Mirace on the river? Letting go and enjoying the beauty of the moment was the real revelation | Jan Risher – New Orleans, Louisiana

Two weeks ago, Wisconsin friend Nancy Emberg put a salmon river on a raft with 16 women and me. Last week I spoke of the miracle of the river. Engberg was an important actor at these events. She added it right away. The real miracle for her was the journey to get there.

"I was overweight and I had to get over a lot of embarrassing things about trying to do sports things; it was difficult," he said. "One by one, each fear disappeared."

Engberg kayaked the afternoon of the first day on the river.

“I cried silently most of the afternoon. Her beauty defeated me. I was looking back and every person in front of me was a woman, ”he said. Said. "I was like these great women, and I am one of them."

Your decision to kayak that afternoon may have moved what the rest of us consider a miracle of travel. She and I spent the morning on a large raft led by a professional guide, but she got on a boat and decided to ride the torrent alone that afternoon.

The salmon stream is no joke. When we cleared out the lunch camp, the spiritual preparation of that adventure element may have occupied his mind. But when we got to the river, she was thinking of a long-standing gift.

“My parents' gift for graduating from high school was a climbing trip in Colorado,” he said. “At the river, there was a time when I was very familiar with the person for almost 40 years, she is still there. She is still inside of me. "

The next day, Emberg told us that his phone was missing. We were convinced it was in her bag.

Was not she.

Surprisingly, he just brushed off the loss.

Michele Ezell de Lafayette is on the road and says Engberg's glasses are set up to look better in every situation.

"One of my favorite memories was the fact that I was overwhelmed by feelings of the beauty of the landscape and I was experiencing it with a group of women," Ezel said. "She was 100% at the time and she was filled with pure gratitude."

I agree.

Losing his phone and camera now may have been a blessing, he says.

"Usually my job is to take pictures," he said. “If no one had done such a good job, I would have gone crazy. In fact, I had the staff do it. "

He also says that he stopped losing his phone for other bigger reasons.

"What options do you have? You can't go back to the river and look for it," he said. "The river keeps flowing."

Almost a week later, we were rafting 60 miles from where we had lunch on the first day. At that moment, I passed the rafters screaming, "Have you lost your phone?"

Suddenly, our entire fleet screamed "yes".

The lookouts said the River Rangers had it. I didn't know the River Rangers were the problem, but an hour later, the two Rangers rafted to the beach where they were having lunch, like in a movie. They handed Emberg his phone, which we found on the beach where we had lunch on the first day.

Most of our group hiked to the top of a nearby mountain and witnessed the entire exchange.

“Looking up, I saw people two inches tall at the top of the mountain jumping and screaming with joy. It wasn't like finding my phone, ”he said. rice field. "It was as if we were all witnessing a miracle."

In fact, the entire group was investing in finding their phone as it was. The trip made a lot of sense to her and she was very happy. We never wanted your trip to get hurt.

Engberg says she thinks the recovery of the phone could have been more dire for the rest of us than she was.

"I often lose things and they come back to me," he said. “I don't know if I have some good lost and found karma, or what? I just trust the kindness of strangers. "

If so, he would have what she has.

Later that day, our fleet passed back to the Rangers. All of our female tribes channeled Bette Midler in 1988 and began singing "Beach's" theme song, "The Wind Under My Wings." (It's worth noting that we saw at least 20 eagles "soaring high in the sky" a week).

In the canyon, the river flowed and we sang to the ranger at the top of our lungs, not caring for the world. Did you know that you are my hero? You are everything I want to be. I could fly higher than an eagle, but you are the wind under my wings.

Looking back, we can see that we were singing to each other, like a bet.