A WHOLE RAFT OF DISCOVERIES
How a near-death experience for me and a second near-death experience for my friend, Kit, ended up teaching me more about boy-girl relationships than most others knew at my age. I also ended up with a long-term girlfriend with whom we had a lot of fun. And not just the physical contact kind of fun, but that was certainly part of it.
I’m Nelson, but the only people who used that name were my parents – mostly when I was in trouble for something. Mostly I was Nellie and my best friend since early childhood was Kit, although much later I learned she was really “Katherine”. We lived on a nice, tree-lined street at the edge of a small city. On the side of our street closest to the river, the houses were separated by 50 to 100 yards with each house having a large lawn going down toward the river. These hills provided sledding in winter with any kid in the neighborhood welcome to come and join the fun. Clearly, I’m describing an earlier time before liability concerns or ‘stranger danger ended much of the fun. And the “open land” ethic continued the rest of the year with pick-up baseball, football, hide and seek, or kick the can on many days and nights if it wasn’t raining – at least not raining too hard. Mercifully, our parents could trust us to go out, play, get tired, and then come home to eat or go to bed, depending on the time.
Kit was just over five feet tall with a smooth, round face and a short bob of dirty blond hair. Definitely a tomboy look, which she lived up to, but she had a girlish side as well and would notice a pretty patch of flowers on someone’s lawn where we were about to play a game and suggest we move so we didn’t trample the flowers. She may have been short for her age, but she was actually quite strong, but without looking at all muscular. I was perhaps five inches taller than Kit as my growth spurt happened earlier than it did for most boys. This made me, at the time anyway, a bit awkward and gangly, but not so uncoordinated that I couldn’t hold my own in the games we played
At first, Kit and I were the youngest kids that played these games, but slowly we moved up to be the oldest. Other older kids had moved on – either because of homework or school sports, or just wanting to feel more grown up.
It was spring, and Kit and I were finishing up the school year and looking forward to moving on to middle school next year. So, one evening we showed up and the chosen game was hide and seek. Kit looked at me and said, “I think I’m tired of this game, maybe I’ll just take a walk down to the river.”
I replied, “Yeah, maybe I am too. Can I come along?
“Sure, I’m interested to see if the flooding last week did any damage, and maybe it even washed up something interesting on the riverbank.”
So, off we went together accompanied by a few comments from the younger kids speculating on what we were going to be doing off on our own. That wasn’t on my mind at all, and I don’t think Kit paid much attention either. I mean, we were just a boy and a girl that had known each other for a long time and couldn’t imagine that we were anything more than friends and playmates.
We descended one of the lawns and picked up a trail that led to the river – a walk of maybe 15 minutes to the river. We could see where the river had briefly come over the trail, but nothing of any interest had landed on the trail. That is until the trail dipped down and there was a big pile of logs. Each one was the same length, about ten feet by my estimate, and they had obviously been washed away from a lumber yard upstream. All I saw was a big, messy pile of logs, but Kit suddenly cried, “I bet we could turn these logs into a raft and go rafting on the river.”
“Just how would we do that”, I replied.
“You know, my father is a construction contractor, and he has taught me a few things about building and how to move heavy things around. I’m sure he’d let me borrow a few simple tools and some leftover material. And you could help me build it.”
Well, it seems I had been challenged, and I wasn’t going to let a girl show me up. “O.K.”, I said, “When do you want to start?”
“Come by my house tomorrow after supper, and we’ll start by moving the tools and maybe some cord to start tying the logs together.”
The next day, I requested that I eat a bit earlier than usual since I was going to help Kit with her idea of building a raft with some logs we found by the river. I quickly gobbled down my supper and headed out. (As I write this now, however, I can’t believe neither parent asked any questions about this unusual plan.) Anyway, I got to Kit’s house and she already had a crowbar, some lumber, and some cord all ready to go. Kit carried the lumber and cord while put the crowbar on my shoulder – even though I had no idea what we would use it for.
It took us about 20 minutes to reach the pile of logs. I took the crowbar off my shoulder, and Kit immediately took it and started to pry on the topmost log on the pile. Once one rolled off, she attacked the next highest log until all were on the ground. I watched somewhat helplessly with no idea how she knew what she was doing. With all the logs on the ground, Kit admitted she was a bit tired and handed me the crowbar. “Here”, she directed, “Dig it into the ground at the end of this log and push that log forward until it is even with that other one.”
