The Fool and the River;

I am stretched out in bed this fine weekend like a gentleman of leisure who has just concluded a successful campaign against common sense, and my breathing resembles nothing so much as a living bingo cage in which a great many ping-pong balls are rolling about with cheerful independence. Every inhalation sets them spinning; every exhalation lets them rattle against my ribs as if announcing that someone has called “B-12” in the great game of mortality. It is a noisy business, and I find it educational.

Yesterday, I held the delusion that a man of my years could revisit the scenes of his youth. I came home from work in the ordinary way, collected Buddy—who is a dog of excellent character and imperfect judgment—and drove east of Sparks to a small pinnacle of rock that stands just off the interstate, where the Truckee River goes about its business of cutting down mountains one polite grain at a time.

I had not been there in several years. In my younger days the place had been a sort of private cathedral of stone and water, and I had the sentimental notion that a man might return to such a spot and recover a portion of the boy he used to be. Nature, as usual, had other plans, and Nature is not sentimental.

Buddy had never seen this part of the river before. The moment I let him out of the truck, he made for the bank with the single-minded enthusiasm of a missionary arriving in a heathen country. The bank, undermined by the high water, was waiting for just such an opportunity, crumbled under him like a politician’s promise, and into the current he went.

There was no time for reflection. I followed at once, because a man who owns a dog is obliged by some ancient unwritten law to jump into whatever trouble the dog has discovered.

I learned in that instant—without the customary humorous footnotes—that a man past his first bloom is no longer 20 years old, even when the mind continues to file false reports on the subject. The water received me with the impersonal hospitality of a tax collector.

It sucked the air from my lungs in one efficient gulp and, I am convinced, poured a generous helping of itself back into the space thus vacated. I scrambled for the surface with the grace of a sack of potatoes that has suddenly discovered ambition.

Buddy, dog-paddling with more hope than skill, met me halfway. We joined forces within a few seconds, but by then I was already exhausted and discovering new and interesting ways to drown.

As a trained rescue swimmer, I rolled on my back, and Buddy, not being a very big dog, climbed aboard like a small, wet emperor. Together we shot down the river for a thousand feet, bouncing and spinning in the current as if the Truckee had decided to invent a new form of entertainment and we were the principal actors. We fetched up against a riffle of rocks on the Storey County side, where the river, having finished with us, deposited us among the stones like a man returning borrowed tools.

It took me a full minute—perhaps longer—to crawl completely free of the water. Buddy, who recovers from catastrophe with the speed of youth and a short memory, had already scrambled higher up the bank, shaken himself into a respectable appearance, and was waiting for me with the patient expression of a dog who expects his master to produce a miracle and a dry towel.

I clawed my way up after him, shaking so violently that I might have been mistaken for a man inventing a new dance. Once in the sun I stood up—slowly, the way a man stands when he is not sure the legs still belong to him—and began warming what remained of my dignity. Soaked to the skin, of course, the morning air, which had seemed mild enough when I was dry, now took a professional interest in my discomfort.

I found a service road that led to a side road, which in turn bent toward the railroad tracks. We followed it, crossing the river not by the train bridge—which looked as if it preferred the company of locomotives—but a little before it, onto Painted Rock Road.

From there it was a mile and a half east along the interstate to the truck, an hour of walking to accomplish the distance. An hour is a long time when every step reminds a man that his lungs are full of river, his boots are full of water, and his pride is somewhere downstream, tangled in the Aspen.

We came straight home after that, once we managed to point the truck in the correct direction. Since then we have remained indoors like two invalids who have taken a solemn vow against further adventure.

I lie in bed cataloguing the various protests of my chest. Buddy occupies the territory under his blanket beside me, occasionally lifting his head to make certain I have not wandered off again in search of youth.

We are both alive, a small and practical mercy. I am thankful for it in the subdued way a man is thankful not to be charged extra for a lesson he did not request.

Looking back upon the affair, I am struck by the perfect irony of the whole performance. I set out to recover a fragment of my younger self and succeeded only in proving that the younger self is long gone, and that the present self is remarkably poor at swimming with a dog on its chest.

The river, which has no opinion on human nostalgia, did what rivers do: it took what was offered and returned what it did not want. Buddy, for his part, has already forgiven the bank, the current, and me. Dogs are philosophers of the highest order; they never waste time explaining why a thing went wrong when there is still a blanket to lie under and a master to supervise.

Lying here with the bingo cage of my lungs in full operation, I've had time to consider the larger lesson. A man may persuade himself that the years have not touched him, that the body remains a willing servant of the imagination.

The river will correct that persuasion with less time than it takes to say “Storey County.” Nature is not malicious; she is merely exact. She keeps the accounts without favoritism, and when an aged fool presents himself for collection, she collects.

There is humor in this, if one has the breath left to laugh. There is satire enough for a dozen lectures on the vanity of human wishes. And there is irony of the purest water—literally—when rescuing a dog becomes the occasion for discovering that the rescuer himself needs rescue from his own pretensions.

I do not intend to return to that pinnacle of rock anytime soon. The place has served its purpose. It has reminded me that youth is a country one may visit only in memory, and that the passport is no longer valid. Buddy, who has no such philosophical burdens, will no doubt be ready for the next excursion the moment I am.

I, however, shall remain in bed a while longer, listening to the ping-pong balls of my respiration and reflecting that survival, while not glamorous, is a form of wisdom that even a fool may occasionally attain. The river keeps flowing. The interstate keeps roaring. And somewhere east of Sparks, a small bank of earth is already preparing itself for the next dog that comes along, confident and uninstructed, to test the patience of water and the limits of men.