THE RECORD

November 29, 1995

BACK TO THE EGG

Suzanne Trevis

I took the kids for a walk down to the lower Heber River bridge the other week to get a look at the river rushing way up over the rocks. I can still remember when this road was gravel, back before they invented softball and all us folks in the trailer park lived on "the wrong side of the river".

We watched huge logs come swirling under the bridge only to plunge off the waterfall created as the river rose above the rocks. And had a great discussion, as only five and nine year olds can, on the possibility of the water getting high enough to knock out the footbridge. This was enough to get my youngest (sorry, not the youngest anymore) middle daughter, quite upset with possibilities later in the day, but made for great conversation at the time.

We talked quite a bit about the pros and cons of swimming, playing in or just visiting the river (in better weather) and I stressed (threatened) yet again about how they were NOT to come down here without their father or myself.

The eldest started asking how old I was when I started swimming in the river and I had to tell her I'd only actually swum in the Heber once on a dare from my brother, then caught myself just in time as I realized that I couldn't have been any older than twelve which would have made my brother only nine. I hate when they do that.

Thinking back I don't know how I ended up at the river with him in the first place, unless I was very, very hard up for something to do. And I should have known better than to get sucked into any kind of discussion with him 'cause being a little brother he always knew the right buttons to push.

Anyway there we were at the Deep Hole with who knows how many other people stretched out on rocks, soaking up the sun. I should have stuck to soaking in sun myself. But of course we'd got into this thing and before I knew it he was going on at me about being scared to jump in. I told him I wasn't scared I just didn't like the cold. "It's not that cold" he says. I should have remembered that everything is relative and my brother has always been extremely thick-skinned.

I stood at the edge of the rock for some time. He'd convinced me it wasn't that cold but I do have a problem with heights. Never having jumped off anything higher than the floats at Antler Lake it took some time to screw up the courage. But I finally took a deep breath and stepped off.

It's the closest I've ever come to being totally convinced I was going to die. It was so cold I couldn't breathe. I could reach out my hand and touch the rock I'd just jumped off but there was no way I could climb out, and the thought of actually swimming around the rock or, worse yet, across the short stretch to the more shallow rocks on the other side. I couldn't breath, moving was totally out of the question.

I'm still not real clear on how I did get out, I think maybe, after they stopped laughing and realized there really was something wrong, they all helped me climb out. But I do know it was my first, last and only excursion into the Heber.

Peppercorn became a favoured swimming hole by the time I hit high school and while it is also cold it's not that absolute, bone freezing, breathe stealing, paralyzing cold of the other. It still amazes me each summer to watch people swimming there, worse yet to jump off the bridge into the river (a double whammy, being that far up). I guess now I'll have to start worrying about my own. What do those other parents do? Or is ignorance in this case more of a blessing?