Rich suggests that we buckle life jackets. Horn Creek Rapid (7–9) coming up, he reminds us. He says something about The Great Wave. For Jenny’s benefit he reviews routine upset procedures: take deep breath when entering rapids; hang on; if boat turns over, get out from under and grab lifeline strung along gunwales; stay on upstream side of boat to avoid being trapped between boat and a hard place; climb up onto bottom of boat as soon as possible; grasp flip fine and assist boatman in righting boat; bail out water; relax and enjoy the view.

“What was that about a great wave?” Renée asks.

“I didn’t say ‘a’ great wave,” says Rich. “I said ‘The Great Wave.’”

More boatman’s hype—short for hyperbole? Dorymen love to melodramatize the peril of the rapids. Makes their idyllic jobs seem important, gives the gullible passenger the illusion that he’s getting his money’s worth.

Comes the now familiar growing roar of uproarious waters. Not far ahead the river plays its usual conjuring trick, seeming to pour over the edge of the known world and disappear down into some kind of grumbling abyss. Above the watery rim I can see hints of a rainbow in the mist, backlit by the westering sun. We’ve seen it before.

What I’ve forgotten is that Horn, unlike the longer rapids above and below, makes its descent abruptly, in one dive, through a constricted channel where the river is squeezed into sudden acceleration. Rich stands up for a last look but sits down quickly. The boat slides down the glassy tongue of the current. Into a yawning mouth. I take a deep breath—involuntarily. “Hang on!” Rich shouts.

The dory plunges down into the watery hole, then up the slope of the standing wave. Water topples upon us, filling the boat in an instant. The force of the river carries us through the first wave and into a second, deeper hole. “One more!” Rich yells, his oars stroking empty air. We dive into a second wave, taller than the first; it hangs there above my head, a rippling, translucent, liquid wall. Our sluggish boat plows through it.

“And one more!” cries Rich. One more indeed. The dory drops into the deepest hole yet. I think I can almost see bedrock bottom. The third wave towers above us. Far above. The Great Wave. Heavily our water-loaded boat, askew, climbs up its face. Never makes it. As the wave hits us from the portside our dory turns over with the grave, solemn, inevitable certainty of disaster. No one says a word as we go under.

Below the surface all is silent and dark. Part of the current, I do not even feel a sense of motion. But before there is really time to think or feel much about anything, the life jacket brings me to the top. The dory, upside down, is only a stroke away. I grab the lifeline. Renée is hanging on beside me. And Rich and Jenny near the stem, Jane on the other side. The wrong side.