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By Root 315 0

the regular raft. So, reluctantly, I took a paddle and strapped on a helmet and had the best time of the whole trip. As river guide Rebecca shouted out orders (“Forward left, back right, forward all”), Cheryl, Tammy, Sabrina, Cindy, Diane the artist, and I all maneuvered through rapids as though we knew what we were doing. “Everyone lean right,” Rebecca yelled, and we all tucked our feet in so we would not come out of the boat as we leaned way over. The smaller raft bounced and crashed in the white water. “And forward left,” she yelled again. “And right. And lean.” So we did. Sprays of water hit us, followed by big, freezing splashes. We were on high alert and in the moment as the raft became a roller coaster. Why had I forgotten how much more fun it was to lose yourself in doing a thing than to watch from a passive position?

“You’ve got to remember not to make decisions based on laziness in the future,” I scolded myself, being careful to remind myself that I was not referring to boarding elevators during electrical storms.

“Okay, okay,” I sighed.

On the very last stretch of river, joke telling started. Though during the past four days there had been little talk of boyfriends or husbands, now it was hard not to notice that there was a definite cast to the jokes a group of women elected to tell in the wilderness.

Exhibit A: “Which one is real? A smart man, a dumb man, an honest man, or the Easter Bunny? A dumb man. The other three are figments of your imagination.”

Exhibit B: “What are the three stages of sex in marriage? Kitchen sex, where you have sex everywhere. Bedroom sex, only in the bedroom. And hall sex, where you pass each other in the hall and go, ‘Fuck you.’ ‘Fuck you, too.’ ”

Exhibit C: “What’s the difference between a prostitute, a nymphomaniac, and a wife? The prostitute says, ‘Are you done yet?’ The nympho says, ‘Are you done already?’ The wife says, ‘I think I’ll paint the ceiling beige.’ ”

When I got to the airport that evening to board the small plane that would take me to Salt Lake, I was sunburned, gritty, and lithe, a heartier, more rugged version of myself.

Unfortunately, Ashley was already waiting for me in the lounge area. Bracing herself with a gin and tonic, she was ready to remind me of the high incidence of small-plane catastrophes.

“You can’t really get to me now,” I told her. “I feel too tan and fit.”

“Just like Ashley Judd at the beginning of Kiss the Girls,” Ashley came back, “right before the serial killer imprisons her in an underground grotto.”

“No … more like something from Under the Tuscan Sun or Eat Pray Love,” I countered.

“We intentionally avoided seeing both of those movies,” Ashley said with a smirk. “We really really hate movies like those.”

“I know. And I still don’t want to see them,” I admitted. “But I think for both of our sakes, before we travel together again, you need to sit down and internalize the premises of a couple of chick flicks.”

WHAT I LEARNED

1. Sunblock really does work.

2. Do the hard thing you don’t want to do right away. That way, if you decide to reject it, it will be for a good reason.

3. Cryptic foreshadowing and scary plot points don’t always add up to a horror movie. Not even when the cast includes girls in bikinis.

4. Things really do come in fours, after all. For instance, there are four things on this list.

Jimmy Explains His Wake-up Techniques

IT WAS MIDMORNING ON A TUESDAY, AND I HAD BEEN SITTING behind my desk, surrounded on all sides by my dogs. Even so, I was edgy. I had been trying unsuccessfully to write since six A.M. Creatively, everything had come to a halt. When that happens I often turn to my dogs for inspiration. But what inspiring thing about them hadn’t I already mined?

Well, it occurred to me, I hadn’t yet written about how I came to adopt my two retrievers, Jimmy and Ginger, after their paterfamilias was arrested for Ponzi schemes three years ago. With a posse of angry, torch-bearing fraud victims hot on his trail, the man in whose house my two dogs had once lived fled our city, leaving his dogs