Throwback Thursday: Just After a Good Soaking

This is my son Evan and me at Nantahala Gorge, N.C., just after a raft trip down the lovely little Nantahala River. This is about 1988 and Evan would have been 14 and I 42. We were both tossed out of the raft in the rapid at the right, sucked into the hydraulic and thrown around pretty wildly (hence our outrageous pants, which were dry extras).

This was a moment when I saw Evan grow up a bit. Instead of coming up to the surface of the roiling water terrified, his head bobbed out of the water and he scanned the waterline and yelled, "Dad! You all right?" I thought, "Yeh, that'll do. The boy's a man."

Wonder what ever happened to those pants Ev's wearing. Not much worried about the pink hotpants on me.