Macy and Gracie—along with some of the women from van two—snicker as they kneel to salvage the cooler’s contents.
“I guess that’s as good an introduction as any to our newest guide,” Gracie says with an eye roll, nodding up at the baby-faced man still perched atop the raft trailer.
“Is this Temu River Jesus?” one woman whispers to her friend, eyeing his stocky build and patchy brown beard, which does little to conceal a minefield of acne scars.
I shoot the woman a dirty look over my shoulder, but thankfully the new guide isn’t paying any attention to her snide remarks. He’s laser-focused on Gracie, his cheeks flushed crimson.
Gracie stifles a laugh. “Everybody, this is Bryan, a.k.a. Flip-Flop. And if you can’t tell, he’s fresh out of guide training.”
“I told you, I don’t like that nickname.” Bryan crosses his arms over his quick-dry shirt, which is at least two sizes too big. If he’s trying to draw attention away from his soft midsection, his tight life jacket only accentuates his bulky form.
“We don’t choose our nicknames, buddy. The nicknames chooseus,” Josh crows, bringing his hands together in a prayer pose. He turns to the women brushing dirt from baggies of sliced cheddar. “Flip-Flop can clean upthe mess he made. Let’s finish introductions so we can get going on the river.” Hands still in prayer pose, he points his steepled fingers at a woman wearing a hat embroidered with the words CRIME JUNKIES. “You! Kick us off. Tell us your name and … something unique about yourself.”
I sigh. The website hypes this rafting trip as the ultimate wilderness adventure for soul-seekers, but between the Econo vans and the never-ending icebreaker questions, this is starting to feel like summer camp. But the bright smiles on every face around me make it clear that I’m the only Debbie Downer here. I try to perk up, reminding myself that very few get the chance to float down this stretch of river. Chatty Cathys be damned, we’re on the Middle Fork.
I let out a slow breath and shift my focus to the absolute majesty surrounding me. It’s every bit as stunning—more, even—than the photographs from the Pacific Northwest Whitewater calendar that Parker bought us a couple of years ago.
We’d used it to count down the days to our long-awaited trip.
It’s still on my apartment wall. I can’t bear to take it down.
I swallow the lump in my throat and try to think of an answer to Josh’s question.
The woman in theCrime Junkieshat laughs and cocks her head, lips pursed in concentration. “Okay. Well … I’m Allie. I’m the captain of my intramural softball team … and all of my fingers are double-jointed.”
She holds up her hands to illustrate, flexing each finger into a perfect right angle as everyone “Oohs.”
“I’m also a high school librarian in Boise,” she adds. “Which means I spend a lot of time convincing sixteen-year-olds that books are cooler than TikTok. Mixed success rate. But I get summers off, and I won this trip in a district-wide Christmas raffle, so no complaints.”
Josh raises an eyebrow, then points his prayer hands at the next woman, a tall older lady with silver-and-brown streaked hair. But before she can introduce herself, Allie blurts out, “Hold on. Um, how close are we to Camas Creek?”
Macy and Gracie glance at each other uneasily, seemingly caught off guard by the question. Bryan, who has finished cleaning up the spill and is dragging the cooler to the river’s edge, looks up sharply. Some of the women shift uncomfortably in the silence, waiting for the guides to answer.
“About forty miles,” Bryan says matter-of-factly. “We’ll be making camp there tomorrow night, just above Anvil Falls. It’s one of the few campable beaches on the river.”
This statement earns a few uneasy murmurs from the group.
Allie, however, looks almost thrilled by this information. “Oh my god, that’s what I thought, but I wasn’t sure. I havesomany questions,” she begins. “The timing of this trip worked out perfectly for me, since all the rumors about Kellen Stroop have finally died down,” she says brightly.
“What’s she talking about?” the taller woman with the silver-streaked hair asks, frowning. “What’s Camas Creek? Who’s Kellen—”
“Stroop,” Allie finishes for her.
Josh shoots Allie a stern look, seemingly putting an end to the questions. I expect him to move on with introductions, but instead he says, “It’ll be dark before we know it. Everybody grab your bags and a life jacket! Let’s get some food in our bellies and get these rafts in the water!”
2
Within a few minutes, the raincloud that briefly settled over us in response to Allie’s question evaporates. There’s excited chatter as everyone empties the cage of our belongings and hefts the bulky rafts down from the trailer. The passenger rafts are bright orange, about fourteen feet long, with thick rubber pontoons stamped with the words IDAHO RAPIDS UNLIMITED. The two gear rafts that hold the essentials for our trip are smaller, maybe ten feet long, in eye-searing electric green and decals that promise ADVENTURE STARTS HERE.
As we work to get our gear sorted at the shallow put-in, I can’t help glancing over at Allie, my curiosity still piqued. Pretty much everybody has heard of the infamous Camas Creek disaster; fifteen people died, after all. Parker watched a documentary about it when we booked the trip, and he gave me the Cliffs Notes about the tragedy. The few details I learned about the story shocked me at the time, but they don’t bother me much anymore.
Because the truth is that Camas Creek happened a long time ago. And unfortunately, it’s just one drop in the bucket of human suffering. So while the others were gasping at the mention of Kellen Stroop, all I could think was,Awful things happen to good people every day.
People drown, get stabbed, fall down wells, get mesothelioma from asbestos, go through the windshields of cars, get shot in shopping malls, and gasp out their last breaths in new and horrifying ways every single day. Human beings die, and the world keeps spinning, the sun keeps shining, and eager middle-aged women keep splashing into rivers like this to “find themselves” in the wilderness, mostly heedless of the fact that fifteen people were murdered in this canyon seven years ago. Life just goes on.
“Okay, everybody listen up!” Macy says, wiping beads of sweat from her brow as we push the last loaded raft into the shallow water. “Phew, we’re ready to get splashing, yeah? But first, we need to talk about safety.” She points to River Jesus, who’s waist-deep beside one of the gear rafts now heaped with supplies for our trip, looking like an advertisement for a hipster cologne that would definitely be patchouli-forward.
Josh nods at Macy, then lets himself fall backward into the lazy, swirling current where his faded orange life jacket pops him back to the surface. We each have our own vest—some much brighter and newer than others, but all smelling slightly of mildew.