Orienting Heaven

First Place Winner of The New Mexico Press Women's and the Federation of National Press Women's Communications Awards for 2015.  This piece was accepted for publication in the e-magazine " The Adventure Bum" which solicited first person extreme adventure stories and unfortunately disappeared after a couple issues.

     Sometimes it feels like mercury is permanently retrograde. I lean back against the hood of the car - the old one that doesn't run anymore - and look up. The Milky Way arches overhead in a jet black sky, which is what we have out here in the desert miles from town. The cloud-like strip of stars runs parallel to Pataca Canyon behind me. The  canyon once held a river but the undulating bed is bone dry now. The Army Corps of Idiots thought they could dam water that ran over lava caves and the river simply sank underground. Then long years of drought did it in completely. Interesting how the Milky Way lines up above it.

     Craning my neck back, I can sense myself rolling east with the planet. The realization dizzies me. I almost fall off the car into the sagebrush from the awe of it. To the South is the constellation that looks like a big 7. Scorpius? To the North, hangs the Big Dipper. I'm trying to reorient. Ha…metaphor for my life. How did I get out here, to this lonely earth-ship? There hasn't been rain in weeks and the cistern is low. Sometimes I think I hear river water rushing, but it's the wind scouring the sage.The solar panel on this place only works in the daylight when I don't need it. The old batteries won't hold a charge. If I want more power than a flashlight gives, I have to fire up the gasoline generator. I can't stand that sound. This place is all about silence. It's about old skeletons and wandering spirits. So at night I star gaze. And think…probably too much.

     Tonight the air is soft and the hood of the old Ford is still warm from the afternoon sun. I scoot back on it for a more comfortable angle. The stars nearer the horizon twinkle like holiday lights in a storm. It's the atmosphere: all the pollution and heat waves we have to look through makes them seem to blink on and off. I could never convince my rafting buddy, Fischman, that the big red-blue-yellow ones weren't UFO's. He simply wasn't ready to give up telling the story of his "sighting".

     I'm watching the planes now: the red blink pause blink pause. One's heading toward Colorado, the Springs, I guess. I try not to think of Fischman but it's no use. The blinking lights and shivering stars bring back the memory of that night around the fire at the rafting camp, and the crazy alien stories he'd entertained the tourists with. It was the first night that week, up there in Colorado on the Arkansas, that we'd seen the stars. It had been raining non-stop. I expect mercury was in retrograde then too. Everything seemed to go wrong on that trip: the leaking propane, the blood-thirsty bugs, and Fischman, unprepared for the job of oarsman. Because the water was so high, the orders had been "no paddles for the tourists". One oarsman, seated high up on top of a gear box, would be in control of the little self bailing raft.

     Fischman was rowing the stretch that day and I was along for the ride - right up front - trying to photograph the wave action with a brand new camera. There were five of us: a honeymooning couple from Denver, a macho paramedic from New York City, me and Fischman. 

     It's not like Fischman hadn't done the river many times, but he wasn't used to oars and the waterscape had changed, swollen from the rain. He misjudged the hole. It had probably been a boulder he'd done a run around in the past. When we hit the trough behind the wave head-on, the raft folded and then shot straight up into the air. I remember watching my new Canon arcing out of my hand in slow motion. I sailed after it. I remember being suspended in the blue and then the raft obscuring the sky as it flipped up and over me. I hit the icy water and struggled upward but before I could grab a breath, the gunnel came down on my head, forcing me back under. Disoriented, I tried again for the surface but the raft was still on top me and I was forced down a second time. I started to panic.

     Sometimes when you know you have to figure it out or die, you get it. I had to swim upstream, underwater, away from  the raft as it raced down the river. And with my lungs burning, I did. I came up, gulped air, and turned on my back, feet downstream to save myself from any rocks that might be ahead. The upside-down raft was bouncing away. 

     The Arkansas was narrow here and deep but smooth. I judged I could make shore easily. I looked around for the tourists. The female half of the honeymooners was screaming for her husband. I spotted him upstream from her. An oar drifted by and I grabbed it and shoved it at her. Although her life vest kept her afloat, just having something to hold on to calmed her down enough to stop floundering and listen.

     "He's ok! He's right behind you! Take this oar to shore." So we saved one oar. The three of us dragged it along with an unloosed rubber stuff bag up the bank where we found the paramedic sitting, dazed and pale.

     By this time another raft had caught up with us and the folks in it were scooping up bits of our gear. "Are you OK?" the guide shouted. I waved her on. 

     "Yeah! We're OK. Grab the raft! Where's Fischman? Look for Fischman!"
     They swirled past us. I turned away from the river to take stock of the situation. The bride was sobbing in the groom's arms but he nodded reassurance. The paramedic had stopped shivering and was just staring at the river. I pulled a sleeping bag, still dry, from the sack and tried to put it around his shoulders. He shrugged it off and wobbled to his feet. "I'm fine!"

     "Look at me." I said. He glared. "Do you remember all the symptoms of hypothermia and shock?"

     "What?"

     "You're white as a ghost, your lips are blue, you're too cold to shiver and you're out of it. Now get your life jacket off and wrap up in this." I ordered. "Sit down and put your head between your knees before you faint."

     "Oh…OK…"

     I struggled out of my own vest, staring downstream. The "rescue" raft had beached with the errant boat alongside, still upside down. I could see little figures jumping in and out of the water, hauling both boats ashore. And then over the sound of the rapids I heard a wail, then shouts and saw the tiny figures all come together in a bunch. I ran, tripping over rocks, willow branches whipping my face, falling only once before I reached the group. They'd found Fischman. He'd never made it out from under the raft. On his forehead was a right angle cut where a corner of the gear box had hit him before he drowned. 

     He'd probably gone out like a light. Out like the meteor I just noticed streaking from the Milky Way. Fischman would have insisted it was a UFO, of course, and the stories would have begun. The stars blur with my tears but the wind that has just come roaring in, dries them before they can be shed. I miss Fischman. I miss his stupid stories. I miss the rain and the river and the aspen. But I'm not going anywhere in this drought, not with this old car up on blocks and not on the dry Petaca.

     I'll take that meteor as a sign from him. Native American legend says the Milky Way is the road the soul travels when it journeys to the Ancestors. I think it looks more like a heavenly river. I imagine Fischman swimming against that sparkling white-water star-stream. Or maybe he's not fighting it. Maybe he's just going with the flow back home. Wherever home is.

Winter Ross is an artist, writer and former wilderness EMT who dropped out of Orienteering class before there were cell phones with GPS's.  She is the founder of New Mexico Street Medics and has published in "Pilgrimage: Spirit, Witness, Place" and "EarthFirst Journal."