Tamar Glouberman’s connection to the past is both a blessing and a curse.
While she was easily able to delve back into memories from her years as a whitewater rafting guide for her new book, that vivid recollection has, at times, trapped her.
“I feel like I live with my past a lot closer than a lot of people do,” she says. “A lot of people are like, ‘That’s ages ago. I can’t believe you haven’t gotten over it.’ In some ways, if you’re writing a memoir, it’s helpful. But if you’re trying to move on with your life, it can be like quicksand.”
That might be true, but it’s certainly a benefit to readers of Chasing Rivers: A Whitewater Life.
In the (part-time) Whistlerite’s adventure memoir, the reader is taken along on more than a decade of whitewater guiding trips and other outdoor adventures—some of which sound dreamy and compelling and others that take a dark turn.
But what gives the book its heart is Glouberman’s vulnerability about her doubts, mental-health struggles, and relationships.
“I got a couple of emails from people saying, ‘Reading your book made me feel less alone. We had very different lives in a lot of ways, but went through some of the same things.’ I think that’s why most people who publish memoirs do it. Part of me was like, ‘Be brave and do it and see. Maybe people won’t relate, but maybe they will.’”
Whistler readers in particular will likely recognize their own mountain pursuits in Glouberman’s deep passion for the river—and of course there are direct parallels in her descriptions of multi-day trips deep into the wilderness.
“Every rapid felt like a homecoming,” she writes in the book after time away from the river. “We crashed through holes and waves while keeping everyone inside the raft. I didn’t have that ultra-focus of big rapids but I still felt very present on the river, enjoying each splash and bounce … By the end I couldn’t believe I’d had qualms about coming back. The way the vibrations of the current travelled from the paddle blade, up the shaft and into my hands made me feel like I’d reconnected with the outside world, instead of hiding in the cocoon I’d spun around myself. I wanted the day to never end.”
While, to this day, Glouberman says raft guiding was her favourite job—even more so than an epic-sounding gig guiding tourists in the Galapagos—she doesn’t shy away from its challenges. She wrestles with the enormity of having people’s lives in her hands, and the aftermath when a trip goes terribly wrong.
“I’ve had a lot of amazing jobs and I probably shouldn’t say this, but the one I’ve loved the most is raft guiding,” she says. “Every day in the Galapagos people would say to me, ‘I wish I had your job.’ I’d say, ‘You really don’t. You wouldn’t have everything you have if you had my job.’”
To that end, part of her motivation for writing the book was to share her unique perspective as a woman who hasn’t gotten married, settled down, and had kids—a trajectory that at the very least would have altered her adventurous career.
“The path of not getting married and having kids and having a life where the outdoors are such a huge part of my life, I don’t read that many books by adult women in that situation. But I know I’m not the only one. I would’ve liked to have had more books like that,” she says.
Ultimately, the book grew out of Glouberman’s thesis from the University of British Columbia’s Creative Writing MFA program. It was that online learning experience—and its somewhat liberating faceless feedback—that gave her the courage to share so many details of her life openly.
“It’s weird writing about your own life,” she says with a laugh. “I don’t know how much I want to share. There’s a lot of things in the story that, until I wrote it down, I hadn’t talked about it with anybody. I don’t know if I want to share this stuff. I’m OK with strangers reading it, but people I know? I still don’t know.”
Glouberman is taking part in a reading event called Chasing Adventure with Squamish author Lisa Duncan at the Whistler Public Library on Feb. 23.
For more, visit whistlerlibrary.ca/events.
