The impact of Christmas

Everything went calm. The left of my chest ceased the rhythmic pressure of a rapid nature, and slowed to a eerie calm. Whites with deep blues rushed toward the surface, expelling pent up energy then vanishing to repeat the process. The warmth around me betrayed a different season than I was used to celebrating this day on. Christmas was upon my thoughts, the holiday season far from the nostalgia of my youth. A mere couple meters away was a horizon. A horizon I had stared at twice before, with eyes wide from fear, thoughts calculating the probability of injures, lost gear, and anything which might impede future kayak trips. The thunder of the 21 meter drop below was evaporated and dissolved by a deep focus. A focus akin to the ancient struggle between man and the elements, his mother, his brother, and his enemy. My eyes stared at the eternal seam of bubbles, a guide to success. I took a last breath, and leaned to my left, the red of my kayak swerving into the oncoming rushing of water. Eyes locked forward to see the landing, arms moving separate from core keeping the line, body neutral, everything tense with anticipation. I felt the sudden dropping of water into the air, the mixing of the like minded molecules. My body on autopilot, my brain blank, absent of thought. As my landing dissipated from the focused eyes, wrist relaxed and the paddle took flight. I leaned forward abs burning from the strain, fingers clinging to the nose of the kayak, and sucked in the last breath before closing my eyes, and waiting. A horrid sensation overcame my body. The nose of my kayak had lifted from its piercing knife like angle, and now was threateningly flat. Fifty feet rushed by in a second an a half.
Impact.
Blackness.
A gasp of air.
"You just did a 70ft waterfall dude!" came the radio like voice of a good friend to foggy senses. My shoulder burned from the muscle memory of a hand roll. My head throbbed with extreme pressure. I blinked hard hoping to focus the scene around me. My neck felt weak as though it was supporting a bowling ball. I struggled to gain focus. Someone place my paddle in my hands. Someone else shoved a box of wine into my chest. I drank. The fiery blood red liquid seared my throat and stained my lips. The realization of what I had done hit me in one swelling wave. I let out a whoop which was swallowed by the amphitheater like walls. We paddled the run out. I scraped through shallow boulder gardens, and snaked past logs, the whole time a deep cold threatening my composure. I stumbled out of my kayak a few minutes later, shouldered it clumsily, and with the tentative steps of the inebriated started for the road. A mushroom cloud of dust rushed toward my face as I dropped my kayak on the gravel roadway. I unbuckled my helmet and took it off with a grimace of pain. My fingers crept toward my forehead. They came to rest upon a alien bump, the swelling spreading rapidly.
We drove home.
I cradled a beer in between my hands and allowed my lids to slid shut. Outside the window, hidden from my dazed position, the large green mountains watched out return to Pucon, a certain familiarity lost.
The swelling subsided.
The reality of what I had done did not intoxicate my brain, fill my lips with ego, or cloud my judgment. All it allowed for was a calm moment. My eyes relaxed, muscles receded from strain, and my thoughts wandered back to the moment. The moment of release. The moment of commitment, the moment of the absence of fear. The moment of waiting for the impact. The moment of waiting for the surface. The moments for which I live.