how far I get. You’ll be out in front to catch me if I capsize.”
    After girding for battle, we took a last-minute look at the upcoming miles in the guidebook. Good thing the pages were waterproof—the rain was constant. A mile around the corner, at Mile 30, we would leave the scaly mountain slopes behind. For the next forty miles, we would be in a tight corridor the river had incised in solid limestone, the fifteen-hundred-foot-deep Lower Canyons of the Rio Grande. That’s where the rapids were waiting.
    At Mile 34, where Oso Canyon entered from the Mexican side, the river ran under an overhanging bluff. “Use caution at higher water levels,” the guidebook warned.
    At Mile 36, a huge cave would appear on the Mexican side, the “ Cueva de la Puerta Grande .”
    The first rapid we would come to was waiting at Mile 38. It was rated only Class 1 on the 1-to-6 scale.
    The first of the major rapids was at Mile 40, at San Rosendo Canyon. It was rated a 3 or a 4 depending on conditions. Ouch . Class 4 was for kayaks, not canoes.
    â€œWe’ll take it as it comes,” Rio said. “We’ll go to shore for anything that needs to be scouted.”
    I remembered a mantra I had learned at canoe camp, a saying meant to dispel fear and the mental paralysis that comes with it: “Breathe. Organize. Act.” I closed my eyes and took half a dozen slow, deep breaths. I remembered another saying that went, “Stay calm, be brave, and wait for the signs.”
    When I felt calmer, I opened my eyes. Rio was standing by the raft, waiting on me. I had the red canoe rigged just how I wanted it. The brand name emblazoned on the bow—Mad River—couldn’t have been more apropos.
    I was organized and I was ready. My rain top was zipped and my life jacket was cinched tight with rescue knife in place. My hat was snug. It was time to act. “I’m good to go,” I announced. “Let me help you launch the raft.”
    We launched onto a river moving by