Epilogue 2
Levi
Five years later
The sign says WYLDE MOUNTAIN OUTFITTERS in green paint. Underneath, in smaller letters: ADAPTIVE RIVER EXPERIENCES AVAILABLE.
The business is different now. Better. The website she built gets more traffic than every other outfitter in western Montana combined.
The booking system runs so clean that people comment on it in reviews.
The Instagram has twelve thousand followers and she still posts three times a week: real photos of real trips on the real river.
She turned a one-man operation with a stock photo homepage into something Danny would have seen when he drew that napkin sketch at twenty-three.
Danny does see it because Danny is standing in my parking lot.
He’s leaning on his cane, looking at the river. His legs are thinner than they used to be and the brace on his left ankle catches the morning sun.
“You ready?” I ask him.
He looks at me. There’s gray in his beard that wasn’t there before. But his eyes are the same. The eyes that looked at this stretch of river and saw an outfitting company.
“I’ve been ready for eight years,” he says. “You’re the one who took forever.”
The adaptive raft is at the put-in. Marissa’s idea.
She came home one night two years ago, sat at her desk, and said “we should offer adaptive trips.” Just like that.
No preamble. No pitch deck. Just: we should do this.
She’d been researching it for weeks without telling me, the way she researches everything, thoroughly and quietly and with a Google Doc that had fourteen tabs.
The raft has a molded seat with back support and a five-point harness.
Modified paddle grips. Stabilizing pontoons on each side.
We worked with a rehab equipment company in Denver (Danny’s company, which is not a coincidence because nothing Marissa does is a coincidence) to design it.
It took eight months. It’s the only rig like it in Montana.
Danny hasn’t been on the water in eight years. Today he goes back.
Kai is at the raft, checking straps. He nods at Danny. Danny nods back. Two men who don’t need a lot of words.
“Daddy!”
I turn around. Cole is running across the gravel lot with the full commitment of a four-year-old who has not yet learned that gravel is slippery. He’s got my hair and Marissa’s eyes and a volume level that could be either of ours.
Behind him, Marissa is walking from the van with June on her hip. June is two. She has my eyes and Marissa’s determination and she’s currently trying to eat a granola bar and a fistful of blueberry muffin at the same time.
“Cole, slow down,” Marissa calls.
Cole does not slow down. He hits my legs at full speed and I pick him up and he immediately points at the raft.
“I want to go.”
“Not today, bud.”
“WHY.”
“Because you’re four and the river has rules.”
“I don’t like rules.”
“You sound like your mother.”
“I heard that,” Marissa says, arriving. She shifts June to her other hip and kisses me. Quick, warm, the kind of kiss that happens ten times a day and still feels like the first time every time. “Danny, you look good.”
“I look terrified,” Danny says.
“You look good AND terrified. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.” She puts her hand on his arm. “The harness is solid. Kai checked it twice. Levi checked it three times. I checked their checking. It’s safe.”
“She checked our checking,” Kai confirms. This is a long speech for Kai.
Danny looks at the raft. At the river. At the water that changed his life in the worst way and is about to change it again in the best way. His hand tightens on his cane.
“Let’s go,” he says.
I put Cole down. He immediately starts explaining to June (who cannot understand him) that Daddy is going on the river and it’s not fair that he can’t go. June offers him the granola bar. He takes it. This is their whole dynamic.
Marissa catches my arm before I walk to the raft. She looks at me. Her eyes are bright and sure, the same eyes that looked at a struggling business and saw its future. The same eyes that measured a wall for a desk and changed my life with a tape measure.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey, trouble.”
“Bring him home safe.”
“Always.”
She kisses me again. Cole is already climbing onto my desk. June is collecting fistfuls of gravel. Marissa goes to handle both of these situations with the calm efficiency of a woman who has managed more complicated logistics than two small humans (though not by much).
I walk to the raft. Danny is in the adaptive seat. Kai has the harness buckled. The river is running clean, the same way it’s always run. The same water. The same canyon. The same rapids I’ve guided a thousand times.
“Forward paddle on my call,” I say.
Danny picks up the modified grip. His hands are different than they were.
The grip is different. But his face when he feels the current, when the water takes the raft and the canyon opens up and the river says “welcome back,” his face is the one I remember from when we were twenty-three and stupid and building something out of nothing on a napkin sketch and a dream.
“Forward paddle,” I call.
We move.
The river takes us. The canyon walls rise.
The sun is on the water. Danny is in the raft and Kai is in the kayak and I’m at the stern with my paddle and the mountain is all around us, the mountain that gave me everything I have.
A business. A partner. A wife who showed up with a clipboard and never left.
A boy named after the man sitting in front of me.
A two-year-old girl who could ask me for the moon and I’d give it to her.
The rapid is ahead. I can hear it building.
“Ready?” I call.
Danny tightens his grip. Kai moves into position. The water picks up.
“Ready,” Danny says.
We paddle forward. The river takes us in.
~~~