Rough Waters

In the Summer of 2021, my family of 5 took a vacation to Cutter Reservoir, New Mexico to go camping with my husband's life long friend, Josh. Our boys were ages 7, 5 and 2 at the time.

Josh is well known for being a river-rat, which always brings to mind the book, The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame.

Josh is a good fellow, kind hearted, experienced with water activities and a good laughing conversationalist. He heartily invited our family for a river float. Key word...float.

With absolutely zero experience with river floating, my husband Eric and I placed our trust in Josh to help us figure out how to paddle, with 3 kids aboard a floatable raft. Easy, right? We practiced on his inflatable boat with the oars In Cutter Reservoir, in the slow moving outlet. We did awesome!

Time to take the family to River float on the...raging fast, white water rapids of the Animas River? Not what we expected.

All of us geared up with our swim suits, life jackets, flip flops, lunches and I took my cell phone to put it in Josh's dry bag. More on that later...

We did decently river floating down the 12 to 15 mph river. My husband had our eldest, Ethan and our youngest, Andrew in an inflatable raft and I had our middle boy, Isaac in my own raft with Josh holding dry bags in his own raft.

We stopped for lunch on the rocky river bank. I mentioned to Eric how my stomach was in knots because I didn't think we should continue. It made it difficult to eat. He was nervous as well. But once on the river...there is no getting off easily. Josh reassured us and we piled back into the inflatable rafts.

As we are going along the river, I start getting stuck in the curves of the river more often. Josh helped me get out of them with ease, but my arms were growing tired. I was not used to having to power through rapids.

The next bend in the Animas River had decided my fate, as the rapids pulled me into the bank of bushes and trees known as 'sweepers'. The raft was caught, the rapids were stronger as I tried to desperately get out.

I screamed Isaac's name as the boat flipped him underwater first. I bolted past him underwater and caught a branch to hold onto. I desperately looked around for my middle son Isaac, who was about 10 feet in front of me holding onto a branch. He was scared and his fingers were loosing grip. I acted quickly, as I made my way up the side of the bank in the rapids, gripping onto the branches to help pull me to my son.

I reached hom right as his fingers lost their grip on the branch. He plopped right into my arms, but I slipped and lost my footing on the slippery rock I had been standing on. It pulled us only a few more feet to a calmer pool near the tall 5 foot bank of the river. I held Isaac in my arms as he shivered and started screaming for my husband.

10 minutes goes by...nothing. I screamed more.

Finally, I hear my husband's panicked voice as he found Isaac and I.

"Oh, thank God" was what I heard him say as he helped pull us onto the bank. All 5 of us were safe, as we cried and shivered against each other.

My husband recounted his story...my fear shaking me to my core.

After Eric witnessed Isaac and I get pulled underwater, he tried to get out of the same strong current and was sucked under as well, with our 2 year old Andrew and 7 year old, Ethan. Eric held Andy and went under water for a few seconds.

Once he was able to surface, he found the one clear spot on the bank of the river and tossed Andrew on the bank and told him firmly, "Stay there. You understand?" to which Andy nodded, shaking with fear and cold.

Eric turned his attention to Ethan, who was holding on to a large sweeping branch, only about half in the water. He had been holding on for 5 minutes. He got both boys to safety on the bank of the river as Eric frantically searched for Isaac and I.

To this day, Eric says he still gets nightmares about possibly seeing bright colored life jackets stuck in branches below the water, known as 'strainers'. I still have reoccurring nightmares of my whole family being swept away and caught in strainers and sweepers.

After finally finding Isaac and I, Eric found a broken bridge that he went across to reach his friend Josh on the opposite bank. Josh was a wreck and so relieved everyone was okay that he turned his head and stressed vomited. Eric firmly told Josh that we would not be getting back in the boats to get back to our truck. They worked out a plan and Eric arrived back to myself and the boys with our dry bag.

I was the only one who had a cell phone. And it was dry! All of us had lost our flip flops...except the 2 year old who had strap on sandles. He didn't really need the sandles since he was hitching a ride on Dad's shoulders! We also had water to drink, a few bars for a snack, and I brought a light jacket.

We had the problem of scorching hot ground with bare feet and miles to walk to get help back to our truck. Eric took my light jacket and cut it up into strips of cloth that we tied onto our feet.

We walked for a few miles along the Farmington, NM desert on a ranchers property. Nervous excitement hit us when we saw the rancher from a way off as he was attending to his cattle, but he was shouting. It made both Eric and I nervous.

As he approached us, he put his hands on his hips seeing a family of five.

"You all look like you have been through some things," he had said. We explained our story and he kindly offered a ride to our truck in his 5 wheeler.

He offered us water and snacks for the kids. We made it back to our truck and realized....Josh had the keys!!

Thankfully, I was able to get in touch with Josh's cousin, who Josh had said to contact while all of us were split up. In the end, it all worked out, with many lessons we learned.

We don't blame Josh at all for our lack of knowledge and skill. To say the least, we will not be jumping into a raft so readily, with out knowledge or practice. Be warned of the rivers strainers and sweepers, that often claim lives. The very last thing anyone wants to see is a life jacket caught in branches, flapping lifeless, with out it's owner.