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Rock Creek Ranch • In the growing light, a raft loaded with aging suburbanites slips past me in the current. Among the passengers, a woman snipes at her husband. Her voice is loud. It carries to the shore.

"I told you it would be like this. But you had to see it, didn't you?"

The Green River quickly carries the complainer around a bend and out of my life. I thank God for small mercies and turn my attention to the towering cliffs.

Through the cottonwoods, the rising sun gradually illuminates the gorge. Every 10 feet turns a million bygone years into gold.

I came to the river looking to escape life for a while and instead found it. The river carries real meaning that is easily missed if you're busy glaring at the back of someone else's head.

Nine new and old friends left the boat ramp at Sand Wash on May 31 in a gusting wind. We were following in the wake of John Wesley Powell, who explored the canyon in 1869 and named it Desolation.

But ours is a different river. Powell navigated the Green at low water, every logjam and boulder a threat. Nearly 150 years later, the river is at flood stage and smothers many of the obstacles Powell faced.

There's still danger. At the moment we're setting off on what promises to be a carefree adventure, a woman is drowning at Wire Fence Rapid 60 miles ahead of us. The river, like life, is unforgiving.

Once you're in it, there's no going back on the river. Like life, the river is a journey of faith. You take what it serves up and do your best to handle your boat well. Much of the journey depends on your attitude. You'll find beauty or desolation.

We start slow, moving with a broad, deceptively sluggish current. The scenery is soon boring. Miles of tamarisk and mud drift past.

Like kids in the back seat, we pester our guides with hundreds of inane questions. What is that? Can we touch it? When are we going to get there? I have to go to the bathroom.

It happens soon enough, the first real challenge that alters our view of what's to come. We round a bend and pile into Rock House Rapid, a freezing, attention-getting slap of water. We bail it out and keep going.

There are dozens of these river-altering moments ahead, times when clarity is forced on us. I can see them looking at a map, rapids with names such as Fretwater, Cow Swim, Big Canyon, Wild Horse, Last Chance, Poverty and Surprise.

My life has been filled with such rapids, inexorable moments when the river narrows, cranks up, and it's sink or swim — Draft Notice, Marriage, First Born, Pink Slip and Mortgage. I managed them with a little bit of preparation and a lot of faith.

If you're smart, you learn to anticipate those moments of alarm that punctuate the long stretches of calm in life. Listen closely and you can hear them coming.

On the river, you keep an ear cocked to the storm sound of an approaching rapid. Boulders rolling underwater make a noise like a distant artillery duel. And there's the worst sound of all — the whistle of air leaving the raft.

What's that coming up? Is it just another Cough or is it Cancer? Disagreement or Divorce? If you aren't sure — and the current allows for it — you get out and go take a look.

We got out before Cow Swim and did that. Good thing, too. From the top of a boulder, the river boiled for 100 yards. Rock-sharpened logs spun in the torrent. A raft hit a boulder and popped a tourist into the air.

There was no way around Cow Swim and nothing to take us through it but faith. We returned to the rafts, cinched our life vests just sort of suffocation and drove on. We make it soaked and shivering but oddly exhilarated. Some things are only fun when you can look back on them.

Faith is all in the seeing. It changes from person to person. Where some see only a gritty prison in the narrow canyon walls, others look and see sunlit houses of the holy.

Everywhere there are signs left by those who have gone before — petroglyphs and graffiti, flint chips and pull tabs, fossils and bottles.

Eventually, my own passage will be added to the sediment of time.

In a moment of astonishing clarity, somewhere in the middle of a rapid, I realize it's my birthday. I add my own paltry 58 years to the millions I see around me.

Life is a river. It doesn't stop moving just because you aren't paying attention. At night, I lie in my tent and listen to the water roll toward the Gulf of California 650 miles away. I'm reminded that I have a downriver destination of my own. And I'm already most of the way there.

Four days on the river and I learned there's beauty on the way to uncertainty. It's up to me to find it in whatever waits around the next bend.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com.