“Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.”

-Herman Melville (opening paragraphs of Moby Dick)

We weren’t water people when I was young. There were no summer trips to the pool, or Sunday rides on the lake. My mother insisted we all take swimming lessons anyway, and so I did for three or four years. I would say the time was wasted on me, but that is not entirely true. While I was not among the kids that left the class with the skills required to avoid drowning altogether; I avoided drowning for its duration, and this suited me just fine. I didn’t plan on having to swim again.

When I got a little older I took informal classes on burning bridges. This was considerably easier for me than swimming had been, and in time I could boast I was good at it. In their smoldering remains, being unable to swim left me but one option: Forward. And forward always seemed like the way to go.

Imagine my surprise then, when I got older still, and realized there was no forward any more, nor was there ever as far as I could tell.

The only way I could re-cross the now de-bridged stream was in my mind. This was well.  In my mind was where all my swimming and sailing had been done anyhow. I could dream about being a pirate as well as any other land-locked son of the Midwest, and I could out-pray most of them that the chance to one day do it on the sea would be a cup that would pass my lips. My mind, then, was familiar both with water and all the ways to keep my ass dry. My ass wouldn’t be dry for always.

One day I met a girl who was a water person. She could not swim either, but this didn’t seem to stop her none. It started out simple enough. There were first boats on lakes, then canoes on rivers, and eventually we got down to kayaks. I tended to find my anxiety grew larger as the size of the vessel and the number aboard dwindled.

My introduction to kayaks was on the occasion of her birthday. I had arranged to rent two kayaks from an outfitter in Boone. We were to float down the Des Moines River and underneath the Kate Shelley High Bridge. The original bridge was completed in 1901 and lies alongside its replacement, which was being finished the year we floated down in 2009. It is the longest spanning double track railroad bridge in the United States.

It is named for the Iowa heroine, Kate Shelley, who on July 6, 1881, was awoken after a thunderstorm by the crash of a locomotive on a small creek near the home of her, her mother, and her younger siblings. Taking a lantern she arrived to find the bridge out and two survivors, one of whom urged her to make her way to the depot in the neighboring town of Moingona, just south of Boone. In an hour, at midnight, a passenger train from Omaha was bound through. If no one warned them, it would be a catastrophe.

She followed the tracks, reaching the trestle bridge that laid over the Des Moines River. As she reached it, her lantern went out, and in the rain of the dark night she was left to crawl on her hands and knees from tie to tie, not knowing for sure when the train from Omaha would happen along wanting to use the bridge too.

She would make it, run another mile to the depot, holler that the bridge was out, and then faint from exhaustion. What she wouldn’t do, however, was see that the oncoming train was sitting there already stopped. It was no matter, everyone gave her an “A” for effort anyway. In 1901, the new bridge was christened the “Boone Viaduct,” but locals soon named it informally after Kate Shelley. “High” was added sometime in the 60s.

My favorite version of the story tells that in approaching the station she was simply too exhausted to speak. She fished in her dress pocket, found a clothespin, and held it high above her head, right before she collapsed. The erudite railroad men recognized the clothespin as the universal sign for “wash out.” The Omaha passenger train was still as stopped as it had been before, she still got the “A” for effort, but now earned additional points for originality.

We set out with a party of 20-30 folks, hauled in three or four vans, a couple of which towed a trailer carrying the vessel of our choosing. Most had chosen canoes; some had chosen inner tubes. Some immediately made their way into the water, and it was my preference to let them all go before we did.

I had no idea how to properly get into or launch a kayak, and I wanted to make sure anyone who might know didn’t see me do it. As a general rule, I will make an ass of myself, but I hate to do it with an audience. As a general rule, an audience usually happens by anyway.

The mop-headed high school kid, remarkably glassy-eyed for having just drove our van, was now in the process of getting our kayaks ready. He seemed an unlikely confidant, but any other contenders I had already let slip into the current. He would have to do.

“So I’ve never actually….driven…err…riden…that is to say got into one of these things before. Any pointers?”

He looked at me and said, “Yea. Don’t tip it over, man.” He offered a laugh, but I didn’t take it. He recovered.

“If you do, dude, you don’t have a thing to worry about. You’ll pop right freaking out of it. It’s completely natural. My buddies and I just went down here last weekend. You will be able to standup and touch bottom anywhere. Between all of that and your lifejacket, you’ll be just fine.” These were the words I floated out into the Des Moines River on.

Being a fairly tall guy, there would be a couple complications. The first had to do with the kayak. To my surprise the seat went far enough back and wasn’t the issue. My feet on the other hand found the quarters on their end kind of cramped. There was not enough room to simply point my toes up nor was there room to angle them in or my heels out. The only thing I could do was point them as far ahead as I could.

It was far from comfortable, and I had no idea how I was going to survive a two or three hour float by doing it. I remember looking ahead and seeing all the other people. The adventurers had already set out to distance themselves from the pack. Those with small children were already in the midst of adventures of their own. Bringing up the rear were me, my wife, and my painfully big feet.

