The North Santiam

My friend Abigail Spinks (21 years old, purchased a house as a minor, ran her own school for a couple of years, published "Dear Princess" magazine for more than 3 years, currently has two foster children) invited me to go inner tubing on the North Santiam River, if she happened to go again this summer.
"That sounds like a lot of fun," I conceded.

And therefore she called me on Friday to finalize plans for a Saturday inner tubing expedition.

I showed up characteristically late and after lunch we set off from Greens Bridge (east of Jefferson, OR) around 3 pm. There were two 13 yr old girls and a 9 yr old boy in addition to Abby and myself. I was rather trepidacious at first, and would be lying to say I was completely at ease near the end of the 7 mile, 4+ hour trip. We had a couple mishaps — one girl got her foot tangled in the rope that held the inner tubes together (thankfully the water was shallow there). We failed to navigate away from the bank on one certain occasion and ended up sweeping rapidly under a bunch of branches — my veiling almost departed from my head, and two persons fell off their tubes. We got stuck in a whirlpool — who knows how long we would have kept going around in circles if we hadn't waded away. Two tubes got snagged on a log in a fast-moving section and I thought I might be swept under water.
The best advice for such a trip is to keep one's head about them.
Over all I think I shivered more from cold than fright and the rapids were fun (eventually). We got to see a snake, I got to swim a bit, and Abby and I sang "How Great Thou Art" as we floated along the last leg of the journey. I'm glad I went.