Early one Saturday morning, I found myself in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia driving an old pickup truck heavily laden with outdoor equipment and college friends. I had been commissioned to drop them off, an hour away, in the New River. My friends were going white water rafting and needed someone dependable to collect them downstream. The collection spot – in W. Virginia - was an informal campsite on a lazy bend where the river was wide and water just three feet deep. We had camped at that spot previously and I knew all the short cuts to get there. I definitely did not earn the commission but accepted it as the bribe was that I had the most dependable mountain driving skills necessary for those back roads.
The New River is a misnomer. It is actually the oldest river in N. America. The other fancy fact is that it flows north. Apart from the Nile, I did not know then of any river that flowed north. The “A” plan of my college friends was to go to the launch site, inflate a raft, wait for a bunch of (c)rafts with females to float by and then join the white water regatta. The white water part of the jaunt would take just 30 minutes but the drive to the collection spot would take me three times as long.
Nevertheless, I was not worried about arriving late as when I dropped the crew, they were sober and they all had excellent tastes when not possessed by spirits. I knew that the crew would only start their journey when something special went by. The launch spot had a carnival blast to it as there were at least 300 youths, in the most colourful of swimming costumes, trying to get into the water at the same time. When I left the crew, they were standing in line to prove to the game rangers that they all had life jackets.
On return to the vehicle - to start what I thought would be a leisurely drive to the pickup spot - I noticed that the fuel gauge was still showing a full tank. A quick physical inspection of the tank confirmed that the vehicle was running on fumes. To make a long story short, I was told to take the bags of the aluminum cans by the park dump and sell them at the nearby recycling center. Those cans brought in $12.30 which was more than the cost of a full tank of fuel then.
As I was driving into the collection spot two and a half hours later, I saw what looked like the raft that my friends were using - floating past the landing area. The raft was upside down and there was no one in the surrounding waters. An hour passed and there was no signs of anyone. I set up the tents and yet another hour passed. Just as I was starting to get real worried, a police SUV drove in. The cop asked me if I noticed anything unusual, so I told her my predicament. She reassured me that if the crew had life jackets, there was nothing to worry about.
The sun began to set over the blue mountains and the skies started morphing into purple when I spied someone with an orange life jacket floating down the river. Then I saw the person steering towards me. Forty feet from the shore she stood up in knee high water and stepped, slowly - a la a James Bond movie - out of the water. The woman was 6ft plus and was wearing a one piece swimsuit which was the same colour as her skin. The water droplets on her caught and reflected the setting sun light and made her skin glisten. Then she delicately lifted her head back and slowly waved off a few drops from her shoulder length hair. As she coolly removed her life-jacket, I noticed that she has a perfect pair of – well, since this is a family channel – warm, brown eyes.
My breath was taken away and I was so transfixed by this beauty that for a moment I could not figure out if she was walking in the water or on it! As she slowly moved towards me, I observed that wrapped around her right wrist was the swirly plastic cord that fishermen use to treadle fish on. I thought to myself that if this woman has a fish on it, I would have to marry her. Just then, the woman lifted the stringer and showed me three large wiggling fish.
My blood drained to my feet, so relieved that I had escaped on a technicality. As I remained speechless and frozen in place by this creature, she gave me a winsome smile and said, “Mervyn Lobo, your friends will be here before long.” That sentence almost knocked me to the floor. Where did she know me from? Was this the unusual sighting the cop was talking about? Was the fakelore about mountain river women real?
The woman must have sensed my uneasiness and disclosed that she had met my friends at a cove upstream and that they were all sitting on a log, unable to leave because of the jelly i.e. someone had an endless supply of jelly shots there.
What the mountain river woman did next, completely floored me. She asked for a knife and proceeded to descale and gut the fish. I almost lost my sanity then and was thinking of giving her a second chance at the great prize - me. She, on the other hand, was calm and when she was done with the gutting, handed me the fish and said it was for the jelly eaters who were sure to arrive hungry.
Her next move knocked me out for the count of nine. She cut open the fish stomachs, removed stuff and discarded what was left into the river. Then she showed me what she had found - two golden rings.
I was later informed that when there is a break up in those parts, bubba’s usually go fishing and throw their now useless shinning rings into the river. Fish stomachs in the area are a good source of gold rings.
The cop car returned and whisked away the woman. I gave a big sigh of relief, happy about my miraculous escape. I was so sure then that I had seen the last of the women, but I was mistaken. I actually met both at the finish line for a local marathon a few months later. The mountain river woman was the local Fire Chief and invited me to ride in the fire engine that led the parade for the winner of the marathon - who was a fellow student from Tanzania.
The rest of the marathon story is for another day.
Mervyn
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