Bewilderment

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A MILE OF DESCENDING TRAIL DROPPED US into a clearing by a rocky stream. Patches of white cascade gave way to deeper, open pools. Mountain laurel and stands of mottled sycamore flanked both banks. The site was more beautiful than I remembered.

Our tent was an engineering marvel, lighter than a liter of water and not much larger than a roll of paper towels. Robin pitched it himself. He fitted the thin poles, bent them into the tent’s eyelets, snapped the fabric clips onto the tensed-up exoskeleton, and hey presto: our home for the night.

Do we need the fly?

“How lucky do you feel?”

He felt pretty lucky. I did, too. Six different kinds of forest all around us. Seventeen hundred flowering plants. More tree species than in all of Europe. Thirty kinds of salamander, for God’s sake. Sol 3, that little blue dot, had a lot going for it, when you could get away from the dominant species long enough to clear your head.

Above us, a raven the size of an Oz winged monkey flew up into a white pine. “He’s here for the opening of Camp Byrne.”

We cheered, and the bird flew away. Then the two of us, after a stiff climb with packs on a day that had broken yet another all-time heat record by five degrees, opted for a swim.

A footbridge cut from a girthy tulip poplar crossed a chute in the cascades. Rocks on both sides were splattered with an action painting of lichen, moss, and algae. The creek was clear down to its stony bottom. We bushwhacked upstream and found a flat boulder. I steeled myself and eased into the rush. My doubtful son watched, wanting to believe.

The water shocked my chest and shoved me toward a tumble of rocks. What looked level from the shore was a whole rolling range of submerged micro-mountains. I plunged into the turbulence. My foot slid on a slick stone worn smooth by centuries of falling water. Then I remembered how to do this. I sat down in the torrent and let the chill river crash over me.

At his first touch of frigid current, Robin screamed. But the pain lasted only half a minute and his shrieks turned to laughter. “Keep low,” I called. “Crawl. Channel your inner amphibian.” Robbie surrendered to the ecstatic churn.

I’d never let him do anything so dangerous. He fought the current on all fours. Once he found his cascade legs, we worked our way to a spot in the middle of the surge. There we wedged ourselves into a rocky bowl and braced in the pummeling Jacuzzi. It felt like surfing in reverse: leaning back, balancing by constant adjustment of a hundred muscles. The film of water over the stones, the light that etched its rippled surface, and the weird fixed flow of the standing waves roaring over us where we lay in the frothy rapids mesmerized Robin.

The stream felt almost tepid now, warmed by the force of the current and our own adrenaline. But the water coiled like something wild. Downstream, the rapids dropped under orange trees that arched in from both banks. From behind us, upstream, the future flowed over our backs into the sun-spattered past.

Robin gazed at his submerged arms and legs. He fought against the warping, twisting water. It’s like a planet where the gravity keeps changing.

Black-striped fish the length of my pinkie swam up to kiss our limbs. It took me a moment to see they were feeding on the flakes of our sloughed skin. Robin couldn’t get enough. He was the main exhibit of his own aquarium.

We crab-walked upstream, legs splayed, arms patting for underwater handholds. Robin scuttled sideways from one cascade to another, playing at being a crustacean. Wedged into a new scoop of rocks, I inhaled the percolating foam—all the negative ions broken by the churn of air and water. The play of sensations elated me: the frothed-up air, the biting current, the free-falling water, a last swim together at the end of the year. And like some surge in the rocky stream, I lifted for a moment before crashing.

A hundred yards upstream, Alyssa tumbled feetfirst down this channel in a wet suit that fit her like skin. I anchored downstream to catch her, but she still yelped as the flow tossed her down the chutes. Her body bobbed toward me, small but mighty, swelling as it swept downstream, and just as my muscles reached to catch her, she passed right through me.

Robbie let go of his hold and scudded down the rapids. I stuck out an arm and he snagged it. He grappled to me and brought his eyes up to mine. Hey. What’s up?

I held his gaze. “You’re up. I’m down. Only a little, though.”

Dad! He jabbed with his free hand, waving it at the evidence all around us. How can you be down? Look where we are! Who gets this?

Nobody. Nobody in the world.

He sat down in the cascade, still hanging on to me, working it out. It took him no longer than half a minute. Wait. Were you here with Mom? Your honeymoon?

His superpower, really. I shook my head in wonderment. “How do you do that, Sherlock?”

He frowned and raised himself out of the water. Tottering in place, he surveyed the whole watershed with new eyes. That explains everything.