small actions
The King of Cups
Every summer a whole tribe of us floats the Kings River, and this year was the 52nd time we’ve done it. More than seventy of us gathered at Hauli Huvila, the little Finnish campground on the banks of the Kings in Reedley: four generations, from the great-elders down to the newest tiny rookie, all in one loud, sunburned, happy heap. It’s a cool respite nestled under towering cottonwoods and wreathed with grapevines, with a community kitchen where the meals come together in a chaos of too many cooks, and dayslong tournaments of croquet, cornhole, bocce, and more. The theme this year was “52 Years of Wild Cards on the Kings,” and the King of Cups looked back at us from every souvenir cup.
If you don’t know the tarot card, picture this. A king on his throne, and the throne is floating on a heaving, white-capped sea. The water is doing whatever the water wants. Waves crest on one side, a little ship pitches on the other. And the king just sits there, cup in hand, calm as a Sunday morning. He isn’t fighting the sea, and he isn’t drowning in it either. He’s riding it, steady, holding his cup like it’s the easiest thing in the world.
That’s the whole trip, if I’m being honest. The Kings comes down cold and fast off the Sierra snowpack, and the moment you’re on it, you are not the one in charge. You can paddle a little and steer a little, but mostly the river decides. The people who have the best day out there are the ones who figured out years ago to quit wrestling it. You let the current have you, with the occasional, minor course correction. You point your toes downstream, tip your head back, and trust that the water knows where it’s going. That surrender is not defeat. It’s its own kind of mastery, and it’s the King of Cups kind.
I think that’s what the card is really about. Not calm because nothing is happening, but calm in the middle of a great deal happening. Big water, big feelings, a big weekend with seventy people you love and all the ordinary friction that comes with any pile of people that size. The work isn’t to feel less. It’s to hold the deep stuff without letting it tip you over. To be the still thing on the moving water.
You can’t float a river every day, sadly. But you can practice the posture in small ways, and I’ve grown fond of a couple of them.
The first is the morning cup. Coffee, tea, whatever your potion happens to be. I’ve started treating it like an actual ritual instead of a thing to rush through on the way to the day. Grind, pour, wait, breathe. It’s two quiet minutes of being the king on the throne before the sea kicks up, a small deliberate calm you make with your own two hands. There’s a reason so many of us are so particular about it (Aeropress fam, where you at?). It isn’t really about the caffeine.
The second is even smaller: one breath before I react to anything. When something lands wrong, or fast, or my Terraform plans all go sideways, I try to let the water settle for a single breath before I move. Nine times out of ten, the wave I was about to make was going to be bigger than the thing that caused it.
And here’s the part I keep coming back to. The king’s cup is full, and a full cup spills. That isn’t a loss. Spilling is a feature-not-a-bug of a cup.
This year my sister and her family came out from Denver, first-timers, sponsored onto the water by my partner and me. Watching my niblings take to the river the same way four generations ahead of them did, I got to feel a small thing I did ripple straight out into people I love. That’s how the whole trip works, really. Somebody said yes to a float 52 years ago, and the ripple from that one small yes is still moving, still carrying brand-new people downstream half a century later.
I don’t think you have to float a river to live a little like the King of Cups. You just have to pick your own point in the current and let some good spill out from it, on purpose. Make the morning cup. Take the breath. Say yes to the rookie. The water carries the rest.
