Round 5: The Story (The Good Life)

"You can't change past history.  But, you can change the future's history by cleansing your soul today.  Forget, forgive, and love passionately."

                                                                    ~Majdi Rabah~

   In the Fall of 2005 Western North Carolina became our home.........and yes, it truly was home for me.  From the moment I arrived I knew that the decision was the right decision.  We lived southwest of Asheville, between the towns of Brevard, Hendersonville, and Etowah.  Marcelle and I found a nice little cabin on the side of a mountain tucked away between Dupont State Forest and Pisgah National Forest.  Our landlords lived on the top of the mountain and had a small pottery studio in a rustic barn close to our home.  It truly was heaven.  If you left our home and crossed the road, you could walk into the wilderness and continue straight for nearly 75 miles without coming across anything but National Forest.  We were surrounded by endless rivahs, waterfalls, mountain biking trails, hiking trails, The Art Loeb, The Balsams, Bent Creek, white squirrels (yes, they are white), Looking Glass Rock, The Pink Beds, bears, and every beautiful landscape you could ever imagine seeing in the mountains of WNC.  The Class III section of the Davidson was a five minute drive from the house.  If you took a walk down our country road, you were greeted by a friendly bull grazing in a sprawling mountain valley.  Our surroundings held a lifetime of adventure and beauty..........adventures and beauty that I was excited to share with the only woman I ever loved.


“I can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though I feel that here in this world there’s no undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else; and I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more.”
~Franz Kafka~

I chose this quote after careful consideration.  If you had X'd out the outside world, all the people, the family bull shit, the Fourteenth Street Whore, my job, and every other distraction of life, I truly believe that there were moments when Marcelle and I were as close to perfect as two people could ever be together.  

  We knew no one, did not have jobs or job prospects when we left RVA, and only had a limited amount of money, but Marcelle and I were confident, and we believed that we could be successful in this paradise.  Within a few weeks we both had jobs and were both on our way to settling into our new home.  I took a job as a Case Manager for a small Mental Health Agency and was able to travel throughout the mountains from school to school working with at-risk youth in the classroom, at home, and in the community, as well as communicating with agencies to help develop these children into successful adults. (as well as developing their parents into successful parents)  Marcelle took a government job with an organization that has since been dissolved.  She worked as a Wilderness Field Instructor for Camp Woodson, a program which took adjudicated youth out of the juvenile detention centers and placed them in a thirty day rehabilitation program through outdoor therapy. This meant that Marcelle would be on trail weekly for anywhere between three and ten days, away from home the entire time.  This schedule is one of the original roots to the downfall of our marriage more than seven years later, but I will come back to that.  We were proud of our accomplishments because we were spending our lives helping others, in a place that we were both quickly growing to love.
   Throughout the first Fall, Winter, and Spring our weekends were spent doing exactly what we had come there to do.........explore the mountains.  We went on hiking trips, tromping through the snow and ice almost every weekend.  We explored the small towns of the area, paddled some, but mostly we spent time with each other.  We never even really met our "Asheville friends" until the following Spring, because we really didn't feel the need to seek out others...........we had each other.


"Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead."
                                                                                   ~Oscar Wilde~ 

