The river is within us, the sea is all about us.
T.S. Eliot
I am going to die. This is not hyperbole. I doubt it will be today, and it probably won’t be tomorrow, but someday I will die, and so will you. I am so sorry.
I understand the words – I am going to die – and I even accept the reality, but when I try to imagine it, my entire consciousness recoils in abject terror. No matter how I rationalize it, the truth remains — I don’t want to die.
I try not to think about it, but it is seldom voluntary. There are just so many reminders. For example, I was in a truck with one of my closest friends (who will be called “Alex” hereafter). It was 5:30 am, and we were on our way to the Fox River for a 10-mile kayaking trip. I mentioned how bad the Cubs bullpen was (they were garbage), and Alex’s response was, “What else is new?”
Years ago, I visited my grandparents in Downstate Illinois, when my grandfather, a life long Cubs fan, asked how the Cubs were doing. I said, “They kind of suck right now.”
His response was, “What else is new?”
That was our relationship. When we got together, we talked about the Cubs. At the time, I thought of it as just a shared interest, but now that I am older, I know that was his way of staying connected with me. That was also the last conversation we ever had.
In the passenger seat of Alex’s truck, I am thinking about my grandfather, how I haven’t seen him in over a decade, and how someday I too will die.
Alex and I had been talking about this trip for years. (Being completely honest, the version of me referred to as “Big Tom” would have never been able to make the trip.) The original plan was to kayak the 15 miles between West Dundee and St Charles, but the river was low, and there was minimal current, so Alex called an audible. We launched from downtown Elgin.
Elgin is a tranquil town at 6:00 am on a Sunday. The banks of the river hosted a smattering of men and women who fished soundlessly, motionless commuter trains hissed in preparation for their morning trips into the city, and with the exception of the occasional fish leaping out of the water to feast on an unsuspecting insect, the river remained silent and still – neither helping nor impeding our journey.
The further downriver I traveled, the more confident I became, and as we passed the riverboat casino, I turned to see it from a previously unseen angle, and my kayak began to rock.
The grass was greener
Pink Floyd (High Hopes)
The light was brighter
The taste was sweeter
The nights of wonder
With friends surrounded
The dawn mist glowing
The water flowing
The endless river … forever and ever
Near the end of my second semester of college, a good friend and drinking buddy asked if I would be interested in buying any of his albums. I gave him five dollars in exchange for “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “The Velvet Underground,” and Alex bought a Led Zeppelin DVD from him. Shortly thereafter, I saw him snort a line of black pepper for cash. He was clearly in need of money.
He did not return to school in the fall. His girlfriend told me, in confidence, that he was in rehab. Once he got out, we started hanging out again, but in controlled situations. We would watch football games or movies at his parents’ house, and there was never any alcohol — until there was.
The last time I saw him was at my parents’ house for a Milk Days¹ party I had thrown. He died in the spring of 2013. I will likely never know what happened, but I can make an educated guess.
When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I didn’t know what it meant to be an enabler, but now I do, and I won’t make that mistake again.
I turned back downriver, focusing on where I was in that moment and paying no attention who where I had been. My kayak stopped rocking.
Not far from the riverboat, there is a train bridge that is under construction. In order to get cranes and other pieces of heavy machinery into the middle of the river, a temporary jetty was constructed. The jetty funnels the current into a 5-meter wide opening. Being a novice (at best), I insisted that Alex pass through first to see the path I would have to take. The current sent him right into the column of the bridge — his advice: take it wide.
In retrospect, it was cute that I thought I would have any control of my heading. I took it wide, but the current swept me sideways. I nearly hit the jetty and did hit the column. If ever I was going to drown, a possibility which I spent the previous week joking about, to the disgust of many, it was going to be here. I pushed myself away from the column and back into open water. Once again, the current died.
At 7:30, we had to portage just north of the South Elgin dam, which allowed me to have my breakfast (a Clif Bar, Jack Links Teriyaki Beef Jerky, and a Miller Lite) while hanging out in the shade under a bridge. Life is only as weird as you make it.
