Just Pack Your Bags and Get on the Bus: Facing the Fear of Drowning, Freezing and Peeing in the Forest

Standing in the middle of Sportsman’s Warehouse, the only sporting goods store in the remote town of Vernal, UT, I am a crumpled mess. I have a Columbia fleece slung over each arm, a bright pink one for me (and I hate pink) and a gray one for my eleven-year-old son. I have chosen them because they are the heaviest weight I can find in a store that has already switched its inventory to summer. In my fist,I am clutching a pair of long johns and a pair of sweats, the wrong size,but the only heavyweight pants in the store.

I gaze, glassy-eyed at a display of wool socks. I am not even sure if I am planning to purchase the socks, or any of the clothing in my hand, but grabbing things haphazardly off the rack makes me feel like I have some control and delays the confrontation of the reality of my situation. That reality is that when the sun comes up, I will be boarding a bus for a four-day backwoods rafting trip along the Green River, a situation for which I have almost no experience and even less control.

An hour before my late night rampage at the only sporting goods store in town, I was arriving with fluttering anticipation at the Don Hatch OARS warehouse for our orientation for our multi-day rafting trip. The group of 25 strangers, spanning all ages, gathered  around a collection of picnic benches for our debriefing before the big day. The cool air is stifled by the polite uncertainty of a group of strangers meeting for the first time and exchanging pleasantries.As a way of breaking the ice, our trip leader asks us to share our past rafting experience. Tongues loosen as people share their experiences of rafting the Grand Canyon or Yampa River or the Hoochiewachiethingama River that I have never even heard of. I nod along and smile, trying to fake some level of experience, but I know my deer in the headlights look exposes any mask of confidence.

As a part of the pre-trip checklist, our unflappable guide informs us that a late season cold front with lows near freezing is forecasted for the first day and night of our trip. She speaks the words as casually as if she was telling us that snacks would be served on the bus. I have carefully prepared for this trip, clicking off every box on the “ultra-prepared” packing list and watching all the videos, but I was preparing for a summer trip. The simple suggestion to be sure to pack a heavy fleece sounds to my irrational ears like the tense opening notes of a horror sequence.

The weight of that tiny feather of information guts me, and the shoots of fear that have been easy to ignore with the distance of a future trip culminate into a ball of dread now that the trip is imminent. The mundane facts, like peeing in the woods and not showering for four days collide with the more weighty reality of falling out of a boat and being swept downstream. The addition of near freezing temperatures gathers the negative energy of all those worries into a huge wave of panic that washes over me.

I stand frozen for a moment, clothes hanging from every appendage, as I replay that moment. A crackling announcement over the loudspeaker reminds me that I only have 15 minutes to make my final selection. I choose the pink and grey fleeces and leave the other unintended choices in a haphazard pile on the corner of one shelf.

Driving back to the hotel, I throw out a lifeline, in the form of an ultimate phone-a-friend and call my husband.

“What’s wrong?” he asked almost immediately.

I smiled wryly, suddenly comforted by the intimacy that would allow him to hear my panic in just a few simple words.

“I’m freaking out,” I admitted without really wanting to.

“I can hear that,” he replied in the calm tone he always uses when I approach the ledge.

“Why are you freaking out?” he asked, opening the flood gate.

It all spilled out like roaring water over a creaking dam- the weather, and the packing, and the thought of peeing in the woods, and spending the week with 25 strangers, the gripping fear that one of us would fall out of the back of the boat, the reality that I would be wet and cold, and the worst, that I would reveal myself to be a fraud.

“You need to stop panicking. Just put your stuff in the dry bag and get on the bus,” he said with a gentle tone that took the edge off the fact that he was not so subtly kicking me in the butt.

Again, I smiled wryly; feeling comforted once more by an intimacy that knew that I needed neither cajoling nor coddling. I made a mental note to include this conversation in my list of ways that my husband is my soul mate. He knew the exact words that I needed to hear, the words that I wanted to tell myself, but were silenced by fear.

I hung up the phone determined to do exactly as he said: pack my bag and get on the bus.

With every waterproof shirt and quick drying pair of pants I stuffed into the bag, I took one step into battle. I wasn’t just packing; I was gearing up for a bi-polar war against two opposing forces-the person that I want to be and the person that I am.

This principle is somewhat like the idea that you have to dress for the job that you want to have. You also have to act like the person you want to be. I want to be brave, adventurous, fearless, so I act like that person.

I act like her, all the while feeling like me- a girl who flips out in the middle of Sportsman’s Warehouse clutching winter wear as though it is a life preserver, a girl who is still giving the side eye to the mechanics of peeing in the woods, a girl who harbors a cold pit of dread that I will fall off the back of the boat and drown. I am still that person, the one who fears, but I am taking my bags and getting on the bus anyway. The journey, I know, will be so much more than the 46 miles downriver.