As the Oarlock Turns

Midnight Boat Boy
By Josh Mahan

After soaking with a tarantula in the springs we returned to camp. Digging into a second helping of enchilada pie lights rushed into our camp.

“Hello? We’ve got kind of an emergency situation,” the voice from the dark called out. “We’ve lost our boat, a 16-foot skiff.”

Just then Lynn rolled into camp.

“Those guys on the point saw it go by 15 minutes ago.”

Without hesitation I ready The Signifcance.

“Let’s go chase it down.”

And with that chi-gong master Lynn and I head out into dark waters. We grow to know each other quickly on the still moonlit night. He’s worried about his boat, the Dolphina Azul. It was dragging anchor and could be sunk with the weight allowing water in.

“We’re going to find it,” I say, as we row mile after mile, return passage seeming bleaker with each corner. He’s got a motor and can pull us back up, that is if the boat is still floating and the engine able.

We find her three miles down, pirouetting in the current, half sunk. We cut the anchor hastily and tie the water-logged skiff to the raft. Instantly it grabs us and sucks us downstream. I pull on the oars aiming for shore.

“I can make this pull,” I tell myself and soon we’re winding through wood traffic on shore to make beach.

Lynn’s happy to find her, but still wondering if the Blue Dolphin will fire its engine again. We bilge by hand for 15 minutes as she settles back to proper balance with each bucketful of water. The battery looks good and Lynn is one with his craft bringing it back online beneath the coming full moon. We talk of the Mayan calendar, surrender, and not fighting the flow. It all makes sense to us in the dark hours.

The motor fires up. We push out to the channel looking for the dangling anchor rope. Unable to locate we return to shore, tie in The Significance for a tow and begin upriver. I pull out a couple of beers. We crack ‘em and cheers to a job well done when the engine sputters and dies. Drifting again Lynn figures water must be in the fuel. I hop back to The Significance and row us into a rock shoal. We transfer fuel. We grow tense a moment, the thought of sleeping out setting in. I’m pretty sure I can row us upstream the three miles back to camp and our people, but am not looking forward to it.

We confer on whether it’ll start this time.

“I’m not much of a motor man,” I tell him. With that it purrs to life, and we are off, fully powered, roaring up the canyon. The Significance bucks in the wake. She doesn’t like to be pulled upstream, a gravity-powered craft working within the earth’s flow.

Before long we are back at Ringbolt rapid, the last living drop on the Colorado’s ancient path to the sea, and the site of our camp at the mouth of Whiterock Wash.

Jen is waiting anxiously on the shoreline for our return. Camp is in a flurry of excitement as we relay our tale, all of us relieved to be back top fully recovered, Lynn and I sharing a strong sense of accomplishment for running an errand of the midnight boat boy. Jen had shared a nice night with Lynn’s people and all had agreed that Lynn and I were cut of the same cloth. How funny we’d found that out ourselves.

He leaves the boats in the harbor at our camp, and works up beach a short way to his tent. The Significance is lonely and spends the night bouncing in the up and down tides of Hoover’s releases with Dolphina.

All return the next morning, Lynn with his crew from Sedona: John, Sheryl, and Nancy. The energies of this group are soothing and ecstatic as we share a meal and grow to friends. We tell the tale and share other stories all agreeing that the river wanted us to come together that night.