#polly mathys

Polly Mathys is a long-time faculty member of Alvernia University, who is highly involved in activities that promote community service, environmental awareness, and student involvement. As part of an Alternative Break experience in the spring of 2016, she survived the Pigeon River. (And she has a shirt to prove it!) Read on!

All the controversy about the near death experience (NDE) — ‘is it spiritually genuine? Is it just oxygen deprivation?’ — has me thinking that there is a category below the NDE – the NNDE, or Near-Near-death experience. That is when you are, or feel you are, in serious jeopardy for your life, and your thoughts race from panic to acceptance to sadness. Or at least mine did.

The lucky among us like to place ourselves in the neighborhood of danger. Roller coaster rides, sky diving, eating fugu, white-water rafting, all are deliciously dangerous, offering that rush to the rider/eater/consumer. Amusement parks try hard to offer that rush through a sanitized, thoroughly engineered and inspected ride. One can let one’s brain fully process the sensation of danger while being in relatively little actual peril. How else could those parks get insured?

But the rider gets strapped in, the ride climbs that first hill, and then... the body kicks out mass quantities of every self-protecting hormone it can produce. Ninety seconds later, a joyful rider unstraps himself and goes off on another quest for living on the edge.

But, and maybe this is exactly why these danger-seeking experiences are so popular, just often enough to legitimize the danger, something does in fact go wrong, and the most awful thing does in fact happen to a rider/eater/consumer. These are genuine tragedies, even if people willingly place themselves in some jeopardy, because there was a certain perceived assurance of safety. Stuff happens.

It is easy to be philosophical in comments like “Stuff happens” until stuff really happens. I do believe in the validity of the NND experience. I had such an experience, and I hope never again to dismiss someone’s bad experience as “Stuff happens.”

Recently, I accompanied six of our students and a staff colleague on a service-oriented Alternative Break to Maryville, TN. It was a busy, tiring week of service, education, and fun. I am 3.5 times the age of these students, so it quickly became apparent to me that I would have times when I couldn’t keep up or couldn’t participate. But I am game, and they were always available to pull me up the hill. One of the students had a quick response to any time someone asked how she was: a gesture that looks a lot like University of Texas’s “Hook ‘em, horns” (grab the two middle fingers with your thumb, extend the outermost fingers straight up, palms out), and a verbal response that said, “Absolutely thriving!” It became our rallying cry, our code language that said all was well.

Before the trip, the decision had been made that we would spend our free day white-water rafting on the Pigeon River in western North Carolina. I signed up too – in fact, I signed up first. I almost signed on for the much less adventurous tubing experience at the other end of the river, but I had a little talk with myself about not surrendering to age and getting out there.

We arrived at the venue in plenty of time. They have you sign a release that is a solid page of small print. Yepper – name, date, witness. I went into the souvenir shop and selected an “I survived the Pigeon River” tee shirt. I went to the counter and said to the clerk as I placed the shirt on the counter, “Says she optimistically…” She assured me I’d be fine and would have a wonderful time.

Into our groups, we were instructed on safety instructions, especially what you should do if you wind up in the water, and how to prevent going into the water in the first place. Short bus ride, got into the raft, got some quick instruction about paddling forward or backward on command, and away we went. We (2 students, myself, 3 other people and our guide) were the lead raft in our group. Before we knew it, we were thoroughly soaked and laughing our way through some pretty bumpy water. Giggle, giggle, high five’s, lots of “Absolutely thriving” hand gestures.

We made it joyfully (there’s that danger-endorphin rush) through our first and second Class 4 rapids and a bunch of Class 3’s.  I have pictures – the smiles are ear to ear.

When we hit the third Class 4, we hit a rock. A student got bounced off the raft, then I got bounced, then two more of our folks got bounced. The other 3 were close to the raft, albeit near the rocks. At least two of them had significant bruises to show for the encounter. In relatively short order, they were back in the raft.

However, the Old Lady (that would be me) started to drift away from the raft. Whatever I did, the distance between myself and the raft kept increasing. I was tumbling through what felt like rough water. My vest kept rising up and covering my mouth. Panic set in. “Panic” might be too mild a word for what I was feeling. I was near shore and tried to grab passing vegetation, but the force of the current made that impossible. If they were shouting to me, I couldn’t hear them. If they threw me the rope with a bag at the end, I didn’t see it.

You know how time seems to slow down when you are in a stressful situation? I probably experienced the opposite. I felt it had been many minutes since I ejected from the raft. I felt the Clock of Doom racing. I was terrified that I was going to be one of those very rare white water rafting casualties. It became hard to breathe. I was drained of energy.

And then, terror gave way to acceptance and then to sadness. I said to myself, “So this is how it ends.” I felt only sadness but was otherwise calm. I felt bad that my passing would traumatize the students I was there to supervise. I worried who would take care of my granddaughter that upcoming week when she and I were scheduled to take a road trip. I was sad that I was breaking a promise I had made to my daughters. Oddly enough, none of this had to do with myself, my sense of my own death or any fear about how the transition would take place. This was my NND Experience. I concluded that, in the end, death was both private and personal, and the sadness had entirely to do with the effect on those you would leave behind.

And then... and then – it seemed like out of nowhere that a raft with only guides in it was able to get to me. One guide was able to grab my hand, and then they lifted me up by the straps on my vest. I was pulled into the raft face-down. My first thought was that I could not believe I was out of the roiling water. My next project was to find enough energy to start catching my breath. I was shocked to learn that you have to HAVE energy to MAKE any more. Lying face-down, I did not have the strength to expand my rib cage from the vest. I struggled to turn over, and the quest to breathe began in earnest. I seriously mean it when I say I had to catch my breath to catch my breath. Slowly, I began to trust that I would be able to take my next breath, and things got better.

I could hear my students and coworker yelling to me, asking if I was OK. I could not talk, no energy to spare yet. But I could raise my arm with my hand in an “Absolutely thriving” gesture. They saw it, and I was cheered by the cheers I heard.

Minutes (or was it hours? I couldn’t tell) later, I was recovered enough that they put me back in my original raft. The guide asked me if I wanted to just ride or paddle. I asked for a paddle and resumed my job. Soon he said we were approaching the last Class 4. He said we could go over it or around it, and he left the decision to us. The other 5 passengers actually left it to me. Hey, what am I, a wuss? I put my hands in the air in the “Absoutely thriving” mode and said, “Let’s go for it!” We did go for it, all was well, and the rest of the trip was exactly the level of adventure you hope for.

I loved the experience, and I would go again, although they probably ought to have a maximum age restriction which I might be on the wrong side of. Kids as young as 8 were on this trip; I find that a little young, given what can easily happen, but that is for the organizers, their insurers, and the individual parents to decide.

But I was changed by the NND experience, perhaps forever. I still wake up sometimes re-experiencing that desperate effort to catch my breath. I think about the calm sadness I felt when I accepted that my life might end in the water.