July 26, 2006

Before jumping into a canoe with Paul and paddling down the Saugeen, I decided to smash my elbows and knees against the sharp rocks of the riverbed. Scars make me look manly. Twitching with pain, I covered my fresh wounds with sunscreen and sweat, and we drifted down the river to accumulate good karma.

As it turns out, it’s surprisingly easy to accumulate good karma on a river. All we had to do was to stop by a gigantic sand hill. There, we buried ourselves in warm clay and swam naked in the fiercely strong river currents. And just as I was pulling up my pants, we saw a green canoe rush over the rapids and crash right into the middle of a boulder. The green canoe capsized, and the girls inside were instantly overwhelmed by the rapids.

We pointed, and laughed. But then the girls started screaming for help, unable to stay afloat in the current. We jumped in after them, grabbed their canoe, and pulled, only to find out how impossible it is to pull to shore a canoe that’s filled with water. After five minutes of shouts and struggles, we pulled the girls to shore. They were shaken and bruised, and we felt brave and beautiful for saving them.

Because we jumped in after them, the girls not only offered us their last two beers, but they also gave us a generous supply of karma.

Karma that came in handy for the rest of our journey. After we drank our beers and waved goodbye, everything was suddenly filled with magic, mystery: the river carried us downstream effortlessly; I got to splash around naked and play with pretty dead things; and a day that was supposed to be filled with thunderstorms was filled with sunshine and endless rainbows instead.

“There are fucking rainbows and sunshine everywhere,” I said, feeling trapped in a magical land of unicorns and Care Bears.

But the magic wouldn’t stop. At sunset we found a swimming hole on the side or the river and a secluded campsite that already had fire logs prepared for us. I stripped naked and swung from ropes — free and bruised and wonderful. Magic was alive.