A Seattle IANDS Near-Death Experience Story

Baptism of White Water
by David Beckman

It was a hot, cloudless mid-July day in 1988, and a half-dozen friends and I were anxious to get on the river. There is no better place in the country to pursue a passion for white water than in the South Fork of Idaho’s Payette River. This stretch of the river is world-famous among white water enthusiasts for its class-five rapids (on a scale of six), and of these, a stretch of the river called Staircase is arguably the most challenging—and dangerous. Aptly named, Staircase is called a drop-and-pool rapid because it drops dramatically like giant stair steps between steep canyon walls for about a quarter of a mile.

I had just turned 33 a few weeks before, and was ready for a new adventure, a new adrenaline rush. I felt I was at my peak physically. I was a part-time fitness instructor at a Boise health club and I usually ran at least one half-marathon each season. The year before, a white-water rafting trip down class 3 and 4 rapids in another section of the Payette had whetted my appetite for bigger challenges.

Before sunrise Saturday, July 16, we loaded our gear into our guide’s pickup truck and drove north from Boise. Phil is a Boise lawyer who spends his spare time searching for new white-water challenges. His raft and trailer still bore the dried red mud of the Colorado River where he had navigated its rapids just a couple of weeks before. He and his legal partner, Breck, an expert kayaker, were to be our guides. During the rafting season, the Payette’s South Fork is considered a challenge even for veterans, but in July the level of water and the speed of its flow were considered especially dicey.

We put in and floated through a variety of water for about three or four hours. Breck floated several yards ahead of us, leading us though the channels, constantly gauging the risks of navigation.

I sat in the front of the raft where I could feel the full effect as we pounded through the white water. I wasn’t worried about my safety. In fact, I felt bullet-proof—I just knew nothing would happen to me. In calmer water, I would leap over the side and swim under the raft to show off for my friends. Breck and Phil so confidently navigated the raft though the more difficult stretches of the river that none of the rest of us ever felt a sense that we were at risk. Occasionally, Breck paddled ahead to scout the next stretch of rapids, looking for the best line to navigate them.

A few times, we even stopped while both considered the risk. To their credit, they were cautious. A few months before, on a kayaking trip to Mexico, one of the kayakers in Breck’s party overturned in some rapids and drowned. And people died in the Payette every year.

After we stopped for lunch, one of the guys wanted to ride on the front of the raft for a while, so I traded place with him and moved to the rear of the raft. As we hit rougher water I regretted giving up my position. The most challenging white water, Staircase, was just ahead.

Breck paddled ahead about a hundred yards and was stopped at some rocks where we caught up to him. He told Phil to pull off to the right bank so they could talk. Just ahead I could see the river drop off suddenly. I couldn’t hear much of the conversation because of the roar of the water ahead, even though Phil and Breck were only a few feet away. But judging by Breck’s concerned look I could guess the gist of it.

Then Breck shouted to the rest of us. “The water’s too rough up ahead. There’s no shame in portaging the raft around (Staircase).”

I yelled back, “You guys are (a term that disparaged their manhood)! We can do this! Let’s go for it!” We looked at each other for a few moments, and then without saying anything more, we shoved the raft back into the current.

As we took the first drop, we were almost immediately in trouble. The flow dropped steeply and bashed into a large round boulder that jutted up from the surface about eight- to 10-feet where it dully cleaved the current. I could feel the raft almost free-fall. Phil tried to guide the raft into the gentler channel to the right, but we were pulled too far to the left. The raft struck the boulder at the bottom of the drop, and then the force of current drove the rear of the raft vertically up the rock face. The guy in the front of me fell backward, knocking me out of the raft and into the water.

I remember watching my legs and then feet follow the rest of my body down below the surface as though the pace of time had slowed and marked itself with heartbeats. It was silent and growing darker and I expected that at any moment my descent would slow and the buoyancy of my life jacket would push me back toward the surface. At first I thought about how macho it would be to be able to brag that I had taken Staircase in nothing more than a life preserver, but that thought passed in a heartbeat. With the next heartbeat I knew I was in trouble.

I’d been trained to assume the “river position” if I ever fell out of a raft in white water: you roll onto your back, keep your feet and face downstream, lay back, and ride it out. If you go under, bring your elbows up along the side of your head to protect it from banging it against the rocks. It is useless to try to swim out of it, the force of the water is far too powerful to resist. But at all costs remain as horizontal as possible. If you put your feet down, you can become “postage stamped” to the next submerged rock or log, with tons of water pressing you against it. But another danger is the nature of drop-and-pool rapids: They are a series of small waterfalls, and as the water cascades over the falls, the current at the bottom rolls like a vertical eddy, spinning you until you lose your sense of up or down. The river holds you there until it spits you out over the next falls, and the process repeats itself. Veteran river guides call it being “Maytaged.”

