This is a story of a day trip on the cool Salt River which spills out of the high mountains to the east of the scorching Valley of the Sun, Phoenix, Arizona.
Two decades had passed since the last time we spoke in person. Little might Carla have known how enlivened my spirit became with our meeting on the Salt in late July of 2012.
Beginnings
We were freshmen at college, just a month into the first semester at Northern Arizona University, and we fell in love. It was 1985.
We met on the 4th floor of my dormitory, Sechrist Hall at a casual party in September. Carla’s keen and happy green eyes charmed me. Her fresh face and vibrant energy captured me. We started dating almost immediately.
(Overlooking the Grand Canyon, November, 1985)
Living away from our parents’ homes for the first time, Carla is the first woman I ever loved. I was committed to our relationship.
As young adults in college, those couple of years we shared were exciting, active, and passionate; sweethearts entering the world of adulthood hand-in-hand.
We shared friendships with our dormitory mates, we studied together in the campus library, and attended forest parties in the snowy winter. On holidays and during summers we visited one another’s families in Phoenix and Tucson. We flew together a couple times in my uncle’s Beechcraft Bonanza. We hiked in deserts, in mountains, and with family and friends down the Havasupai Trail, camping at Havasu Falls inside the Grand Canyon. We toured 'la frontera' in Nogales, Mexico, and spent time on the beach in San Diego. We held hands. We made love. And we were best friends.
I became lost as 1987 turned to 1988. Looking back now, I was lacking definition and direction. There was no motivation for an intellectual or professional goal. The missing sense of purpose in my studies led unsurprisingly to a light depression. I felt like dead weight.
Carla wasn’t lost. She seemed intent and focused. Even then I recognized that.
Carla may have been relieved, but separating from her was painful. The walk home from her apartment was long, dark, and lonely. Each torturous step away from her remains clear in memory. In that world and in that time there seemed no other option. Two and a half decades have not erased the memory of the torment; the decision to break up for both Carla’s good, and mine.
Since then, Sugarloaf’s hit song 'Green-Eyed Lady' transports me to the better memories of those two years we spent together.
In the early 90’s, as I neared completion on a degree at Arizona State University, I was able to find and visit Carla for a short lunch on the coast in Los Angeles. She was already a CPA and had moved to southern California. That lunch was brief and unfulfilling, but I was grateful to have had the opportunity to be so near my former best friend and lover.
Sometime after my divorce a decade later, I attempted to locate her again. I even tried to reach out to her mother Genie in Tucson. A hand-delivered letter to what I remembered was a historical family-owned home in downtown Tucson was not enough. There was no one home and there was no response to the letter I left wedged in the door.
Many years passed. In a sign of the times, she found me on social media in 2009.
”Hi Tim. This is Carla. Remember me?”
“Haha. Do I remember you?! Hell, I LOVED you, Carla! I can never forget you.”
That greeting from her was our first communication in roughly 17 years. Even though it was online, I was so overjoyed we reconnected that I told everyone who cared about me and some who didn’t.
Soon, Carla and I shared memories of exploits together and caught up with one another’s current lives. Sometimes we even exchanged photos that were taken so long ago. It saddened me to hear her mother had passed away in the mid 1990s. Genie was a wonderful and kind woman to me.
Carla was still in California, the mother of two daughters.
Why did she search me out on social media? Moments of nostalgia can do that. Or maybe she was driven by something deeper; something more personal.
A couple more years passed when Carla informed me she’d be in nearby Scottsdale with her teenage girls. She asked me what I thought the chances were that we’d be able to see one another while she was in Scottsdale.
“If you get to Scottsdale and the creek don’t rise, it’s a certainty,” I told her.
“Those are good odds! :),” she replied. The creeks almost never rise in the arid Valley of the Sun.
The River
Carla wanted to take her daughters tubing down the Salt River. Her idea!
“Would you and your nephew and niece like to join us?,” she inquired. ‘This is so incredible,’ I thought. “Absolutely, Carla, that would be excellent.”
‘Unbelievable! God must be granting me some kind of gift.’ I reasoned.
Nephew Ty couldn’t make it, so my niece, Jalin, invited a girlfriend along.
Jalin, Jenny and I met Carla, Micaela, and McKenna at the convenience store just outside of Fountain Hills, only 25 minutes from where the three were staying in Scottsdale. She pulled up in a big black pick-up truck. A hug, kiss on the cheek, and handshakes later, we boogied on down to the river in a convoy.
May the delight I felt in seeing her on that day never escape me!
_____________________________
I mentioned to Dave, a long-time friend, how Carla had exhilarated me.
Dave countered, “Why do you say that? How could seeing an old girlfriend be so meaningful?” I think he sought to provoke an explanation about which he had no understanding. Dave was seventeen years into a marriage with his high school sweetheart. Maybe he needed to hear me explain affections to which he couldn't relate. A lost truelove.
