What is Too Old? A Day on the River With the Pickled Players

You're Too Old to Spend the Rest of Your Life on the Couch: Let's Adventure!

The ladies before our trip

Are you too old to have seriously badass fun?

Yesterday I was reminded of how wonderfully active, engaged and happy so very many people are, and why age is no barrier for plenty of folks.

Too many of us have decided that getting our eyes sucked out by social media trumps being outdoors and vividly alive. I beg to differ. While you may not live in Oregon, where I reside and where it really is very easy to head out to the best Nature has to offer with friends, you can still go play, at any age.

I joined a lively group of pickleball players out of Portland who had decided that rafting on one of Oregon’s gorgeous rivers was a fine way to spend a Thursday. The instigator, Laura (above, center, toasting with a mimosa and wearing light orange) had the river trip idea.

Oregon River Experiences (ORE) was the outfitter, Owner Todd Gilstrap had cleared my participation so that I could not only experience a day trip but also see another wild and scenic river in this state of breathtaking options.

Even better, most or all these women were over sixty. If you’re like much of society, the picture in our head is a bunch of frumpy old dames shuffling around a court trying to hit a ball.

Like much of society, you’d be dead wrong.

This was a group of active, athletic women approaching their later years with enthusiasm and verve. This group is a perfect example of the kind of people who will invite you to lift yourself up regularly.

That’s a good part of how to age well. Among the key aspects of healthy aging is your social community. When a key part of that community is this lively and engaged, you are likely to benefit enormously. You just want to play higher.

But wait, there’s more.

Ten of us showed up just south of the small Eugene town of Escatada, Oregon. I was the guest; the women were celebrating a birthday of one of their members. You ask any group of women to get together and you are guaranteed three things: food, frivolity and fun.

Moments after arriving there was a layout of goodies, including celebratory headbands and mimosas. A few fun drinks made it into water bottles; what the hey, right? Scones, fruit and a lot of laughter, introductions all around and a lot of anticipatory energy.

ORE’s van pulled up with the boats, our personal flotation devices (PFDs) all the gear and our guides. We loaded up and headed down to the put in, or where we would place the boats in the river to ride the rapids and see who fell in (or didn’t).

What the fire took and what Nature is regrowing

Four years ago when I moved to Eugene, barely a month later our area was hit with a conflagration which threatened to completely wipe out all that was green in this part of the world. The air was black with smoke.

Four years later, the forests are already regenerating. Alders and undergrowth are burgeoning again, and falcons and other wildlife are slowly making their way back. The regrowth is exciting to see, and a lesson in how Nature takes care of herself.

The lively and active Clackamas is full of life both above and below the water. We were all eager to get started. Todd conducted the safety briefing and snugged our PFDs tightly enough we could hardly breathe.

That’s precisely how tight you want your PFD if you need to be hauled aboard after a spill.

Todd delivering the safety briefing

UGH that’s SNUG, where it’s supposed to be

Soon we were on the river, the waters cool and the breezes sharp enough to keep us paddling on the flats. Laura was on the second paddle boat with Pascal, who had moved here from Chilean Patagonia.

Pascal had just come off the Lower Salmon just as I had last week, a long, hot trip which can leave guides and guests tired. Especially guides, because their days are some fifteen hours long, six days in a row.

Even so he was alert and lively and attentive, sending his boat through all the fun opportunities that a full day on the river can offer: a bit of surfing, some big fun circles on the flat, and the occasional offer(not taken) to dive bomb the cold water off basalt rock formations.

You can take a short half-day trip, which is fine, although you won’t get to do some of the fun stuff like paddling right to and then on top of a wave to surf it. I can’t speak for you but if I’m going to go on the river, I really want to do as much as I can on that river and get my money’s worth. These women did just that.

First-timer rafters can often start out fearful not only of the power of the river, which is considerable, but of falling into the rapids. I watched a few of the women deal with those fears as we entered our first relatively rough water.

