The Free Radical

The energy was mostly back to normal. The only real difference was that things were a lot quieter. Most of the usual culprits checked in with us– Eagle and Raven– but they just did silent flyovers, whereas in recent weeks they had been extremely vocal. Their silence felt respectful.

The good news: the one-year-old girl who was airlifted to the Calgary Children’s Hospital after being spilled from an inflatable dinghy on Dutch Creek on Wednesday is expected to make a full recovery. She had been admitted in critical condition, having difficulty breathing during transport. Children are remarkably resilient!

The bad news: there’s no cure for stupidity. I’m sorry, I feel particularly qualified to speak on this because I’ve demonstrated my own stupidity in regard to Dutch Creek previously. You can read an entire novella I authored last year detailing What Happened That Day, when a very good friend of mine died in Dutch Creek one sunny May afternoon. (It’s the last article in the Newsletter and continues in four parts.)

The family involved in Wednesday’s incident may still be facing charges as the RCMP are consulting with crown prosecutors. I can understand their reasoning, but I don’t think that criminalizing stupidity serves much of a positive outcome. Why do I insist on using the word “stupid”?

I took these pictures yesterday, so these are the current conditions of the river very near to where the incident occurred. Granted, the side tributary where Lhasa is carrying her stick is navigable, but check out the main channel where the waves are crashing into the cliff behind. Now, use your imagination to picture a young mother climbing aboard a dinghy with her three-month old infant in her arms along with her one-year-old daughter… and going for an afternoon “float.”

After reading the initial news articles, I checked out some of the comments, and predictably, nearly everyone was in agreement that this was the height of stupidity. There was one dissenting voice who came to the defence of this family saying “We’ve done this float a hundred times before!” Not during high water, you haven’t!

How do I know that? Because I have. Way back when I was 16, I went out with a few of my friends in an inflatable dinghy and rafted the very same river during the peak of the runoff. In the first minute of the trip, the bottom fell out of the boat. No problem; we straddled the sides and continued on our way. Soon we encountered a tree jutting out across the surface of the river and we were powerless to avoid it. All of us bailed right before impact– all but one, that is. Neil was pinned against the tree across his stomach with the boat holding him fast from behind half submerged beneath the tree. We yelled at him to push himself under so that he would emerge on the other side. He wasn’t very keen on our suggestion! Fortunately, one side of the dinghy popped, and the half-deflated raft got pushed under the tree and continued down the river. We survived… barely.

So what I’m saying here is that maybe you’ve “floated” Dutch Creek once during high water… but when it was over, you hauled your coughing and sputtering ass out on shore and definitely said to yourself “Holy shit! We’re lucky to still be alive. I’ll never do that again!” And I haven’t, and I won’t!

Even when we were sixteen and typically stupid, we would never have even considered taking children with us, let alone two infants! I’ll trust that a valuable lesson was learned on Wednesday and we’ll leave it at that. I wish all the best to the family involved and I really wish I’d have seen you that day before you jumped into the raging chaos that is Dutch Creek at this time of year. I have the stories that will penetrate even the dimmest wit… because, clearly, I was once that stupid myself.