The rush of the river tumbled over pink rocks, leaving them glistening in the sun. Flecks of gold and silver sparkled around aqua waters laced with white foam as the current galloped up onto the rocks and frothed back down again. Overhead, pine trees loomed, stretching toward an endless blue sky, and the air was sharp with their evergreen scent.
Dan and I crowded at the rail fence beside the river in Glacier National Park with our six children—Helen, eleven; the four boys scattered in between; and three-week-old Carri Beth strapped against my chest in a baby wrap. Destiny, a teenage friend we’d mentored and now our nanny, stood with us. This would be our last trip together before her upcoming wedding.
Dan raised his voice above the roar of the water and the chatter of the children. Excitement bubbled almost as lively as the river beside us.
“Okay—now a few instructions,” he said, waiting until he had their attention. “Everyone sticks with Mom and Dad, and everyone has a buddy.”
We buddied four-year-old Zach with Helen, Andrew and Blair together, Kip with Daddy, and the baby with Mommy.
“Everyone listening?” Dad asked.
“Yes,” they chorused.
“More people die from drowning in these rivers than anything else in the park,” he continued. “Not bears. Not mountain lions. But by falling into these cold, rushing rivers. So stay back from the water. If you step onto the slippery rocks, you’re going to fall in.” They solemnly nodded.
“Everyone stays with their buddy,” he went on, “and no one gets ahead or behind Mom and Dad. And”—he added, holding up his water bottle—“no littering. If you bring it in, you bring it out. Water bottles, wrappers—everything stays with you.”
They nodded again.
“Alright. Let’s go.” And we were off on the journey.
But this journey had actually begun two weeks earlier:
Carri Beth’s birth was the first my mother hadn’t attended. She and my dad were away, spending time in ministry with our church’s Idaho branch. Soon after the birth, sickness began circulating through our Texas community. One day my mom called and asked, “Is there any chance Dan can get away from work long enough for y’all to come up and visit Dad and me here in Idaho? We’d love to meet our new granddaughter…”
It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, but we did our best to make it work. With some finagling and rearranging, we were in the car the next day with Carri Beth, just nine days old, and a vanload of excited children.
Christopher, now two and a half, still didn’t seem to notice that his new baby sister even existed. He hadn’t begun to talk yet and wandered in his own little world, eyes distant and brow puckered. The trip unsettled him more than usual. His anxiety followed us mile after mile.
The older kids, on the other hand, were thrilled at the novelty of stopping at a hotel. Priceline was new to us then—you could bid and end up with an incredible place for almost nothing. That night we landed a Courtyard Marriott, far nicer than anywhere we had ever stayed before.
Dan went inside to check in and then came back out, opening the van door.
“Now, kids,” he said, “this is a much nicer hotel than we’re used to. The lobby is fancy, and we all have to walk through it. I want everyone to walk quietly and calmly and not make a disturbance.”
Oh boy, I groaned inwardly. Six grubby kids who’d been in the car all day, full of snacks, walking through a fancy lobby—we were going to make a disturbance no matter what. But we tried.
Grabbing their small rolling suitcases, the lighted wheels blinking as they spun, we all lined up. The tall glass doors opened into a high-ceilinged lobby with marble floors. Glass chandeliers hung above us, and an entire tree grew up through the center of the space.
Click, clack, click, clack, our shoes echoed.
Clackety-clickety, clackety-clickety—the suitcase wheels sang. Naturally, Carri Beth chose that moment to wake up and scream inside the wrap.
I brought up the rear while Dan led the charge. Somewhere in the middle, Andrew suddenly hollered across the echoing lobby, “Hey, Mom! I just lost my soul!” My mind stumbled. He lost his soul?
Then I saw it; the sole of his cowboy boot skittering across the floor. “Oh,” I sighed. “That kind of soul.” At least we were still whole.
“Shhh!” Dan and I both raised fingers to our lips as Blair tore across the gleaming floor to retrieve it.
With souls still intact, we finally arrived in Idaho and introduced our brand-new baby to my parents. My dad took Carri Beth in his arms, standing in the sunshine with pine-covered mountains behind him, and prayed a blessing over her life.
Christopher wrapped himself tightly in my skirt, hiding.
We spent a wonderful week of games, campfires, hot dogs, sticky marshmallows. As we packed to head back to Texas, Dad asked, “Have you all been to Glacier National Park? If you have time, you really ought to go. It’s beautiful.”
He hadn’t been yet himself, but he’d researched it, hoping someday we could all go together. So we decided to take the plunge and detour through Montana.
That was how we found ourselves standing at the river’s edge.