   Marcelle loved to garden, and for those of you who know her family or have been to their home, you know why.  Marcelle grew up in a home that had a garden bigger than their house.  Gardening was important to her, and because of this, it was important to me.  So throughout the winter, I built her a garden next to our cabin.  I know what you are thinking..........how hard can it be to build a garden?  Well, in Western North Carolina it is pretty damn hard, because nothing is flat.  I spent the entire Winter and Spring cutting trees from deep in the woods and dragging them up the mountain to create a stair step garden dug into the side of the hills.  Everything I used was natural, and the only pieces of equipment used were a shovel and hand saw.  I built brick steps and a patio, and had multiple raised beds that produced flowers and veggies that looked as though they had been grown on steroids.  (I wish I had pictures of our garden, home, etc.  I hate to call Marcelle out here, but I have to.  When we were separated, Marcelle took all the photos of our past...........all of them.  I was left with only the photo archives in my computer, but a month after we separated my computer was stolen out of my car and I lost every picture I ever had from my past.  I spent months begging Marcelle for pictures, but never received any.  Every memory I ever had of Ashville now exists in my mind and my heart, and I was heartbroken when I lost all the pics.  I now understand why people grab their photo albums as their house burns down around them.  Nothing is more precious than the memories we hold...........anywho, back to the story)  When the garden was completed, it was bad ass!  It is one of the things I am most proud of about my marriage to Marcelle, because it was built out of love.  See, I am not much of a romantic, at least according to her.  She wanted love letters, unique and creative gestures that swept her off her feet, homemade Christmas and Birthday presents that took weeks to make, etc., etc., etc.  Instead, I did the only things I knew to do to be romantic.  During the first year of our time in WNC, I would buy her flowers every Friday at the little Farmers Market on my way home from work.  I did this every week.  In doing so, I learned something..........you can't do the same thing every week to show a woman how much you love them.  If you do, then what was once special becomes expectation.  I hate to say it, but chivalry in our society is dead.................and I have no doubt that women are the ones who killed it. (Chappelle)  If any woman reading this has a problem with what I just wrote, by all means, let me know, because I would LOVE to debate it with you.  Most likely, the only ones who have the balls (pun intended) to argue this one with me are the exact same women who killed chivalry in the first place.  Try appreciating things that are done for you, as opposed to bitching about the things that are not.  You may stop being so pissed off all the time..........my point is this.  The garden was my way of demonstrating to Marcelle how much I loved her.  I don't think she ever realized that, and that really hurt, but I still loved what I had built, because above all else, I had built it for her.


“His attentive treatment of her had nothing to do with the presumption that she was weak, and everything to do with the conviction that she was valuable.”
                                                                            ~Angela N. Blount~

That one is just for you Celle, and it is TRUTH.

   As Spring approached, our itch for whitewater grew and it was time to push some rubber.  We applied with USA Raft for guiding positions, and were hired by a really great guy named Nick.......plus, our addition to any rafting company was a no brainer.  We came with a good amount of experience, were a two for one deal, were both good people with great personalities, and fit in well with all the dirt bag boaters of the area.  It was the first time we had sought out a social circle in the community, and we found a good one.
   We trained on the French Broad and Nolichucky Rivahs, and because we had already been through plenty of whitewater training's and situations together already, we both stood out at the top of the class.........this made our jobs MUCH easier.  When you become a guide in WNC, your rookie season is spent paying your dues.  Rafting customers are broken down into three groups.    Camps (which are given to the rookies), groups of friends and companies, and families and business team building.  The rookies get all the camps for a certain reason..........they never tip and are usually full of shitty children who never listen.  The French Broad took it one step further however, because they had daily trips for the ADHD camp..........yes, we spent our days taking boats full of ADHD kids down whitewater rivahs.  (this is the hardest job I have ever had)  I was proud of myself because I only threw four children in the rivah on purpose throughout the entire summer..........but I did mistakenly refer to a child as a boy for an entire trip, only to find out afterwards that he was in fact a girl.  (I still feel bad about that)  The counselors even painted her fingernails so people would know she was a girl, but I just thought he was weird.  (As I said, I still feel bad about this)  I bring up this one particular camper because he/she was in fact the most difficult customer I have ever had in a boat (besides the one time I had to guide a midget, but I will get to that later).  When the little girl (who I thought was a boy) got into the boat she was off the chain and needed a serious dose of Adderall.........I take that back.  She probably needed something much stronger.  She seemed excited about the trip, but when we entered the first rapid she fell out immediately..........the first rapid is easy Class II.  By the fourth rapid she had fallen out three times and was now freakin' out in the boat making it impossible for me to continue the trip.  Our trip leader was an older guide named Marshall who was one of the hardest rivah guides I have ever come across.  He approached the boat and asked me what was wrong.  I explained the situation and then waited for my TL to respond with a solution.  He looked around the boat, paused for a moment, and then gave me the best solution I have ever heard from a TL.............He said very calmly and non-nonchalantly, "stick her in the guide hole under your feet, keep your foot on her so she doesn't come out again, and let's go dude!".......................this is why I love River Guides.  No time for bull shit, no time for excuses.  Marshall was my boss, so I did what any good employee would do.........listened to him.  I stuffed her in the corner of the guide hole and rested my foot on her and continued my trip.  I am proud to say that I have now guided a whitewater rivah with a kicking and screaming ADHD child under my foot while directing five other ADHD kids to safety.........if a man can do this then he can do almost anything.  


