The Words of Hope

The Words of Hope

It was day four of Adventure Week and I had to take twenty 8^th graders down the Meuse River to their next campsite. It was their first kayak day, my third. Our 8^th grade teaching team felt that this week was one of the most important activities of the school year; this day probably more important than the other four. The kayak days of the last two years had been fun and uneventful. I had the feeling this one would be too.

Our students received about forty-five minutes of instruction. They watched, silently, as the guides taught how to wear the skirt and snap its elastic hem over the mouth of the kayak seat. This, they explained, was the way to keep water out. The guides taught that if the boat flipped, they could pull the tongue-like tab on the skirt to free themselves. Lastly, the students were told if they capsized and panicked, they could drown.

We walked with our gear to the launch. I was uneasy because the situation was different from the previous two years. Too few single kayaks had been provided, so pairs of students doubled up in two-seaters. More importantly, only one kayak guide was in the group. Other than those two circumstances, this day resembled the kayak days of the previous two Adventure Weeks. We were under the sun on the Meuse in May flanked by beautiful Germany and Belgium. The temperature was probably 65 degrees, the water about twenty degrees less than that. We donned our helmets, life jackets, and skirts. Kayak day had begun.

My misgivings were eased the first hour of the trip. I felt better about having only one guide because a couple of parent chaperones had come along. Although we had students in two-seaters for the first time, it appeared they had figured out how to manage. Everyone seemed to be having a great time paddling their crafts and splashing their friends.

The river had no rapid water in it. At times the current helped the kayak along, but at others, students had to paddle to continue the journey. About two miles down the river, concrete blocked nearly its entire width. The only way to continue was to ride down a man-made chute by the bank. It was angled as steep as a stairway and the water rushed through rapidly and pooled below. This, of course, allowed our novice kayakers the sensation of shooting the rapids. It was exciting, but it could be tricky. Two hours into the trip, kayaks began to bunch together in front of the chute just as they had done in previous years. I paddled to the bank and began talking students through.

The water had its way with kayaks in the chute, bumping them against the sides on their way to the pool below. Most kayaks came out wobbling and unsteady. Paddling hard was the only way to keep them going; the way peddling hard straightens out a bike with a wobbly front tire.

Several kayaks made it through before the first double appeared at the mouth of the chute. The girls in this kayak were no more special than the rest, but they were definitely different. Katie, the daughter of our counselor and special education teacher was sitting in front. In the back was Sarah, the firstborn child of my daughter’s basketball coach. These girls’ parents hadn’t shown up Monday morning for a quick exchange about safety. For weeks they had repeatedly sought me out at work seeking reassurance in my eyes.

Like all the other kayaks, this one fought hard against lining up for the ride. It eventually surrendered and entered the chute. Because of the weight in the back, the front stayed in the air over the rushing water. When enough of its weight was beyond the fulcrum, the front end fell like a redwood into the pool below. The added weight of a passenger in the front end caused the nose to take a dive. The excitement intensified as the kayak bounced against the sides, wobbling, threatening to capsize. The passengers laughed and screamed all the way.

Just when the pair should have been paddling hard to get through this vulnerable moment, Katie panicked. She dropped her paddle and grabbed the sides. The back end of the kayak cleared the chute. What occurred next happened so fast I don’t have the picture clearly recorded in my memory. The scene was suddenly silent as a funeral. I stared down at the bottom of the overturned kayak. The sun reflected up at me from the underbelly. It was a huge dead fish, floating out to the ocean.

Contrasting the sudden serenity above the surface, below were two terrified fourteen-year-old girls. I was on the bank, several feet higher than the water level. Between us lay rows of large rocks. As I ran down the river beside the kayak, I screamed, “Pull your tabs! Pull your tabs!”

I could feel the rush of hysterical panic beginning to rise within me. The kayak had been upside down for a long time. I couldn’t get to the water. I didn’t know what to do. The urge to jump up and down and scream was overwhelming. Suddenly, I watched as the fish regained consciousness. The kayak rolled over, belching its hostages. When all else had failed, the girls pulled the tabs on their skirts. My friends’ children were alright, but they were choking, gasping for air.

The kayak floated far enough that I was able to get in the water and help them both to the bank. We righted the kayak, dumped out the water, and relocated the paddles. The girls were understandably shaken. Standing in the wind, completely soaked, they were also freezing. They balked at having to get back into their death trap. I gathered myself and calmly explained that they couldn’t continue outside of a kayak. If they wanted to eat dinner, sleep in a tent, and get home on Friday, they would have to get back on the horse and ride it.

The rest of the kayaks rode the chute, and we were all on our way again. About a half hour later we stopped to eat our packed lunches. Another two hours and we were at our campsite where we joined the other two groups from our school for our last night of camping. The harrowing story of how the two girls almost drowned on the river spread through the camp like the flu. The next day we took down the tents for the last time. Our sixty students, along with several exhausted adults, hiked a few miles to the pick-up point. Four hours on the bus and we were home.

Weeks later, on one of the last remaining days of the school year, several students sit on desks in my room reminiscing about their Adventure Week. Their exclamations are like fireworks, randomly and explosively lighting up my room.

“Remember when you burned the hamburger at dinner!”

“Yeah, and when your tent fell down in the middle of the night!”

“I’ve never peed outdoors so many times in my life!”

Sarah, the girl who sat in back of the kayak that dumped, is among these storytellers. She is enjoying the regalement but has yet to contribute. The other students pause to catch their breath and reflect, like boxers between rounds. Unexpectedly, Sarah takes center stage.

She speaks in hushed tones about that day and her terrifying experience. Her gaze is cast toward the floor so our eyes can’t see into her open, vulnerable heart. She begins with the predictable.

“When our kayak flipped I thought I was going to die. That was the most frightened I have ever been. I didn’t know what to do. When I finally thought to pull off my skirt, I couldn’t find the handle.”

An instinctive hush falls over us. Her words tease our lust for honest openness. Then Sarah utters the unexpected words of epiphany. Her narration takes us back to lunch on the riverbank a few weeks ago.

“We pulled our kayaks up on the bank and ate our sandwiches. Everyone was talking and playing except me and Katie. We were completely soaked. The wind blew on my wet hair. I was freezing.”

There is a brief pause and then Sarah tells the students of her brief conversation with me, held between mouthfuls of peanut butter and jelly. She explains to her small audience that she had told me she was freezing and shares my words of encouragement.

“Remember Sarah, every day ends.”

She lifts her head for the first time in her narration, and turning to me, as though we were the only people in the room she says, “Mr. Rush, I just kept saying those words over and over to myself. I don’t know how I would have made it to the end of the day if you hadn’t said that to me.”

In ten minutes Sarah validates the entire Adventure Week concept. She found herself in tough conditions but figured out a method to survive them.

The final bell of the day sounds and my students shuffle into the hall. In the silence, I begin organizing the papers on my desk. I walk the room returning teaching materials to the cabinet in the back. These are end-of-the-day routines, but the end of this day simply will not be routine. The implications of Sarah’s comments go beyond validating Adventure Week. They affirm me as a teacher.

My hope in teaching has always been to make a difference in young people. Today a student let me know I had achieved that sacred goal. As I lock the door and leave for the day I realize something I said to a student in her moment of need had been her life line.

Like the folks who had made that phony kayak chute, I too have left my mark in the course of a river. I poured a little bit of myself into the life of a student. Those words of hope, “every day ends,” have seen me to the end of many a dark day in my life. Now they’ll ease her difficult days. Maybe one day she’ll share them with her children and tell the story of “kayak day” and the teacher who helped her endure it.