Back on the river, we passed wading Great Blue Herons, as Kingfishers and a Bald Eagle flew overhead. The Fox River is a great locale for bird watching, which is a great hobby that I encourage everyone to pursue, full-throatedly.
The river to the ocean goes
A fortune for the undertow
None of this is going my way
REM (Find The River)
We ground to a halt, as we both bottomed out. Alex was able to find a path that allowed him to make it through with considerable effort, but the route I took required me to get out and drag my kayak for about 30 meters. This would be our only natural obstacle along the way.
As we weaved around the islands near Jon Duerr Forest Preserve, the site of a memorial for the unknown soldiers who died in the Black Hawk War, I sliced my hand on the side of the kayak. Neither of us had the foresight to bring a first aid kit. The rest of the trip, I focused on keeping my hand out of the disgusting river.
We stopped on the eastern bank near Valley View so I could clean my wound and wrap my hand in the boxing wraps, which I don’t know why I brought. I also enjoyed a second Clif Bar and re-hydrated with the great taste of an ice-cold Miller Lite, which did not make me logy due to its less filling nature. The four miles that followed this stop were the most tedious of the trip, as the current completely disappeared. It was at this point in the journey we faced our third and final obstacle — assholes.
We had been lucky that the only motorized watercraft we had encountered thus far were trolling pontoon boats, but in the lake-like waters north of St Charles, the powerboats and jet-skis showed up in force. The first time I had to reckon with the wake created by one of these crafts, I thought it was fun, but each time they sped by, it became considerably less fun.
Most of them did give us a wide berth, but there was this one who could not have cared less that there were kayaks on the river. Each time I would hear a loud motor coming up behind us, I would turn to see who it was, and each time, I would rock.
Dear God, be good to me. The sea is so wide and my boat is so small.
Breton Fisherman’s Prayer
In the fall of 2008, a friend of Alex and mine who had dropped out of college after our freshman year visited me at my apartment. For the occasion, my roommates and I threw a party. It was here that he informed me that he had enlisted in the Marines.
He behaved kind of oddly at the party. He at some spaghetti out of our fridge and drank a glass of milk. I don’t know why, but both of these things stuck with me. The next morning, I offered to take him to breakfast, knowing that we would not see each other for a while.
At breakfast, he told my roommates and me an incredibly anti-climatic story. It was long, it meandered, and it completely fizzled out, but he was excited as hell to tell us this story. This story would be how some of my roommates remembered him and would become a running joke in our apartment.
That was the last time I ever saw him. He died in the spring of 2013, but I didn’t know until the spring of 2015. Unlike our other friend, we know exactly how he died. It was a national news story.² To this day, I feel like a shitty friend every time I think about him. I sincerely wish I hadn’t made him the butt of a running joke, and how does one go TWO YEARS without knowing that a friend had died and still have the audacity to call that person a friend? Because of this, I try not to make mean spirited jokes, and I regularly tell my friends that I love them, which makes some of them profoundly uncomfortable.
Eventually, we made it to the no-wake zone, where I no longer had to look back upriver and risk tipping. This trip confirmed something that I had already known: Every time I look back, I risk drowning.
The river flat-out refused to aid us in our expedition. We toiled for the last couple of miles. A flute played in the distance, or perhaps it was a siren trying to lure me onto the rocks, oblivious to the fact that I am not a sailor, but rather the waves which will always end up on the rocks, without fail. Most likely, though, it was someone playing the flute.
We finally reached the point where we would disembark and pulled the kayaks ashore. In doing so, my sandal fell off my foot, which I promptly sliced open on jagged rocks. Tired, sore, bleeding pretty severely from my foot, and celebrating our successful journey with the crisp, refreshing taste of Miller Lite, we walked the half-mile from the river to Alex’s house, where I dressed my various wounds.
The river continued towards its terminus without us, but I try not to think about that.
¹ Since 1942, Harvard, Illinois has hosted an annual festival called “Milk Days” to honor those who provided milk to the war efforts.
² https://www.cnn.com/2013/03/21/us/nevada-military-explosion/index.html