Not long afterwards, as we went through more, their confidence rose, and along with that, the fun factor. It’s got to be one of the best parts of a guide’s job to observe how people choose to rise to the occasion, and in no time anticipate the rapids instead of fear them.

If there is a better lesson about life, how to lean into the wall of water that threatens to toss your boat instead of away from it, I don’t know what is.

At one point, over on the other boat two pickleball players got planted in the river. One of them was Laura, the organizer, who at 76 was the oldest. She was also one of the most game for taking chances. She grinned at us from the water as she floated down the rapids to be picked up in our boat by Todd.

Laura, rescued, with her rescued boat shoe

A trip like this takes advantage of all kinds of opportunities for people, as their confidence rises, to take more chances.

In my boat the birthday girl (62) chose to “ride the bull” through the rapids. That meant that she straddled the leading edge of the boat, held on for dear life and ended up on her butt in the front of the boat- as instructed- at the end, safe and happy. With everyone screaming.

In this video you see Laura riding the bull on the other boat, and then ours as our birthday girl sits up front and we go through the rapids. I’m in the rear and had to use my phone, so it’s naturally bumpy:

Laura, of course, did precisely the same thing. We watched her all the way through the rapids to the end. The advantage of a larger group is you get to watch, cheer on and celebrate (and compete with each other; after all these are pickleball players).

Sometimes the other boat fares better than you, sometimes you best them. That’s part of the fun.

This is just people living life in full.

When we make a big deal about how old people are when they are engaged to the full, we’re being ageist. When we are surprised that someone like Laura, 76, has no fear sitting “bull rider” on the front of the paddleboat, we are being ageist.

Let’s take this a step further.

When we assume that a bunch of pickleball players over sixty are likely to look a certain way and are surprised they show up looking like the athletes they are, we are being ageist- not just about them, but about ourselves.

Why? Because somewhere in our psyches we just can’t imagine being youthful and adventurous and excited and exciting after a certain age. That’s not fair to us and it’s not fair to anyone else fortunate enough to age well into their eighties and beyond. That’s powerful societal messaging, and it’s why I call it out.

I’ve made that same mistake. Society has long told us that after a Certain Age we’re going to melt into the couch and become invisible. I didn’t have a vision for my future when I was in my thirties and forties. Many of us don’t- all we see is what we lose, rather than all the fun that becomes available to us when we rise into who we are as we age.

You and I are WAY Too Old to start pulling back on fun.

Fun is always available, we just need to embrace it.

When we confront the implicit and evil ageism that creeps into our own psyches, we also erase judgment of others. We can celebrate people as they are at any age, because we celebrate ourselves at any age.

When we confront the implict and evil ageism that creeps into our own psyches, we also erase judgment of others.

Laura, center, and part of the bunch relaxing at the end

We’re all just living. Laura and all her compatriots (about 400 total, playing pickleball around Portland) are, as Cindy Lauper once sang, girls who just wanna have fun. Lauper is my age these days, 71. My guess, like these pickleball players, is that she still wants to have fun.

Age has zero to do with our ability to play hard and high and scream and laugh. Taking a day to play hard on the river is just one of many ways to be reminded of how precious life is, how important friends are, and how invigorating Nature is- the perfect combination.

Even as ability changes, and it does, you and I can still pack food, mimosas and good friends into a couple of cars, load up on a fine boat and spend the day screaming over roaring rapids on the Clackamas. Or the Lower Salmon as I just did, or the Rogue, or or or.

Oar, if you’ll pardon the pun.

Let’s have fun, please. Because the more fun we have, the more fun we want to have. That’s a habit worth investing in.

The only limit to living life is the set of limits we place on ourselves.

Here’s to a glorious day with terrific women, a great rafting company and to living well at any age.

Let’s play.

Pascal and his boat getting ready to take off

Thanks for riding along with me on a fun dayon the Clackamas. If this story was fun for you, please consider

If someone you know needs to be reminded to put the remote down and go remote (which in some cases is a walk around the block) please consider

Either way, don’t wait for fun. Go create it.