Thoughts On A Given Day

What is it that makes me, a somewhat rational, otherwise perfectly normal man, want to sit down on an inflated tire tube and, balancing on top as best I can, absolutely freezing my bejeebers off, go floating down an ice cold, and I mean “ice cold”, mountain stream? Recently I’ve had cause to ask myself this very question.

“Tubing,” as it is passionately called by anyone with any claim at even moderate expertise – moderate here meaning that you’ve managed to get downstream at least one time without getting thoroughly dunked – is a casual, if slightly hazardous, sport. I say sport; I realize however, that it will probably never be an officially sanctioned and otherwise recognized Olympic competition. Recreational activity is probably a better title.

When you are on a tube, bobbing along on a mountain stream, you are all by your lonesome, just you and the tube, encountering rock after rock, branch after branch, spillway after spillway, and the tube is not nearly large enough to protect you from all of these potential hazards. In other words, you are going to get banged up and possibly totally flipped off your perch. (At which time you make a mad dash to regain your tube before it floats away and leaves you quite embarrassed and possibly totally stranded.)

Sound like fun? Probably not. But it is.

I have been tubing most of my life. Hailing from the Great Smoky Mountains as I do, I had ample opportunity as a teenager to hop on a tube and go laughing and cavorting downstream with my brothers and cousins, and I still enjoy it. Even now, when my fifties are a faint memory, and I’m stepping into that twilight zone of my early sixties, I still enjoy tubing. It’s different, of course, harder, too, on these old bones, but also just plain different.

It’s different because in days past we could just grab an old car tire tube that was lying around the yard, head down to the creek, and go tubing. Odds were we’d be the only ones there except for an occasional angler, swimmer, or nature lover. We’d have a wonderful sense of peace and tranquility even amidst the rushing of the stream and the bashing of the rocks. Now it has become, like most everything else, commercialized. You stop at the entrance to the stream and rent your tube. You pick out your ideal size and decide whether you want a seat attached to it so that you won’t bust the very living daylights out of your rear end.

Experienced tubers (“Like Me,” he said, with an air of boastful pride.) know that there is a particular art to proper tubing, and prefer no seat, though it is harder to find one without a seat already attached these days. The seat takes something away from the sport of it, I suppose. There is required a certain degree of skill in knowing just when to raise your lower quarters up out of the water and avoid those submerged rocks. There is also a bit more of the daredevil feel to it when you know that if you don’t do it just right you are leaving your bottom deck vulnerable to a sudden and shocking surprise. I’ve learned this much about nature. When flesh and bone meet river rock, it’s not the rock that moves, and it’s not the rock that groans or cries out in pain.

The tradeoff is that the tubes without the seat can glide down the stream so much faster, because there’s less friction, drag, and snag potential; and anyone, like me, born with the spirit of competition burning in their veins, knows that being the first one downstream is of critical importance if you are to claim possession of that illusive ‘best ride’.

Of course, those competitive days are over for me. As I mentioned before, it’s harder now. Tube races are for those lightweight youngsters who can glide easily downstream without the least concern for waterfalls and semi submerged boulders. Those of us, like me, in the over sixty crowd, who arrive on scene with our own built in tube (shall we say ‘inner’ tube?); we just want to make it downstream safely, without getting stuck on too many rocks. It’s simply amazing how much easier the tube gets stuck on the rocks when it’s sinking lower in the water. (“The water level is down,” he declared, hoping in vain that somebody would buy that line.)

I say again, tubing is harder now. Used to be you could pick out the best route to go downstream, avoiding the rocks and other assorted hazards, and the only challenge was could you get your tube there before the current pulled you in a different direction. Now, in this modern age of tubing, you can still spot your best route, but trying to get to it is like fighting your way through rush hour traffic. You might have twenty other people struggling to get to that same spot, and, of course, they are younger, lighter, and always faster. So guess who gets stuck on the rocks wallowing like an overturned cockroach, legs and arms waiving frantically as you try to dislodge the tube without actually having to get off of it? Enough said on that subject.

I noted earlier that the water in those mountain streams is cold, and believe me it is. Even the extra layers of blubber carried by those of us on the far side of fifty don’t seem to help too much. We still freeze. It’s so cold it sucks the air right out of you like a rapidly deflating balloon when you first get in. Then you get on your tube, and after a few frigid minutes, your feet become so numb that they don’t even feel cold anymore, and that’s a good thing. But then, of course, you inevitably slap up against that immovable rock, and it splashes you with ice cubes from head to toe, taking your breath away all over again. Eventually it happens so much that your whole body becomes numb; and then you’re just fine, happy as a lark, until you get out of the water.

When you do get out of the water you’d better hope that the sun is shining and the air is warm, because if it isn’t you’ll be shaking like a washing machine stuck in spin cycle. And with each successive ride downstream the cold factor multiplies until finally you’re shivering so frantically that you’d steal the shirt off of your best friend’s back just to get warm. (A dry shirt, of course.)

So just what is it that makes a man like me – over sixty, over weight, my best ride probably years in my past – want to hop on an inflated tire tube and go bobbing and splashing downstream like a waterlogged beetle caught in a storm drain? To put it as simply as I can, it’s still fun. I still feel the joy of God’s creation when I’m standing in or floating down a mountain stream on a rubber tube. God has provided many things in this world for our pleasure. Ice cold mountain streams are certainly among those things. I don’t know at what point I’ll be too old, too fragile, or too heavy to get on a tube and go for one last taste of the gusto, but, until that time comes, get out of my way. I’m headed to where the ice water flows.

Deuteronomy 8:7
NIV
For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills.

Isaiah 43:2
NIV
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.