I was helpless to do anything but go were the water would take me. I felt panic roll up my throat until I thought it would choke me, but I willed it back down. I knew my only chance was to keep my composure and think. As I was tossed over a waterfall, the force of the water held me and rolled me along the dark river bottom, bashing me into boulders I couldn’t see. I hit them with such force, it was like being blindfolded and beaten with a baseball bat, not knowing from where the next blow would come. I wanted to scream with pain but I couldn’t—I couldn’t let go of what little air I had until the current released me from the bottom and tossed me over the next waterfall. When I began to see daylight and hear the roar of the water, I knew I was about to be propelled to the surface. When I hit the foam, I exploded my used air, learning quickly that I had only a moment to gasp my lungs full of air before I repeated the cycle. I wasn’t getting enough, though, and I was being beaten badly. Once, I remember breaking the surface and seeing the raft about thirty yards downstream. I saw the faces of my friends, gray with dread, searching for me. All they could do is watch me break the surface from time to time.

I grew weak quickly from the beating and from breathing too little air. I never gave up believing I could make it until the last time I remember being tossed out of the undercurrent. I tried to raise my left arm to begin to stroke to the surface, but it wouldn’t move. Neither would my right. I tried to kick my feet but I couldn’t move them, either. I could feel my body begin to shut down. It was then that I knew it was over. I knew I was going to die.

It didn’t take long. The last thing I remember thinking as my life faded was that despite all I had been through, I was determined not to surrender my last bit of air and take water into my lungs while I was still conscious. I was determined to fight with whatever I had left, that I would not surrender. Then I felt myself go.

The next moment I became aware that I was not in my body, and that the pain from the beating was gone (this part is very hard to describe accurately because there are no words in our vernacular that come very close to relate the experience). I was in a calm, dark place, not the least bit foreboding, but comfortable, very comfortable. Juxtaposed against the violence I had just experienced, I felt confused. Then I sensed the countenance of a being next to me, and this huge wave of love washed over and enveloped me. The only way I can come close to describing it is to imagine coming home to be greeted by someone, maybe a family member, who loves you unconditionally. Multiply that feeling by a factor of 1,000 or 10,000 or more. That is what it felt like. He said to me (I don’t know for sure, but for some reason my feeling is that the being was male), “It’s all right to let go.” It was not spoken in a voice as we think of one, but rather a voice I heard in my mind—a very clear, kind, gentle voice. And I knew with absolute clarity what he meant. The best I can explain it is he meant that struggling wasn’t necessary any longer, that it was now time to let myself move on to whatever was coming.

What came was a life review. There was no sense of time or space. I viewed events like they occurred in real time, but in layers, instantaneously—from my perspective as I viewed it during my life; from the perspective of those I interacted with; and from a sort of omniscient view. There were events I was profoundly ashamed of, and when I turned my attention to the being to look for a reaction, there was no judgment, only unconditional love. I knew then that if or when there was to be judgment, then I, as a divine spiritual being, would judge myself.

I relived the emotional pain of events such as a divorce that occurred years earlier, and wondered why that relationship, with all of its upheavals, had to happen. The answer, complete and satisfying, came instantly. Everything that happened in my life happened for a reason, and it all made perfect sense. I then asked every question I could think of, every unanswered question I ever had in my life, and as fast as I could ask them, they were answered, again, fully and completely. Answers poured into me. It was like all these “Oh yeah!” and “Yes, of course!” responses flashed around me like thousands of flash bulbs going off.

Our only purpose, I learned, is to advance, to grow spiritually. Coming to Earth is the fastest, although most difficult, way to do this. This brought new meanings to me of the teachings of Jesus Christ, or Buddha, Mohammed, and other supremely evolved beings.

I learned so many things, but the most significant was that love is the key to all things, that it is the power of the universe—God’s power, if you will. The power of love is the key aspect we all come here to learn, and to use to overcome adversities.

Judgment of others is simply wrong-headed. We all came here to accomplish different things, and to those ends we came to a variety of different circumstances in order to facilitate our learning and accomplishment. So if I spend time judging others, for example, I deflect the focus away from the things I came here to learn and do.

I came to realize that this lifetime was one of many I’d had before. I came this time to accomplish things that I had determined before I was born. I realized that it was perfectly fine for me to proceed on, but I also knew that if I did not go back to my current life, that I would have to come back to attempt to accomplish those things in another life—I viewed it much the same as having to repeat a grade in school. So far, in this life, it appeared to me that I’d been a poor student. I was very clear about the things I came to do, but I knew I wouldn’t be allowed to remember those things if I went back—those things were there for me to learn (or more accurately relearn) while here on Earth.

I was on a spiritual precipice; I was presented with a choice and I had to make a decision. I didn’t want to go back, but I knew it was the best choice for me. As soon I decided, I was back in my body, floating limply down the river. The raft was beached quite a ways downstream, and Breck was floating behind some rocks in an eddy, searching for me. As I floated past him I saw his hands reach into the water and grab the straps of my life jacket and jerk my upper body above the surface. Above the roar of the water he shook me and yelled at me to breathe. He kept yelling and shaking me until I was fully conscious, and he managed to tow me downstream to shore. I was bruised, gashed, bleeding, hypothermic and struggling to maintain consciousness. I felt like I’d been run over by a bus. I was also in shock.

I healed very quickly from my injuries. Nothing was broken. My friends said the last time I went under they lost sight of me for about three minutes, but incredibly, I did not inhale water. I was in sensory overload, and it took me a long time to assimilate what had happened to me. But one thing I knew for sure, my old life didn’t fit me anymore, and a new one was just beginning.

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