Cecil Vortex

The first time I went to Muir Woods, the forest floor was flooded with people. It was like midday at Disneyland, only with Douglas Firs and Coastal Redwoods instead of Winnie the Pooh and pals.

I was discouraged. This was not the verdant vibe I was looking for.

I had a friend with me who’d been to Muir several times before. Everything was going to be ok, he said. Let’s walk along the path, and when it forks, we’ll take the one going up. Just three forks (give or take), that’s all we need, he said. Which seemed bonkers to me, but we were already there so…

After the first fork, we found ourselves in the middle of a modest crowd. There was chatter on the trail for sure. Happy families. A group of thirty-somethings. But nothing like the mob we’d left behind. What really surprised me was the sound. Or the lack of sound. The tree cover served as baffles, already muffling much of the noise from below.

After the second fork, we ran into a few hikers. Hardier folks than me and my pal. People with equipment. What really surprised me was the sound. Or the lack of sound. The tree cover served as baffles, already muffling much of the noise from below.

One more fork, one more choice to push back a little against gravity, and as promised, we were all alone. Just us, a little chirping, some rustling branches, and the crunch of our feet on the path. We’d been walking for perhaps twenty minutes now and the crowd had just disappeared. I never forgot it. And I learned a simple lesson that day that I try to keep in mind.

There are those moments when you have a choice, when you can opt for the easy way or the arduous way, the stroll or the incline. It doesn’t have to be that dramatic. But it’s remarkable how just by choosing to sweat one, two, perhaps three times, you can find yourself in rare air, listening to the sound of your feet on an open path.

Junior year in college, my girlfriend Laura and I both applied to get into the Big Writing Class. There were always more applicants than seats in the BWC. I don’t remember exactly what I wrote as my sample, but I remember it was something dreamy and shaded in mystery. It took place in the woods. There was fog. And there were unicorns.

Meanwhile, Laura wrote a piece about a writer who noticed that he had a freckle on his right ear. This sent him into a tailspin. I remember one line of dialog in particular—it was something like: “How can I be a writer, if I can’t even notice details on my own head?” And I remember that line because I had said that line, one angsty afternoon, looking in the mirror, spotting that freckle, and going “What the hell?!”

So my unicorns didn’t make the cut. Laura’s piece was great, and she earned a chair. And let’s take a moment to appreciate the awesome meta-ness of the situation:

Laura had written a story that drew from a real observation. Meanwhile I had zipped past a detail in my own life that was literally (literally!) about noticing things, and opted instead to write, well, goofball nonsense.

To be fair, it wasn’t the fog or fantasy that made my piece bad. My mistake was writing a story without a true moment or feeling. Growing up I’d had the idea that the only writing that counted was 100% imagined, and that led me down this fanciful path. But the lesson I took away from the class I never took was that details matter, and that in art, drawing from reality is more than fair game, it is the game.

(And that’s why I hope you enjoy my novel in progress, about a unicorn named Dan who wears glasses. Boom!)

There were ten of us perched around the edge of the raft: me, my wife, her family, our river guide. We’d all signed up for an afternoon adventure in the form of whitewater rafting down the American River—some exercise, a bit of a rush, all followed by the reward of an extended float down the lazy river.

And then perhaps five minutes in, things took a turn. The raft swung into a mid-sized vortex and our guide shouted for us to paddle hard and pull the boat around a large flat rock rising up on our right. So we paddled hard. We paddled quite hard. We paddled plenty hard.

We paddled hard. We paddled quite hard. We paddled plenty hard.
But as we curved around the bend, the river got the best of us and our raft ended up parked on this rising rock, listening to the sound of water slapping up against the side of the boat.

No problem, our guide shouted. We just needed to all move to one side of the boat and bounce, together. And we’d pop free and go sailing down and through the churn.

Bounce. Easy. Bounce, bounce. A little harder. Bounce –! and the boat flipped. And I mean completely flipped, flying out from under us, on to who knows where, leaving me, my wife, and her family scattered around the drink.

And I have to admit, even though we were going rafting down a big wet river, taking a full dunk like this was a scenario I had never really considered.

I remember my head going underwater. I remember popping up and shouting, in what I like to think was a sign of solid life priorities, “Where’s my wife?!” She was about 40 yards downstream, it turned out. The guide was already back on board and hard at work, one by one yanking us into the middle of the boat where we sat for a moment or two, shaken and a little bit freaked out, before sort of squishing our way over to our posts on the edge.

As we started moving back down the river, the change in the way we paddled was obvious. Heading toward a rock wall at the next turn, we dug in, I mean really dug in, together, fierce, fighting with the water, paddling like it mattered, because it did matter, and because we knew in our soaked bones what was at stake. The wall came close but we didn’t let the boat hit, and instead we flew on past. It was fantastic.

And here are a couple of things I took away from that glorious soak, which I still count as one of my favorite days to-date: that having something at stake, and everyone knowing what’s at stake, can make the journey not just more successful, but also a hell of a lot more fun. And that you don’t always get to decide how hard “hard work” is. You may think you’re working plenty hard. But sometimes it’s up to the river. The river tells you how hard you need to paddle. And when the river’s got your attention—when it tells you and your crewmates to dig in, and you listen—sometimes you fly.