A Close Call
A day I will never forget
“Whee,” I yelled as I pushed us off from the top of the steep bank where our little dirt road ended. That road stopped just before the riverbank plunged into the dry riverbed of the Rillito River. Sara, my best friend and little sister sat in front of me as if we were on a sled in the snow. Our sled consisted of a long, low heavy cardboard box that had held large sheets of paper. Our father had given it to us to play with. Daddy, as we called him, was a hand-silk-screen printer and one of the best. So we often had access to boxes and cut off remainders of paper.
Sara, her short blond hair blowing in the blissfully cooling wind caused by our rapid descent down the riverbank, shrieked a bit and began laughing. She was a sunny kid, full of spunk, and always fun to play with. We were both in little one-piece sun suits of cotton, hers of a faded and now grubby white and pink flower print and mine of a slightly less faded but just as grubby white and red print of big polka dots. We had left our cheap plastic flip-flop thongs at the top of the bank because climbing back up the sandy bank was too hard wearing them. Besides, our feet were pretty tough by this time of the summer when we had been walking barefoot as much as we could. We both preferred bare feet at this point in our lives.
We were fairly tanned by this time too, which hid some of the dust on our faces, arms, legs and feet. Both of us had sun-bleached hair and hazel eyes. I was a few years older but small for my age of around 9 or 10 so I seemed closer to Sara’s age. In the summer we played together most of the time. Much of that play centered in the riverbed.
There was a small island, or at least you could call it an island when there was enough water in the river to surround it. That bit of land stood close to the bank nearest to our sunbaked adobe house — just one house up the road from the river.
The island was perfect for many of our games. A lovely Desert Willow shrubby tree grew on our side and provided a bit of shade as well as the beauty of its orchid-like lilac and purple flowers, which we loved to pick. Often we would pull them from their fuzzy sepals, check that there weren’t any bugs in them and then suck the bits of sweet nectar still residing at their thin tubular bases. Then, if we had a jar of water with us to keep us from getting parched, we floated the blossoms in the water to “make it pretty”.
Other flowering plants grew on the island including several small yellow or purple- blossomed ones we called Bladder Pod and Crane’s Beak. The Bladder Pod seedpods made a delicate little rattle once they dried out. And we used to make “fairy scissors” from the long stiletto-shaped seeds of the Crane’s Beak. Thankfully, I don’t remember any of the horrible goat-head stickers growing there. They were very painful to step on and had a bit of plant poison on their thorn tips, which made their punctures especially aggravating.
Some days we spent hours on this usually landlocked island playing house or building little altars where we would leave pretty stones and other natural treasures as offerings to our childish understanding of the Divinity. It also provided the site of many of our pioneer and American Indian games. For me, it often proved a refuge when I needed a place away from everyone else.
On days when the river had run, we played in the clay left in pockets by the water. We fashioned bowls and sometimes sculptures from the dark brown, slimy stuff. On those days, Mama had us hose ourselves off before coming back into the house, as we would be covered with the stuff, often with a frosting of sand crusted over it. The water fights that often erupted between us as we cleaned up were fun and cooling after much of the day in the hot sun.
This day I’m remembering, we had been sliding down the riverbank and scrambling back up it. And we dragged the paper box back up behind us. Our play had gone on for a long time.
The heat and lack of a good breeze made us lazy. The sunlight filled our vision with its luminous brightness. It shone in our hair and made it glisten. And its dry heat made us thirsty.
The slight breeze that did blow held no real coolness. There were rain clouds over the mountains but no rain threatened close to us.
Every once in awhile a Mourning Dove would call from the island’s Desert Willow into the hot air, filling it with her sweet sad song. A few lizards with their little blue throat patches watched our play from a safe distance. They must have wondered at all the commotion in their normally calm light beige world.
Down and up again we went shrieking, laughing and making quite a racket. We both had started to tire but we didn’t want to stop our play. The speed exhilarated us. Climbing back up with our strong young limbs made us feel almost invincible.
It all gave us too much joy to stop!
We had just landed with a bump at the bottom of the bank for the 30th time or so when I caught a whiff of an unmistakable smell — moisture on dry desert wash sands. Startled, I silenced and Sara looked at me wondering. Then we could hear the ominous rumble of the tall dark wall of water that leads a flash flood!
Neither of us hesitated. We started to scramble up the bank, leaving the box to fend for itself.
In a panic, I dug my hands and feet into the bank and finally reached the top. I turned around and Sara had almost made it up herself but happily grabbed my extended hand.
The sweat poured off both of us, as much from fear as physical strain. We weakly sank down onto the bank and watched the chocolate mousse waters rush past us, filling the area we had vacated just in time. That wall of water, filled with dead tree limbs, cactus pads, and other debris carried away the paper box and tore at the edges of the island.
It could have easily carried us away too — rolling us over and over as our heads struck river rocks. Eventually, it would have left us badly injured or even dead after burying us in sand, mud, clay and debris.
I remember that as one of the most frightening experiences I had as a child. The smell of a wet summer wash or riverbed will often bring it flooding back to me.
I don’t recall, we might not have told our parents about our close call for fear of their forbidding us from playing in the river during the late summer monsoon season. However, we had learned our lesson and became much more careful when thunderhead clouds built up anywhere visible.
Now when I think about what made me stop to notice that telltale smell and then listen for the flash flood’s rumble, I’m certain that the Divinity we made our childish offerings to intervened to save us. Nothing else makes sense to me, knowing how much fun the sliding was and how inattentive we had become. In any case, I’m thankful to have lived to share this story.