"I'd have a longer attention span if so many things weren't so shiny."
                                                        ~Me, and it's the truth.  Damn you shiny stuff~


   Once the rookies had enough of the ADHD camps they either quite (like all Team WAV kids would do), or they were promoted to the classier customers.  Marcelle and I were NOT quitters.  By the second half of our first summer we no longer needed to deal with the camps, kids, and bull shit.  Instead we were selected for smaller more personalized trips full of smiling families, great businesses with cool bosses that scheduled raft trips for their employees, and retired vacationers with too much money.  The biggest benefit to this was tips...........I once received a $500.00 tip from a boat full of Texas oil tycoons..............but then I pissed off Marcelle by spending half of it on beer and pot for all my fellow guides.............which made me very, very popular.  :)  The other added benefit to being promoted was that our boats were full of interesting people from all over the country who appreciated history, good ole' fashioned rivah stories, quality conversations, and peaceful quiet moments to soak up the glorious scenery that surrounded us every moment of every day.  
   Marcelle and I were very good guides...........I am proud to say that this was because of our experiences guiding low water trips on the James for the previous three seasons.  Buzz once forced me to guide a six person boat at 3.6 feet on the James.  All six participants were at least 250 pounds.  This is next to impossible.  The experience included them demonstrating their laziness to the point that I purposely drove the boat far left at Hollywood, trying to launch over the pin rocks with a 1500 pound boat.  This resulted in our raft going airborne and a forty five minute rescue mission of fat people floating down the James.  One of them even refused to get back in my boat........fine with me.  Less weight for me to deal with.  (Lou witnessed this entire incident, so you can ask him for an in depth description)  The point is, three seasons of low water guiding on The James will make you a very good rubber pusher.
   Both Marcelle and I became very respected by our fellow guides and began to thoroughly enjoy our time together on the rivah.  Additionally, it gave us more options on WNC paddling trips with friends, as well as advancing our knowledge and comfort level on our own expeditions.  I have taken a lot of rivah trips with a lot of people, but my two favorite paddling partners were and always will be Marcelle and Marlow.  I loved being deep in a gorge with that feisty and beautiful girl, and I will always cherish and miss those experiences.
   I, along with the rest of the world, am ADHD, so we shall continue this journey later on.  (I just got tired of writing.  I bet the little boy (I mean girl) that I stepped on would understand)  I have a million stories to be told from the rivah, and I want to tell them all, so be patient if you enjoy reading.  The ending will arrive at some point, but there will be many more tales of whitewater woes and excitement before we get there.  Fact is, I just love to write, even if I am not the best at it..........and to all the haters who only read in search of the gossip, I can't express this enough..........GO AWAY!  Happy Holidays everyone.  Be careful this weekend with the weather, although I am calling it right now.........no snow or ice for RVA, just shitty cold rain. That is why my ass will be in West By God, hopefully with a boat, some cross country skis, and nothing but time! 


"There's no such thing as bad weather, just soft people."

                                              ~Bill Bowerman~


That last quote is TRUTH.  Toughen up RVA!  See ya on the rivah..............hopefully without your foot on an ADHD little boy.......I mean girl.   PEACE



To keep reading the adventure, click here...........................The Healthy Double Life