I love my new life here. Sometimes I get very tired, and lately I feel almost like…I’m stretched thin. But that’s okay. It’s only some of the time, and it’s a small price to pay to help my new family. I love them so much.

And they love me.

“If you were to eat me, what part would you start with?”

I know it sounds like a strange question. A silly attempt at being macabre. But that was the question that changed everything and opened the door to my new life.

I had been married to Tony for six months when we finally got to take our honeymoon. We both enjoyed the outdoors, but he had talked for years about taking a bigger, more “extreme” trip. The kind of deal where you get dropped off and you don’t see anyone again for two weeks.

I was nervous about it from the start, but he assured me everything would be fine. We had a very clear plan:  Get dropped off ten miles from Whitetooth river, hike the first day and set up camp near the banks. Raft down the second and third day, making camp as we went. After that, we were hiking across the wilderness toward the mountains until we hit national park grounds on day ten and our rendezvous at a ranger station on day twelve.

I pointed out that the longest either of us had been camping before was less than a week, and while we had visited the area before, we had never camped or rafted there. Tony countered by pointing out all the studying up he had done on the area and survival techniques, and when I looked unconvinced, he told me that his parents were getting us a satellite phone for the trip as well. If we got tired of it or ran into a problem, we could always pull the plug on the adventure early.

Pushing my concerns aside, I smiled and nodded.

****

The second day of rafting, we capsized. We had both been rafting before, and the water had been slow and mild the first day. But a night full of rain—and a portion of the river filled with rocks—made the second day hard going from the start. We had been at it for less than an hour when a sudden drop onto a stony shelf less than a foot under the water sent us flying. We were wearing vests and knew to point our feet in the direction the river was taking us, but it was all we could do to stay close to each other as we tried to make our way to a safe spot for both of us to get out of the water.