River Rush

When Aunt Opal died, she left Mary June very comfortable. Mary June inherited property, stock, oil royalties, and me. I had been Aunt Opal’s favorite niece, and Mary June figured if her mother liked me, there must be some undiscovered potential lurking under my farm girl guise. So I became her Project.

June had shed the “Mary” part of her name in the last half of her life, just as she had shed her submissive wife/homemaker image when she divorced her first husband for the second time. (She wasn’t one to give up easily.) She was a professor of consumer economics (home economics with a doctorate), and an accomplished artist. She had risen from an emotionally abusive marriage and created a Self that was awesome to behold. Now she wanted to re-create me, scrub the dirt out from under my fingernails, and give me some semblance of sophistication.

She took me to Greek restaurants where I tasted falafel for the first time and Indian restaurants that served up luscious lentil soup with yogurt. She hauled me to museums (gorgeous Chihuly glass and ancient Egyptian tombs), art shows (people paint some weird stuff), art parties (old ladies drinking ouzo), and an Oscar Wilde movie (his poor wife!). She gave me my first Whole Foods experience, and we shopped at Tuesday Mornings.

Her driving terrified me. (Who makes a U-turn on a four-lane street in downtown Ft. Worth?) She took a sort of close-your-eyes-and-jump-off-the-cliff approach when she got behind the wheel. I never said a word. Her wrath would be worse than wearing a body cast for six months.

June loved to travel, and she cajoled me out of my comfort zone and into a trip to Costa Rica. She had been once before and seen the volcanoes. Now she wanted to see the beach. Not on the resort-laden Caribbean side. Not June. She avoided anything that smelled remotely of popular culture. She searched out places that reeked of local flavor and hard beds. So we headed for San Juan, Costa Rica, without a single hotel reservation but not without a plan – June always had a plan.

We spent the first night in a hostel and breakfasted the next morning with a teacher from California who assured me that a state lottery would not improve funding for education in our state. (He was right.) June and I spent the morning going to the post office, changing money, and soaking up the culture. That afternoon we caught a bus headed for San Isidro.

San Isidro was a pleasant little town. We ate pizza on a balcony that evening and gave our leftovers to a trio of backpackers from Europe – strapping blond young men without a care in the world except how to get to the next rainforest. We boarded another bus the next morning, bound for Playa Dominical.

Riding with June had tempered my attitude about dying in a car crash, but it had not prepared me for the ride to Dominical. Costa Rica has one main highway that curves across the backs of mountains. It is not a four-lane highway. It’s not even a two-lane highway. Try one-and-a-half lanes. And we were riding in a bus that took up all of its lane and most of the other. It was full of Ticos and two white women. Ticos filled the aisles and the steps, and the bus driver seemed to know everyone by his first name. He talked and gestured during the entire three hour trip, oblivious to the 1,000 foot drop that was two feet from my side of the bus.

Did I mention that this was a local bus? We stopped at every little village and crossroads. We even stopped for entire families at places with no appearance of being inhabited. Finally, we arrived. The bus deposited us on the side of a dusty road. The fact that we had no clue where to go did not daunt June in the least. She took off in the most likely direction, and soon we were sipping watermelon frescas at an open air café. (Café is a euphemism for a kitchen and some tables under a roof.) Nothing has ever tasted so good since.

We stayed in Dominical for three days. Our base was a little room in a complex of cabinas owned by an American whose aim was to make just enough money to stay in Dominical. This was a surfing community and had quite a few expatriates from the U.S. who were seeking relief from a culture of wealth acquisition. June and I provided quite a contrast to the small, brown-skinned Ticos and the tall, tanned Americans.

One of those three mornings, I headed out on my own while June re-organized her multi-pocketed vest for the 39th time. I walked down the beach quite a ways, enjoying the sound of the surf. The ocean was endless. There were no boats to use as reference points. I was very small on a beautiful blue-green planet, but I felt very much at home.
I came to the edge of a small stream that ran out into the ocean. The water was about ten feet across and crystal clear. To continue my walk, I would have to cross it. I took off my sandals and stepped in. Ahh . . . delightful. A few more steps made me little more cautious. The bottom was not smooth. Pebbles of various sizes made walking difficult with bare feet. I picked my way across, slipping and almost falling once or twice. In the middle of stream, my awareness was redirected. The water was moving awfully fast. It was only up to my knees, but it was pushing hard. It would be tricky to get up if I should fall.

Suddenly, adrenalin poured through my veins. I was standing in the middle of a narrow stream with the wide Baru River on my right, pushing its water through this little funnel that led to the ocean on my left – about 25 feet away. If I fell, I would not have time to recover before the water carried me tumbling into that huge, pounding surf. No one would ever find my body.

Well, then. I would just have to be careful, wouldn’t I?

I was equidistant from both sides of the stream. I could turn around and go back. If I continued across, I would have to cross it again. I think I must have laughed out loud. I had not felt this alive since I was a child. Here I was, on the edge of the Earth, just one misstep from oblivion. I stepped forward toward the other side. I would savor this exquisite moment if it killed me.