I did what was natural for anyone to do. I was sitting in an area of sufficient size, so I simply brought my knees up to my chest. There I sat comfortably, albeit for a brief while, until I realized why no one sits in a kayak like that. I no longer had any balance. I had little to begin with.

All the sudden I could feel the kayak suddenly pitch to my left. I threw everything I could muster to the right. The kayak flipped over, and I came out just as the glassy eyed kid said I would. What I couldn’t do, however, was touch anything resembling a bottom. I now found the second complication of being a bigger guy on an outfit geared to accommodate the masses.

In the midst of my rapidly flailing arms, I discovered my lower lip’s natural position was just scarcely above the waterline. In fact it was so close to it, it wasn’t unreasonable to assume the rapid flailing of my arms was the only thing keeping my lip above it. It’s a challenge to be in full panic, flail your arms, and breathe all at the same time. While I tried to do the latter, I found I preferred the first two more, and gave up on it. Eventually I tried to get maneuvered somewhere where a bottom could be found.

The stroke I chose was the doggie paddle, beings as how this was the only one I knew that let me keep my head above water. We were on the far side of a bend in the river. The bank closest to me was being actively cut and stood above the water like a wall. A hundred yards away on the inside of the bend was a sandbar. I set my sights on that.

The doggie paddle, or at least how I was practicing it, is as effective for swimming as is shoveling the snow out of my driveway with a fork. I managed to take two or three yards off the distance, but by that time I was exhausted. I tried again to touch bottom, and I couldn’t.

My wife had retrieved my kayak and was beginning to understand that I was in trouble. She placed it just ahead of me, between myself and the sandbar, in the hopes that I would grab hold. I reached out and knocked it out of the way.

She stopped it with her paddle and pushed it back. As I looked over at the sandbar of my salvation, a bright red wall came floating back across my view. I pushed it again. “No,” I managed to get out.

I couldn’t imagine getting my arms far enough out of the water to get around it. There really wasn’t anything I could see to get a grip on. I couldn’t take having the view of that quiet little sandbar taken from me. I guess I had become partial to it.  I began to wonder if they served beer there.

“What do you want me to do? Just tell me what you want me to do.”

I could look down stream and still see most of the party we left with. There was one guy, in a kayak as well, looking back. I remember thinking of hollering for help, but then I thought, For Christ’s sake, don’t make a scene about it. Drown quietly.

There was enough of a current that my wife had to put forth a little effort to keep from leaving me. She’d paddle a little all the time, darting this way and that, and I could see how nervous she was.  I began to forget how nervous I was.

“I’m getting in,” she said.

I managed to get out a “No you are not.”

“Yes. I am.”

“Listen to me.  No.”

I had read somewhere that most of the time there are two drowning victims it is because the first wraps their arms around the second. I was quite certain I would do it too, and I was intent on it not happening. She had a paddle to knock me out with, and if she had done it I would have had no argument. She was too soft hearted, though.

Her nerves had her paddling harder, and instead of keeping even with me she was about to paddle right on by. She had to turn the kayak to keep from doing so, and that is when I saw it. There on the back of her boat, held by a little string, was a red t-handle just above the water line. I latched on to it before she could get in and have me latch on to her.

She paddled for the sandbar I had been dreaming about. On one end of it were barefoot kids whose parents were already needed a break from their river adventure.  On the other end was me, washed ashore like a shipwreck survivor.

The man I had noticed in the kayak had noticed me after all. He nudged the kayak we had left behind up on the bar beside me and placed my paddle back inside.

“There is no way we can go on.  You nearly drowned,” my wife said.

I looked back the short distance to where we had left. The vans and my confidant were gone.

“Well I’m not walking back to Boone. Looks like on down is the only way to go.” I was hoping “on down” would be downstream.

It was, and I went keeping my toes pointed straight ahead the whole time. When we got to Kate Shelley’s bridge, I took it in as well as I could, trying to keep my larger than average head perpendicular to the rest of my body, so as not to cause the kayak to list. I’m sure the view was just as good from the backside, but I never turned my head to take a look.

When I arrived at our destination, I thought I had accomplished a feat no less than the one Kate had.  She hadn’t saved anyone either, after all. But no one single person made a commotion about it. My effort had earned no great notice. Seems like the only thing I could have done to have made the paper was to have not come down it at all. They don’t name a bridge after you for that though. You get a chunk of concrete in a row some place.

For a while I thought it was something to have decided I was going to drown quietly, without making a commotion and all. I thought it separated me from other men. A few years later I was plunged into deep water again, deepest of my life, and this time I was on my own. I would realized drowning quietly is what most men do.  I had been no different.

It was then that I came to an appreciation of bridges that don’t burn, of the humble doggie paddle, of those that see you need help without your asking, and the special ones that help you quietly raise some hell after all.