By JAMES DAMSCHRODER

The Union Democrat

For white water rafting guides, a river's extremes can teach lessons applicable to life's realities.

From the chaos of rapids, to the protection of an eddy, the flow of a river is full of life metaphors that river guides share with their customers and students.

On Wednesday, on the Merced River, 18 people, from those preparing for a trip down the Colorado River to those releasing the tension from working in a San Francisco emergency room, braved the class III and IV rapids on the third day of a week-long rafting guide school organized by OARS, an Angels Camp-based outdoors company.

There were seven guides, some there to teach and others to relearn the lessons that are special to each river, and 11 students braving the chill of the early spring runoff from the Red Bud Launch Site and ending about 20 miles down the river at the Railroad Flat Campground.

The river's flow alternates between rapids and long stretches of calm water, surrounded by spring wildflowers blossoming along the river canyon's grassy hillside, which suddenly gives way to the rocky river bank.

"A river has a lot of similarities to life," said guide Anna Moore, of San Francisco. "Things are going great, and then you hit a rapid, and you don't know what way is up and what way is down."

The guide school runs three of the more popular rivers in the area: the American, Merced and Tuolumne rivers. The school focuses on all aspects of river raft guiding, from the subtleties of reading the flow of the river, to rescuing a rafter awash in the rapids, to leaving no trace behind at campsites along a river's shoreline.

The students were from all corners of North America, and their reasons for being there were equally distant.

For Heather Tindle, of Murphys, the guide school not only was about learning the intricacies of the rivers but also about helping her heal from the death of her brother, Daniel Tindle, who drowned in the Stanislaus River about two years ago.

"I have never been scared of rivers," Tindle said. "But now, some of this is about overcoming that fear that came after he drowned."

For Vince and Birgit Langmann, of Portland, the guide school was about keeping a 19-year personal promise Vince made to navigate the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.

After 19 years on the wait list, the stars aligned for Vince, and he will fulfill his promise on April 18, 2009.

"It was about 10 years before my name came up, but then we had to put it off because we had kids," Vince said.

First, Vince must learn about the life of a river, and that's where the guides' expertise on reading its flow comes into play.

If the river represents the ups and downs of life, the guides represent the family that help you through the rough times.

"It's all about the camaraderie," OARS guide Kate Wollney said. "A crew that works together for awhile becomes like family."

Wollney is the rafters' surrogate mother — she has a soothing singing voice but a fierce, commanding voice amid the rapids, where everything seems one moment from disaster. And like all good mothers, when someone is cold, she has a bundle of wool hats to keep their ears warm.

It's Wollney's 16th season river guiding, but her childhood in a Chicago suburb was as far from a river guide's stereotypical upbringing as Chicago is from a serious rapid.

Her Midwest life changed when Wollney was 14, and she went on a trip to the Rogue River in Oregon.

"It was the first time in my whole life that I felt at home," Wollney said.

The Rogue River is now Wollney's base, but she often helps with the California OARS' guide schools.

Guide Anna Moore is the fun sister, her laugh can be heard cackling from a distance even while she's thrashing in rapids.

On Wednesday on the Merced, she got tossed off her kayak, but she rode the white water to an eddy where she regrouped and continued down the river's flow.

Moore's full-time job is a night shift nurse in a San Francisco emergency room. She said that the two differing lifestyles balance her and give her the freedom to enjoy both.

Unlike Kate Wollney's upbringing, guide Clavey Wendt was born to be a river guide. Wendt's parents started OARS almost 40 years ago— he was even named after the Clavey Rapid on the Tuolumne River.

Wendt is the father figure of the group. On Wednesday, he was making hospital trips for the sick and reminding others multiple times to drive safely after a full day on the river.

Whatever the differing personalities, every guides' reasons for devoting much of their being to the life of a river is simple: "It's all about the beauty of the river," guide Karen Zuschlag said. "I mean, that's our office."

Contact James Damschroder at jdamschroder@uniondemocrat.com or 736-8097.