Once I had that task completed, I was directed to push the other logs until about half of the 12 logs were lined up. Then I said I was tired, so Kit took the bar and quickly completed the job. (How someone her age became so skilled with such a primitive tool, I never did find out.) Now, with the logs lined up, she directed how we would wind the cord up and around each log until each end was bound tightly together. By now it was getting dark, so we left the bar and lumber and headed home. “Thanks for the help,” said Kit, “You’re a fast learner with the crowbar. Tomorrow we’ll bring down some more scrap lumber along with nails and hammers to make a smooth deck on top of the logs. Come to my house after school, and we’ll take the next step.”
I went home, took a bath, and fell right to sleep. The next day, I quickly changed out of my school clothes and went over to Kit’s house. Here we picked up several more boards plus a can of nails and two hammers. At the raft, I felt a bit awkward compared to Kit as I swung the hammer, but she never criticized when I periodically had to bend a nail over because I hadn’t hit it right. We were done by dinner time, and Kit said she had something to do that evening, but perhaps we could finish the job the next day, that day being Saturday. I asked if we were going to finish decking the rest of the raft, but Kit just said she had a plan.
Saturday was a day we both liked to sleep late, so it wasn’t until after lunch – and I’d been asked to do a few chores around the house – that we met to go to the raft. Today, Kit just had two saws that she said we would use to saw a pointed bow on the raft. So that was the ‘plan’ she alluded to the day before.
We got to the raft, and the first thing we did was to push the now fully assembled raft closer to the water. This required a solid set of the crowbar in the dirt and both of us pushing on the bar. Once we had part of the raft hanging free, Kit etched some lines that started at the front and angled back to the upper end of the boards we had nailed on for decking. “O.K.”, she said, “Start sawing on the line on your side.”
I hadn’t done much sawing, so again I was the awkward one who had a hard time keeping the saw running straight and smooth. Soon, Kit had sawn a log or so more than I had. That was when a couple came walking down the trail along the river. They were holding hands as they walked and looked to be juniors or seniors at the high school. The boy was carrying a large blanket rolled up under his arm. We sawed for a few minutes more, but then Kit said, “I’ll bet they went into the little grassy clearing that’s just down the trail, and I wonder what they are doing there? I’ll bet they’re lying on that blanket doing who knows what.”
“So,” I said, “Did you want to perhaps go and sneak up and see for ourselves?” Kit nodded, and we dropped the saws to see how we could discreetly take a peek at their activities.
We found the entrance to the clearing, and then quietly moved along in the bushes next to the trail to the clearing. Right at the edge, there was a thick bush, but one that had a few holes that were just big enough to get a view without making the viewer obvious. Perfect, and we were quickly rewarded with more of a view than either of us could have ever imagined.
The couple had already shed most of their clothes and were engaged in a passionate topless embrace. Breaking the embrace, they quickly stripped of each other’s shorts and lay down naked on the blanket. How could this get any better for our young, innocent eyes. But better it got as he rubbed her breasts, she fondled his penis, and then he lay back while she positioned herself with her crotch above his mouth while her mouth engulfed his penis. Kit and I looked at each other with a collective ‘Oh My God’ look.
I also realized that my own little member had grown harder than I ever remember while I noticed Kit squirming a bit as she watched. Neither of us had any idea what they were doing. It looked totally gross to us, but the couple seemed to be in a state of rapture as they ministered to each others private parts. After how many minutes I couldn’t tell as I was so focused on the action, the boy pulled his head off her crotch and said something. She nodded and he went back to licking or whatever he was doing while also starting to thrust up into her mouth. Suddenly, they both went sort of rigid followed by much motion, and finally some cries of either agony or ecstasy. Give our experience at the time however, we couldn’t tell the difference. With that, we looked at each other and nodded that it was time to return to the raft and resume sawing.
As we sawed, I admitted that watching that scene made me feel different than I ever had before, and for the first time I wondered what Kit looked like naked now that she had grown from earlier days when our parents would allow us to skinny dip together. Still, I couldn’t imagine wanting to do what we saw that couple doing with her. Kit said watching the couple had had a similar effect on her, but she had no idea what exactly they were doing in that weird position. “I don’t think I’ll ask my mom about that, but next time I see my 16-year-old cousin Molly, I’ll bet she knows what they were doing.” I didn’t ask her whether she had the same desire I did to see the other one naked or, after her last comment, whether she wanted to do the same thing the couple was doing.