I responded that I realized that what was good for us when were in love at 18, 19, and 20 years old must also be remembered by Carla like that. That we both remembered those same good times. With her suggestion to spend a day together, Carla was invoking those good times; those good memories.
The lingering bitter-sweet memories of our breakup helped me grasp this rare opportunity. The unexpected opportunity to spend a bit of time with Carla was phenomenal. Carla was a thrilling woman - still! We had once been ‘one.’ Now she was being generous enough to open a window into her most beloved possession, her family and her current life.
That was an invigorating moment — voicing to Dave that I thought I was mostly doing good for her — and that Carla also remembered it that way. Now, an asterisk, or a footnote was to be added to our former story.
As my mother later put it, “the fact that Carla wanted to do something with you means so much by itself. Not many people do that kind of thing. It’s just not common. After all the years, she still has a warm spot in her heart for you.”
______________________________
As Jalin, her friend and I waited to meet up with the California girls at the convenience store, I offered some food for thought. As far as Jalin and Jenny knew, we were going tubing with “a friend and her two daughters.” Jalin was aware that my loving relationships were few and held close to my chest, and she was no doubt wondering who this woman, Carla, was.
“Girls, do you know who we’re waiting for? Do you girls know what this tubing trip is all about?,” I asked. They didn’t know. Together they turned to me with curiosity in their eyes. “This is the first woman I ever loved. She’s coming in here to meet us right now!”
They lit up all cute-like, saying “oooh, ahhh.” Smiling, the daughter I never had, Jalin, was clearly excited for me. She and Jenny slunk blithely back into their seats.
“You know” I said, “it’s been so many years ... maybe this could be a lesson for you. If you try your best to be as responsible and mature as you can in the many relationships you’ll have with people — you know — they can last! They can be good relationships for a long time — maybe forever.”
Sheepish smiles and enthusiasm radiated from the girls through the car.
_________________________________
Later, while we floated together down the river, Carla told me her daughters had asked, “Who is this guy, Tim, we’re going to tube with, Mom?”
“We were friends a long time ago, in college. He’s a really nice southern gentleman.”
That’s the first time I’d heard myself being likened to a southern gentleman! I’m thankful for that. We all know worse things have been said about former boyfriends and lovers.
Maybe that was Carla's justification of her steadfast act of spending an afternoon with someone only she knew as her first college love.
We were trying to pass to the four girls who accompanied us something about truth and morality, about positive human relations; about devotion. Afflicted by mismatched circumstances distant in time, we didn’t need to forever close the door on the love we once shared. Maybe?!
A tinge of anxiety struck when I considered how long it had been since we’d seen one another. I told Carla on the river that I couldn’t bear the thought of going another 20 years without seeing her again. She smiled, agreeing that would be too long. “Maybe next year,” she graciously affirmed.
Indeed, the following year we had a chance meeting for an hour or two in San Diego. There, Carla was even able to say hello to my parents with whom she was familiar, and by whom she was loved so long ago.
Undulations and Meander
Twenty five minutes after leaving the convenience store, in the parking lot of Salt River Recreation, we unloaded vehicles. We were very well stocked for the trip. Water and tea for all, sandwiches, chips, peanut M&M’s, crackers, gold fish, string cheese, dried fruit, etc. And Carla brought the beers.
By sharing and arranging the contents of the two coolers into one, adding sun block, donning hats and securing other belongings, we all began to get to know one another.
“All 15 year olds need to carry the coolers to the tube rental spot!” I called, wanting to force interaction between the teenagers who were strangers to each other. Jalin and Carla’s eldest Micaela were on cooler duty through the expansive parking lot and beyond.
After retrieving her forgotten wallet from the inner tube rental office — yeah, Carla forgot her wallet within two minutes — the six of us got on the bus. She blushed about that wallet.
We were driven through the desert in an old, tan bus, upstream to the tuber’s drop-off point. I eagerly snapped the first photos of the day. The bus shook and rumbled along the curvy and hilly terrain. The icy water in the coolers sloshed around as Bob Seger blared from the bus radio.
Jalin and Micaela heaved the large cooler down to the riverbank. As we walked along I asked curiously, “Carla, when was the last time you were on this river?” I wasn’t sure what she’d say. “It was with you, Tim.” I smiled, trying to restrain the look of satisfaction from the kids who were with us. Carla and I had also climbed part of nearby Red Rock in those heady college years.
The day was a desert hot 105 degrees. Sun lotion was sprayed and slathered on our bodies as we all stood shin deep in the water of the Salt River. I cinched the cooler tube to mine with a couple knots.
Making our way over the slippery river rocks and plopping onto our respective tubes, the shock of refreshingly cool river water contrasted with the burning hot black rubber inner-tube.
