The Time I Almost Died

The Owens river lies a bit east of the Sierra Nevadas in California. Narrow, mean little river full of twists and turns and willows lining the bank, dead branches broken and sharp and a swift current to drag you into them.

I was sixteen and with my friends. We were the Bat Patrol, a bunch of stoners and metalheads and guys interested in more than lazy paddles around placid lakes. Us and a couple of our dads drove out and put in - canoes empty of everything but us and our paddles - to ride the Owens, down the worst bits.

We didn't do it to get to a nice campsite or for the view. We did it because it was dumb and dangerous and it scared the shit out of our troop leader, a lawyer named Larry Aschbacher.

So we got up early and set out canoes in the water carrying nothing but us and our paddles. Some of us even wore lifejackets.

The river was high and angry. Week before had been nothing but thunderstorms. We rode it rather than paddled it. Only time our paddles touched water was to steer us around a bend. Ripped my shirt clean off, coming around a corner we swung wide and ended up in the trees. Left it hanging there.

Hauled off for lunch on a sandy stretch. Ate spam with a plastic spork and went back to it. Caught a branch under my eye, right over the cheekbone. Let it bleed. 

River split half a dozen times around sandbars and long, narrow islands. Widening out into a dozen channels. Took the wrong side of one. All I heard was the boat ahead of ours yelling "bridge!" and coming around the corner to see a wall of aged wood rising from the water. We backpaddled like mad but the current was running quick and over we went. My partner went straight under but I grabbed the top of our canoe to ride it through.

Except it got stuck between the struts and me. Shoved me right up against the bottom of the bridge facing up, head hanging over the edge of the canoe and pulled underwater. Couldn't breathe because the canoe was crushing me and even if I could all I would've done was suck water.

Felt like I was stuck like that forever, but it wasn't much more than a minute when the next canoe coming down smashed into me and sent me scraping down the underside of the bridge to pop out the other side bloody. Like being born, spat out blind and flailing.

First coherent memory I have after that was crawling up onto a rocky little beach and puking up river water. I walked the last mile. Never found our canoe.