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Outside Magazine March 2003

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DESTINATIONS SPECIAL: The Scouting Expedition
A Trip is Born (Cont.)


	The Land Rover at journey's end. (Joshua Paul)

Day 9, mile 220
OUR BODIES HURT from the long days. "I feel like I slept on an anvil," Cherri said, climbing into her boat.

The river opened wide under a grayish sky and gray-green border of forest. Louries cooed and trumpeter hornbills bawled in the trees like babies crying. It felt like deepest Africa, but Clinton and Rod suddenly seemed in a huge rush to get out of it. Was it because of their safari dates later in the month? Clinton, I felt, was diving into rapids too blindly. Rod refused to take our breakfast break at a beautiful waterfall pool—he wanted to carry on.

"What's the hurry?" I finally asked him.

"This is an expedition, Pete-ah," he said. "We have distance to make. People are counting on us."

I hated being in the wilderness while simultaneously subjected to the time pressures of the modern world—symbolized by the ever-present sat phone, now unboxed on sandbars two or three times a day to check incoming e-mails or place calls. I wanted to follow the natural rhythms of the wild.

"You won't have a problem," Clinton reassured us as we queued our boats above a big granite shield forming a natural dam where the entire Lugenda River funneled through a 50-foot split. "Just eddy out left at the bottom of the chute."

"And if we do have a problem, what's below the eddy?" I asked.

"I don't know," Clinton said. "The river turns, and I can't see around the corner. Just eddy out and then I'll have another look."

The first wave was huge, the second even bigger, the third bigger still. Our boat spun left as we trampolined along—I couldn't hold it straight. I saw an eddy, yelled to Steve that we'd grab it and prepare for the chute's last drop. Our kayak surged across the powerful eddy line— and flipped.

We're really screwed now, I thought.

Surfacing instantly, I grabbed for a large boulder and tried to claw up its smooth, steep face. The swamped sea kayak pressed against my back, slid off, and plunged into a big hole downstream, followed by our paddles and then Steve, who disappeared into the maw. My fingertips lost their purchase and, like a clawing cartoon cat, I slid down the boulder's face and swirled after them.

I resurfaced in big waves, gasping. I saw the others in an eddy on river right and swam hard toward them. But the powerful current was dragging me around the bend into more rapids, into— for all anyone knew—another waterfall.

"Swim!" I heard Cherri scream. "Swim harder!"

Something orange rocketed across the blue sky; Rod had hurled a throw rope. I noticed a dark head bouncing through rapids downstream: Steve being swept around the bend. I stroked with everything I had toward shore. Suddenly I popped into the eddy.

"Take this!" Clinton shouted to me, shoving our swamped kayak with the bow of his. "Swim it in!"

"Get Steve!" Cherri screamed at Clinton from the shore. "Leave the kayak and get Steve!"

Clinton was already sprint-paddling around the bend. I dragged myself onto granite slabs, panting heavily, as Cherri and Rod jumped into their kayak in pursuit of Clinton and Steve.

For five minutes I could do nothing but stand there by myself and hyperventilate, the swamped tandem kayak pulled halfway up on boulders in the midst of the African wilds. I wondered if Steve had drowned. Would I feel guilty? Could I have prevented it? If he had, what next? Keep paddling? I knew one thing absolutely—this was the last time Steve and I would paddle rapids like that, at least rapids that were unscouted by me.

We were going to slow down—it was that simple. But if Clinton and Rod refused to slow down? What would I do? I contemplated the prospect of walking out on my own. We had neared the Niassa Reserve. Would I find a road there? Even if I could find a road, it might be days before anyone came along. Would I survive in the bush alone? I pictured myself stumbling along, huddled at night around a fire, yellow eyes blinking in the surrounding darkness.

This, I suddenly knew, hunched and panting on the empty shore, was true wilderness— this sense of utter animal nakedness. I was in the midst of true wilderness, and I didn't like it at all.

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