The river’s gentle undulations comforted us. We continued to re-acquaint. Rediscovery, it was. The girls giggled together, making forays in and out of the group of four of them. Carla and I lingered together.
Occasionally one or two of girls would paddle back in with us. They were no doubt curious about our conversation, if not also desiring snacks in the cooler attached to my tube.
The intense heat of the Sonoran Desert’s July sun acted the blanket on our chilled waterbed. The entire riparian habitat was lulled, it seems, into a narcotically induced sense of stillness and peace.
We lolled, fondly speaking about family, work, and our college years.
Light lapping rapids present themselves on the river where it branches around a marshy island. It so happened that the six of us became separated by the angles in the water. Despite my familiarity with the river, fluctuations in the riverbed and river rocks broke us into two groups. Carla and her daughters found themselves guided by the rapids to one side of the marsh island, while Jalin, Jenny and I were taken around the other side of the marsh island.
I was lonely again, feeling an acute sense of separation. Over the densely overgrown island I called out “CAAARLAAA!” two or three times. In the rapids the sole reply was the rushing sound of water. This time though, I knew we’d reunite within minutes - not decades.
At the downstream end of the island Jalin, Jenny and I were waiting on the sandy bank when our companions bobbed around the bend.
As the six of us stood under the shade of a cottonwood tree enjoying snacks and a drink, the question was posed, “should we tube the entire length of river, or should we exit at Blue Point Bridge, the half-way point”? Simple. “Let’s go all the way,” by unanimous consent.
As the peaceful and ever-more heartwarming float continued, my camera gave way as we crossed under the bridge. After eight years of reliable use the camera failed. I was happy to have captured a dozen shots before the failure.
We were swept slowly around a left hand curve on the meandering river. Cliff jumpers!
“Mom, I wanna do that!” called Micaela. So Carla and the four girls maneuvered their tubes toward the cliff-face underneath the 15 foot jump. The opposite side of the river had a flat sandy bank and waste basket. I paddled there with the cooler tube to throw out our empty cans and wrappers.
The girls scurried up the cliff face to get to the jumping off point.
As I swam my tube and the cooler tube back across the swirling, pressuring currents to join Carla again, and as two of the girls were considering a second jump, Carla reached out to help me. I bumped the cooler-laden tube toward her. It broke away and she swam for it. The current beneath the cliff was deep and strong and as she jetted for the cooler, one of her canvas river-shoes was ripped off.
“Ah! My shoe!”
Instantly I said, “You get the cooler, I got your shoe!”
As she succeeded, so did I, finding the shoe a few feet deep in a swirling green-brown eddy.
That short moment was something to savor. We communicated well while helping one another. It was spontaneous and personal.
We swam 30 or 40 feet back upstream to get to where McKenna, anchored against the cliff in her own tube, guarded her sister’s and mom’s tubes.
As Micaela decided to jump again, and as Jalin now joined in, I asked Carla if she’d taken pictures of Micaela’s first cliff jump. “I realized I ran of out film as we came around the bend,” she winced.
That’s another curious coincidence - that both our cameras were done by the halfway point of the float.
Then Carla poked, “Tim, go ahead! Jump it!” Well, what else was there to do?! I could not decline. If she said “go to the moon,” I’d have tried to figure out a way. Did she know that?! Almost certainly.
Thoughts danced as I scaled the low cliff face following Jalin’s directions. ‘This might be dumb’, ‘this is gonna be fun',’ ‘there aren’t any old people like me up here.’ Supported by memories of cliff jumping in my teen years, I continued to scamper up the small cliff. Having reached the point from which to jump, I looked out, turned to Carla and called down to her, “Carla, this is for you!” It was truth, and so it had to be!
What fun it was!
After another short period of quiet floating, we all slid in to the exit point on the bank of the Salt River. There we caught the bus back to the tube warehouse and parking lot, and to our waiting vehicles.
We embraced one more time and parted ways. Carla followed my lead as we convoyed back out of the river basin. I felt a kindred spirit toward her girls and blew her a kiss as we diverged on Beeline Highway. Carla headed to her resort, I back home.
That night I received a message, “You still know how to show a girl a good time.” Damn, that was perfect!
At 6:30 the next morning there was another message. I’d forgotten my Swiss army knife in her cooler.
Carla forgot her wallet, Tim forgot his knife.
I picked it up from the hotel concierge later that day. The Californians had gone.
Enduring
Accessing the memories, the feeling of the light Carla and I shared, had become difficult. Memories were obscured behind the opaqueness that grows with the passage of time. Our reunion clarified and brightened my view of what we shared decades past.
A new conclusion has been rendered.
Today it is obvious that I bonded with the right person in Flagstaff in fall of 1985. It’s thrilling to reaffirm that now, almost 27 years later.
What a gift we shared!
*This memoir written using 100% HI (Human Intelligence), 0% AI (Artificial Intelligence).
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