With that exchange we resumed sawing. Soon the couple came back by us with the girl noting, “Doesn’t look like much progress since we came by earlier, especially on his side.” Kit quickly replied, “Good help is so hard to find these days.” That seemed to satisfy the girl, and they gave no indication that they knew we had been spying on them.
After maybe another hour, we had a nice, pointed bow on the raft, and Kit said maybe we could try it out the next day. So, we agreed to each pack some water and snacks and meet back at the raft the next morning at 10. I said I would bring the paddles as my family had done some canoeing and we owned a canoe with paddles. We took the hammers and the leftover nails back with us but left the crowbar. Kit said we would need that to get the raft into the water.
The next day, I put the snacks and water plus a light windbreaker in a small pack and headed off to the raft. Again, I can’t believe my parents didn’t say anything about the fact that I was about to take a raft out onto the river. Kit said her parents also had nothing to say. I guess they knew we were both strong swimmers, and the river wasn’t all that wide. Little did they know what serious dangers we actually faced.
Some thunderstorms had come through during the night, and it was considerably cooler than the day before. I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and a hooded sweatshirt plus sweatpants and sneakers. Kit was also wearing a hooded sweatshirt, jeans and sneakers. I would later learn that she only had on a thin short-sleeved shirt underneath the sweatshirt.
So now it was time to grab the crowbar and heave the raft a few more feet forward until it dropped into the water. Leaving the crowbar behind, we took the paddles I had brought and started off into the river.
The water seemed to be a bit higher than yesterday, probably from some heavier rain near the river’s source, but we didn’t think much of it until we got out in the current and realized that we couldn’t paddle our ungainly craft upstream as we had planned. I tried working our way to the other side of the river where the current was less on the inside of a bend, but we were still being pushed downstream. We were already far enough downstream to be well out of sight of where we had started, so we just relaxed and drifted with the current. I said that I believed there was a trail along the river that we could use to return to the start. We’d just tie up the raft somewhere downstream and return when the river wasn’t flowing so fast. Kit agreed with that idea, and we continued to drift along for a few more minutes before we suddenly realized just how far we had drifted.
What brought us to that realization was the sound of a waterfall, which meant we had drifted nearly to the next town on the river that was aptly named Sylvan Falls. Now we had to get back to the bank we started from and had no time to waste. We paddled furiously and were making progress, but the sound was getting closer. we even wondered out loud if we would be better off just swimming for shore. We quickly agreed, however, that our clothes would not allow us to swim very fast. We thus redoubled our efforts at paddling to shore. It was starting to seem hopeless until I spotted a tree that had fallen into the water. From my canoeing experience, I knew that there would be an eddy behind that tree, so all we had to do was make to the outer end to the tree where we should be safe.
By now, Kit was paddling furiously but also wailing that she didn’t want to die going over the falls. I was equally determined not to die but remained focused on steering us close to the tree and then turning us just enough to get into the eddy. With a few final strokes, we pulled in behind the tree and the raft stopped moving downstream, and then even moved upstream as I maneuvered us over to the shore. With only about 100 yards to go before the first whitewater, it was indeed a very close call with almost sure death.
We now thankfully stepped ashore and quickly noticed some grape vines we could use to tie the raft up in case we ever wanted to return and try to paddle it back upstream. We were both pretty shaken by how close we had come to dying, and Kit gave me a big hug saying, “I knew how to build this thing and thought you were pretty incompetent, but you knew how to use it and saved us from drowning.” And that was not the last hug we would exchange before the day was over.
We then headed up through the brush, but soon came to an old clearing that likely was once the site of a farmhouse. A vague trail led out of the clearing up the river, which was probably the remains of the road that once accessed the farmhouse. After about ten minutes of walking, we came to a stream that was maybe 20-feet wide. The water wasn’t flowing, but it was quite deep – probably backed up from the river because it was so high. There was a log across the stream that rested on some old bridge foundations. It seemed too narrow to balance on, but I found a long stick and figured to use it for balance. Kit did the same, and I went across first. Once there, I turned to watch Kit, but to my horror her stick broke and she had to jump off the log to avoid otherwise going in headfirst. The water came up to her shoulders, but she could otherwise wade to my side where I helped her up out of the stream.
“Are you going to be all right walking in those wet clothes?” I asked. “I could at least give you my dry windbreaker for your upper body
“Oh, I’ll be fine, let’s just get going”, she said.
So on we went, but with the cooler temperatures and a steady north wind in our faces, Kit soon began to look a little stiff as she walked. The next time I looked back, she had fallen behind and was stumbling a bit as she tried to walk. I again asked if she was all right, and she just said she needed to keep moving to get warm, but for her moving was becoming increasingly difficult. Finally, she just collapsed on a log, shivering and miserable.