We hiked trail after trail. On one steep mountain path, I again took the rear, Carri Beth strapped to my chest. Person after person stopped when they saw her.
“How new is that baby?” a gray-haired woman asked.
“Almost three weeks,” I said.
“And you’re climbing a mountain! Hurrah for Mommy!” she cheered, passing the word along until several more echoed her praise.
It was encouraging, but I was exhausted.
We decided to take one last trail, leading down to a fifty-foot waterfall. We climbed down beneath the pines until we reached the bottom. Dan took the older kids up onto a ledge near the top while I stayed below with the little ones, absorbing the serenity as aqua water swirled in the pool. At last, it was time to head back.
The climb was steep. Dan carried Christopher on his back, and I carried Carri Beth on my front. Trudging beside us, Destiny hung onto four-year-old Zach’s hand. The three oldest—Helen, Blair, and Andrew, moved faster and faster ahead, following the riverside trail.
As they disappeared around a bend, I said, “Dan, I’m not comfortable with how far ahead they’re getting. Maybe Destiny could—”
A blood-curdling scream split the air.
“Helen’s voice,” I knew instantly. “Andrew!” The echo of her scream slapped back and forth multiple times between the craggy peaks.
Then Blair’s voice joined the echo. “Andrew!” Again, his scream went on and on, jumping from ridge to ridge.
My heart slammed so hard I thought my chest would split open. I knew exactly what had happened. Andrew was in the river…
Dan dropped Christopher’s pack and ran. Destiny ran. Zach tried to run, but I caught him.
Dan slung the backpack off and laid it beside the trail. Christopher began screaming in terror. I grabbed the pack upright while still carrying Carri Beth, motioned Destiny to keep running with Dan, and took Zach’s hand.
So there I was—dragging the pack with Christopher in one hand, holding Zach with the other, Carri Beth bound to my chest—running uphill faster than I thought possible, but not fast enough.
“Oh God, oh God,” I prayed aloud.
Christopher screamed harder, but for once he was looking straight at me. The terror in his eyes nearly undid me. I crested the hill. The screaming had stopped.
Helen and Blair stood frozen, huddled together, staring toward the river. Destiny sat beside them in the pine needles, pale and blank.
“What happened?” I demanded.
“Andrew went into the river, over the falls.” Helen and Blair pointed toward a smaller waterfall, so beautiful earlier, now seemed menacing.
“Where’s Daddy?” I almost shrieked.
“I don’t know. He went down there. He told us to stay here.”
“Dan!” I screamed.
His face suddenly appeared over the rock ledge—soaked, streaked with dirt, blood oozing from his temple.
“It’s okay,” he said, looking me in the eye. “He’s okay.”
He was gray. Even his lips were gray.
He disappeared again. Below, Andrew lay soaked on the riverbank, sticks and pine needles clung to him.
“He went over the waterfall,” Helen wailed.
“He’s okay,” I repeated.
Dan hauled himself up the bank and we gathered around, silent and shaking.
“He was standing on a rock,” Blair said. “It wasn’t even that close. He kept slipping and slipping… and then he went over.”
The waterfall he pointed to was only six feet high—but downstream was the fifty-foot fall. That was what we had all imagined, and was where he would have ended up.
“He went over the small one,” Dan said, “then down the cascade and landed into a pool. There was a whirl in it. He was clinging to a rock in the middle.” We all spontaneously began to pray and to thank God for sparing him, for the little whirlpool, for the rock.
“Why were you so close to the river?” Dan asked Andrew.
“I didn’t think those rocks were close,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know they were wet.”
“Well,” Dan said, “now we know.”
We began the walk back to the van. Andrew shivered, blue with cold. Dan walked beside him, still holding his water bottle.
“Why did you keep the bottle?” Dan asked. “You only had one hand to hold onto that rock.”
“Because you said not to litter,” Andrew answered.
Dan’s eyes widened as he glanced at me. “I just wish he’d listened as closely about the river as he did about littering.”
We warmed Andrew, got in the car, and watched the sun melt into the mountains like molten honey.
Christopher leaned against me, spent and finally silent. I told Dan, “I’ve never seen a child as terrified as he got, nor as difficult to calm down.”
Christopher’s unusual terror that day felt like a foreshadowing of how much our life with him would be lived on edges no one else could yet see.
But gazing at the mountains, I said, “You forget how beautiful it is,” and we watched the light and riotous colors slowly fade.
“Pain and beauty both shrink with time. You can’t hold onto them or truly understand them, until you see them again,” I told Dan
Praise God, everyone was safe! A lesson and memory for all.