… which was then known as Radha River, writes Srajan.
During the second World Festival at Rajneeshpuram in the early 1980’s I was designated to lead river raft trips down the John Day River that ran adjacent to the ranch. Getting a late start and then taking the seldom used back road past Patanjali Lake and then out of the ranch along twisty gravel and dirt roads, we followed Cherry Creek to arrive at the gently flowing banks of the river, a local fishing access point. There had not been time to scout out the river except using old maps but it looked to be a leisurely float of about 12 miles with a few small rapids before arriving at the truck farm along the eastern edge of Rajneeshpuram. My partner – if I remember correctly it was Swadesh – and I unloaded and prepared our two river rafts. Our crew of twelve (six per raft) was international and no one had much rafting experience, although we looked to have enough strong arms with a couple of exceptions to paddle us through.
The first few rapids proved to be the strongest of the trip and we made them easily. The canyons were beautiful and our spirits were high as we floated along for the first five miles or so requiring only mild paddling effort. Then, as we rounded a bend in the river, we were met with fierce headwinds that in no time were blowing us upstream! “Hard paddling!” was the command as I attempted to rally the hot, tired, and not so strong after all boat mates. We began putting all of our effort into the paddling, yet after a good hour of on again off again vigorous stroking we were barely making progress and all of us were tiring. Additionally the two tiny Japanese girls who I had placed in the front of the number 1 raft had not been paddling much at all. There was growing discontent amongst the other now exhausted paddlers that the girls didn’t get the importance of helping out.
As I checked my watch (long before cell phones) I could see that at this rate we were going to miss our 5:00 pm take-out at the truck farm. That would also mean that we would miss the grand festivities later with Osho at Rajneesh Mandir. I communicated this to the two boats. It looked like we would be missing our pick-up.
Somehow this was communicated quite effectively to the two Japanese girls at the front of the raft. They immediately started strong steady paddling and singing Beatles’ songs at full volume! It took the rest of us by surprise as we giggled at their mispronunciations and reveled at their enthusiasm.
We all found renewed strength and as we rounded another bend in the river the wind died down and shifted to a tail wind. Finally, tired but laughing we made it back to the truck farm just in time to break down the rafts, catch the last bus, and make it to darshan. It was the best celebration ever.
Srajan is a regular contributor
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