From my time outdoors with my parents, I knew that someone could die of the cold even if it wasn’t below freezing. I realized that this might be the case with Kit, but I knew that for sure when she said, “Oh, just go on without me, I’ll just lie down here and rest until I can move again.” That was how I knew many people had died when they just lay down when they were cold.
I immediately said, “No, I’m not going on, and if you lie down you’ll likely die. “I’m going to get you out of those wet clothes, get you in some dry ones, and then we’ll see about continuing on.
“But how will you get me in dry clothes?” she asked. “I’ll give you mine, idiot.”
Hearing no resistance, I started pulling off her sweatshirt and then the thin short-sleeved shirt she had on underneath. She wasn’t wearing a bra, so I didn’t have to deal with that. With her naked above the waist, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t notice the two little half-lemon-sized breast that she had developed along with some very stiff nipples pointing out from them. Later, I learned that it was the cold that made them so hard, but at the time I just thought that all girl’s nipples looked like that.
I quickly stripped off my sweatshirt and shirt and put them on Kit. Then I removed her sneakers and started the more difficult task of getting her wet jeans off of the legs. I grabbed both the jeans and her panties and managed to slowly work them down her thighs. Again, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t notice her little hairless slit, but most of my attention was on the task at hand. Once I had her jeans below her knees, I quickly finished the job before taking off my sweatpants, which went on much more easily that her jeans came off. I left my boxers on as I didn’t think they would add much warmth. Finally, I pulled off her wet socks and put on my dry ones. Her sneakers were too small for me, so I just had to put her wet ones back on my dry socks; but at least she’d have that warmth for a little while.
The next step was some vigorous rubbing of her legs to generate some heat by friction. I started at the calves but was soon rubbing her thighs right up to her crotch. For the first time since I had started the process of undressing and dressing her, I started to hear some contented signs from Kit. “Am I getting you warm?” I asked.
“Yes, and that feels real good as well”, Kit replied. At that point I had no idea what ‘feels real good’ meant coming from her.
“O.K., are your legs warm enough to stand up so I can warm your upper body?” With that, Kit stood up and I started rubbing up the sides and front, occasionally bumping up to her little breasts. I then pulled her closer so I could give her backside a good, heat-producing rub. It was then that I could feel her erect nipples pressing into my chest, and this caused a momentary stirring between my legs.
I then managed to somehow get all of her wet clothes either in my pack or on the outside before saying, “Do you think you can walk again?” Kit answered with a somewhat unsure “yes” and held out her hand. I took this as my cue to take her hand and start urging her along the trail. At first her legs would barely function, but gradually over the next fifteen minutes or so she was able to move a bit better. Finally, she was moving almost normally when we came to another stream. This one was only about six feet across, but Kit looked totally terrified at the prospect of crossing it. I could understand why, so I looked to find two sticks and made a big show of testing their strength. I found another stick and easily crossed the log. I then turned around, put one foot back on the log and reached as far as i could with one hand while using the stick in my other hand for balance. All Kit now had to do was take one step out onto the log before I could take her had as a further guarantee of not falling in. After some initial hesitation, Kit took that step and was soon safely across.
Now the trail was grass-covered but road-width so we could walk side by side. I never let go of her hand after she managed to get across the bridge. Kit could now walk without any help, but she never let go either and we went on up the road. I realized that we were holding hands just like the couple we had seen the day before, but I never suspected what was to come.
We arrived back at the entrance to the clearing near where we had launched the raft. By this time I was becoming a bit chilled as I walked nearly-naked into the north wind. I suggested that it might be a bit warmer and out of the wind in the clearing. I also suggested that we could hang up Kit’s wet clothes to dry a bit before she had to put them on to return to ‘civilization. At the entrance to the clearing, we found some bushes that were in the direct sun but still in the wind, which seemed like a good combination for drying.
Then, we went into the clearing where it was much warmer and out of the wind. Here I could take off my little pack, and we could talk about what we had just gone through. Kit’s first move was to move in and give me a really tight hug, saying that she owed me one from before when she was so cold her arms couldn’t move to hug me back while I was warming her up. She said that not only did she like the heat that I was generating with my hug and rubbing, but also that it was me who was hugging her. This again caused a bit of stirring between my legs. But then she said that, when I rubbed her legs, she had the feelings that she had had between her legs when she was watching the couple go at it the day before.
