Finding Enlightenment in a Fluorescent Green Inner Tube: A Letter from Camp Scamp

Well, I finally got my butt into an inner tube on the Chattahoochee River. Floating down the ‘Hootch in a fluorescent green inner tube, I wasn’t expecting to find enlightenment.  But I did.  I will share with you the insights which I acquired today.

1. Go With The Flow

2. Two Is Better Than One

3. You’ll Get There Eventually- Maybe Not How You Expected To

1.  Go With the Flow.  During the last few weeks at work, interspersed between looking at a million slides under the microscope and doing autopsies (and having the angry family members of said autopsy on the phone yelling at me), I fantasized about the Chattahoochee River.  I imagined the wonderful feeling of my cold butt floating down the ‘Hootch in an inner tube, the warm sun on my face. 

We finally made it to North Georgia, and to the Chattahoochee River.  The big white school bus took us down the road from the Cool River Tubing Company, and dropped us down by the riverbank.  We jumped off the bus, carrying our inner tubes to the middle of the river, and hopped in.

  Alas, my beautiful dream seemed to turn into a nightmare 200 feet down the river.  My tube was stuck on a rock and I couldn’t move.  After a few minutes of this unpleasantness, I took matters into my own hands.  I stood up in the river and tried to move the tube over the rock.  My feet slipped on the slippery river rock and tumbled over; one of my flip flops slipped off and began to float down the river. Someone caught the flip flop for me, and I tried to flip the tube back over. I slipped again. My hat fell off and into the water. I tried to catch my hat while not letting go of the tube-and my other flip flop slipped off. I retrieved my wet hat, righted my tube, and got the one remaining flip flop from the nice family that had retrieved it for me.  I flopped back into the tube, clutching my one flip flop, wearing a soggy hat and cursing loudly.

 The reality of tubing the ‘Hooch was nothing like the fantasy that I had so carefully preserved in my head for all of these weeks.  It sucked.

I heard a voice drift back to me from down the river:  “Just go with the flow.”  Words of wisdom, I thought.  Then I realized that it was Allen’s voice.  This pissed me off, because I hate it when he says something wise that I didn’t think of first. 

Despite the fact that I don’t like it when he’s right- and will usually do the exact opposite of what he suggests, just on principle- I went with the flow.  I stopped fighting.  And when I inevitably got stuck against another rock, I waited.  The water rushing past me freed me.  I didn’t push against the rock; I didn’t stand up and try to walk over the rock.  I just waited for the water to carry me around?    That was my first Universal Truth of the day.  The moment that you stop fighting , that you stop trying to push against an immovable object,  that you stop trying to control everything- that’s when the water picks you up and begins to take you down the river again.

2. Two are Better Than One.  Ben and I seem to be the klutziest, dorkiest tubers in our party.  If there’s a rock to get stuck on- we’ll find it. If there’s a big branch by the side of the river with a snake hanging off of it- we’ll find a way under it.  If there’s a spot in the middle of the river where there’s absolutely no current- we’ll find ourselves in it.

Our antics entertain and/or annoy the hell out of the other members of our party.  You can see them, watching us from down river, looking either amused or completely exasperated.  And it is embarrassing for Ben and me to be the only people on the river who just really can’t tube.  I mean, it’s a simple concept:  you sit in an inner tube, and you float down the river.  Yet… somehow we do a lousy job of it.

So, today, Ben and I strapped our inner tubes to each other with a thick nylon strap that the tubing company provides for such a purpose.  We were going to do this together.  Two crappy tubers should equal one decent tuber, I reckoned.

Certain members of our party believed this to be an idiotic idea:  two bad tubers hooked together would not equal one good tuber- it would equal a total disaster.

But we showed them.  Two are better than one.

An amazing thing happened. When Ben and I, tied together, approached the rocks that conspired to impede our path, Ben would boing into a rock and bounce off; this carried him  back and would slingshot his tube around mine;  he could then pull us both, albeit facing backwards, though the rocks and back down the river.  The Doubters could do nothing but look on with envy.

Safely down the river, Ben lay across the tube on his belly and paddled.  I sat back in my tube and pushed with my push stick.  And we got ourselves down the river, whooping and laughing.  And there was another Universal Truth:  it’s fun to go down the river, through life, by the side of the people that you love, one pulling the other through the rough spots.

3.  You’ll get there-eventually.  It’s going to take you as long as it’s going to take you to get down the river.  You’re going to get down the river when you get down the river, even when you want to get the hell out because it’s lightning.  You’re going to get down the river when you get down the river, even if the rest of the family is waiting for you on the side of the river, tapping their feet, checking their watches (they do that).

You may not get down the river by the straightest route, the fastest route, the easiest route.  You may not get down the river with your hat still dry or with both flip flops still on your feet.

But you’ll get there. And, somehow, it will all be ok:  that’s how you needed to get down the river. You needed to get down the river that way, so that you could think about Life and Universal Truths- and then sit down and write all about it.