Soul searching

Maybe today would be the day.

I told myself this as I rounded my secret southside backroad (yes, there is one) after a hot morning of slinging papers. I always ended my route with this scenic overlook, which provided a generous view of Smelter Rapid. With a mere glance, I could tell the general flow, see if there was anyone playing, maybe catch a raft splashing through. I could also get a good feel for the river’s mood that day: dark and menacing; playful and frisky; lazy and benevolent.

Ponderosa, looking scarier than ever.

On that day, it was sparkling green under the noon sun: splashy and fun. That rare time of year where the frigid bite of winter is gone, the sun is blazing and there’s enough flow to get you over most rocks but still provide a thrill on the bigger drops. Maybe even enough to make you think twice about securing your open beverage. In other words, prime tubing conditions.

“I gotta get out there,” I wistfully complained to my delivery cohort.

See, a summer toiling on home projects and a bum shoulder had precluded me from a lot of my usual river excitement. It was time to put my foot down – or up in this case – grab (or drag) the kids, pump up the River Rats and get out there.

Some hard-core river folk might be ashamed to admit this, but I heart tubing. Maybe it stems from my formative years in the Midwest, taming the mighty Apple River in Keds, jorts and cotton T-shirt (smokes in a Ziploc, another thing I should probably not admit). It was almost as if the need to plunk my posterior into an inflatable doughnut with a frosty beverage in hand was part of my DNA.

Anyway, I was hatching my plan to fulfill my genetic destiny while eating lunch and listening to KSUT. But what I heard next not only made me want to toss up my lunch – it made me realize it was the day for something entirely different all together.

The voice came on and explained in an impossibly calm tone how there had been a mine breach in Silverton and 1 million gallons of toxic mine waste were headed toward Durango along the Animas River. People were advised to stay out of the river and conserve water as much as possible.

My mind raced through the myriad responses – the first of which was denial. Maybe it was a cruel “War of the Worlds” type joke. I texted the spousal unit, the main media socializer in the house, to confirm.

Yep, it was true, he responded. And even weirder, it was the EPA that accidentally ripped the band-aid off, making a bad situation really, really bad.

I went from stunned to sad to deeply depressed in a matter of minutes. How could it be? Yes, we all know the sordid history of mine run-off in Silverton. But that was just a little trickle, somewhere off in the middle of nowhere. Right? Not a toxic torrent that would necessitate closing all water intakes and shutting down the river for days on end. Right?

Oh how wrong.

I did what most anyone would do when getting word that a good friend is dying. I rushed to its side.

I guess everyone has their river love story, and I am no exception. Nearly 20 years ago, I moved to Durango friendless, penniless and jobless. I scored a kayak the size of a Cadillac, took a few lessons and fancied myself ready for the big time. The absence of any semblance of a roll was merely a technicality. The bulk of my first few months were spent alone, ironically, on the “River of Lost Souls.” I guess you could say we were just two lost souls, swimming in a fish bowl … no, wait. (It’s not that I don’t like Pink Floyd. Or that I condone paddling alone. But when you’re a goober newbie – a “goowbie?” – with a paddle fashioned from a shower rod and one of those Soviet-era hockey helmets, well, good kayakers see you come wobbling up and scurry away like someone just yelled “shark!” in a crowded eddy.)

Anyway, the river and I became fast friends. It let me swim in its waves –  on multiple occasions – bash my shins on its jagged rocks, drown my massive boat like the Titanic in its depths and drink my weight in its water, either through my mouth or up my nose.

If it sounds like a lopsided relationship, it wasn’t. See, after almost every spanking and thrashing, there was a sliver of hope: a perfect ferry; a Hail Mary brace; or maybe even a two-second micro surf. And no matter what, I always got off the water smiling and wanting more.

Twisted, maybe, but it kept me sane and kept me in Durango. And it still does.

By the time I rushed to the river’s side last week, I had seen the photos of it resembling something akin to radioactive Velveeta. I prepared for the worst. But instead, I was greeted with a familiar scene – kids, paddleboarders and rafters cavorting on a summer day. The orange plume was fashionably late, and I made a mental note to commit the bucolic scene to memory.

For the next several hours, I held vigil, hopping on my bike every so often to ride to the river’s edge and see if the color had changed. Eventually, darkness fell and I gave up, hoping perhaps the sludge had taken a wrong turn somewhere (like New Jersey. Just kidding!)

But the next morning, my hopes were dashed as I came upon my favorite play spot draped in a color that shouldn’t belong in nature, but unfortunately does.

Obviously, it’s easy to get emotional at such a site, and lord knows, there’s plenty of blame to go around. It’s not just about the loss of recreation and drinking water, or becoming the latest poster child for environmental disasters. Or yearning for the good, old days when all we had to complain about was panhandlers and sculptures.

It’s about being given the responsibility for this beautiful, precious, rare and completely irreplaceable resource. And then going and wrecking it; possibly beyond repair.

But perhaps the worst is trying to explain it to my kids – kids who were anointed in the river in the closest thing to a baptism they’ll ever get. To see them try to wrap their heads around how something like this could happen, when their whole lives they’ve had it drilled into them to “leave no trace,” “pick up your trash” and “don’t trample the cryptobiotic soil!” Then, they see us adults, in a giant game of geologic Whack-a-Mole, plug up a hole in a mountain of Swiss cheese, causing 3 million gallons of caustic orange goo to come gushing out.

Ok, perhaps this is a simplified version of actual events, but how is any parent going to convince their child it’s OK to go in the river ever again?

And the fault rests squarely on all our shoulders. Maybe that’s the hardest part to swallow. Liberal, conservative, GDI, guvment hater, Obama lover. We all had a hand – whether through complicity, complacency or antipathy. And it is up to us to find a way out, whether it be Superfund once and for all or turning Lake Powell into the world’s largest settlement pond (although some would argue it already is.)

They say the river teaches us about life. It teaches perseverance, humility, patience, beauty and respect. And let’s just hope, this time, it teaches us forgiveness.

– Missy Votel