That last statement was all it took for me to come to the same full hardness that I had had when watching that couple. Kit was holding me so tight that she immediately noticed my swelling member and pulled back. I was about to apologize, but she said she was pleased I had that reaction and asked if she could take a closer look. “I mean, you saw all of me back there, it’s only fair that I get to see all of you.”
So, I stepped back and there was my little pecker sticking straight out through the fly in my boxers. “Oh, can I touch it”, she said. “I guess so, why not”, I replied. So her hand started feeling my erect member with comments about how soft it felt on the outside, but how hard it was inside. Then she let her hand slide up and back down my shaft while she marveled at how there was this soft, loose layer on top of the hardness. That motion caused me to utter a contented sigh.
“Did that feel good?” she asked. I could only nod in agreement. “Do you want me to do it again?” Again, I could only nod in agreement. With that permission, Kit started wanking me with great enthusiasm. Soon, however, she paused and noted just how naughty it was that she was stroking me the way that she was. I agreed and said I wondered if she would cause me to shoot that stuff that I knew guys shot into girls to make them pregnant – that being the limit of my sexual education at that time.
Kit said, “I guess after two near-death experiences today, I don’t really care how naughty this is.” With that she went back to wanking me, and soon I began to feel something way better than anything I had ever felt before. My little pecker started to tingle, the tingling spread down my legs, and I announced, “I think I’m about to shoot something.”
Kit, not needing anything to get het wet again, turned my member away from her body, but she didn’t let uo on her ministrations. Soon the pressure increased, and I craved the release I thought would happen. A few more strokes, and I moaned as I got that relief as I started jetting white ropes out onto the grass next to where we were standing.
Kit then asked me how it felt, but before I could answer she pulled down my sweatpants in a panic exclaiming that she was going to get them all bloody because she was having her first period. “First period”, I said, “I only know first periods in sports games.” Kit then explained that, while I seemed to know what boys did regarding human reproduction, girls had a more complicated cycle that involved becoming ready to be pregnant every month, but if that didn’t happen the somewhat bloody preparation came out and had to be absorbed in some way.
After that education, we finally actually looked at my sweatpants that were down at her ankles. There were definitely a few wet spots in the crotch, but none looked at all red. Kit said she still felt wet between her legs, but wondered what it was. She didn’t think it was pee. Being perhaps overly bold because Kit had just been ministering to my private part, I reached between her legs, took a swipe of whatever liquid was there. I first held it up to my nose. “This sure doesn’t smell like pee”, I said, “Here, smell for yourself.” With that, Kit took a swipe between her legs and quickly agreed with me while also noting, “You and me touching me there actually felt kinda nice”
‘Would you like me to do it again”, I asked. “Sure, I suppose naughty deserves naughty. Let’s see what happens next.”
So, I stuck a finger into her most private area and started to probe around. I found her little hole and tentatively pushed one finger up and in. This elicited a little moan from Kit, somewhat to the moans I had heard when I was massaging her thighs to warm up her legs. If that was good, then I probed a bit further, but seemed to hit a barrier. There were more moans and contented sighs, but nothing that encouraged me to probe further. Then, I started to move my fingers up from her little hole to explore the other folds that were hidden inside the innocent little slit I had seen when I removed her jeans. This move generated more soft moans until I hit a slightly harder little bump. “Oh wow, that’s the best”, Kip practically shouted, “Keep doing that.”
With that encouragement, I continued to massage that little bump while also using my other fingers to feel around down lower. Suddenly, Kit said, “I don’t know what’s happening, but I feel like my lower body is about to explode. Just keep doing what you are doing, and I’ll see what happens.”
I kept at it as Kit’s moans grew louder and louder before she finally practically shrieked, “It feels like I’m about to go over a waterfall, but keep going.”
Given our recent experience with waterfalls, I was surprised at her exclamation that a waterfall was somehow a good thing, but I kept up my ministrations as her body began to writhe, accompanied with more ecstatic moans. Eventually, Kit asked me to stop as her breathing slowly returned to normal. “I don’t know what I just experienced, but I guess this is another question for my older cousin, certainly not my mother.”
With that, we checked and found that many of her clothes had dried enough that putting them on didn’t feel like donning a wet bathing suit. I got my clothes back, and we agreed on a story that didn’t involve our rafting danger, accepted that she fell in a stream on the way back, and that we would go down tomorrow to better secure the raft for when we might be able to paddle it back upstream.
TO BE CONTINUED