This is a fleeting time in river-running history. Someday people will speak of Chinese whitewater with the same reverence reserved for the American Bison. There is so much of it, and it is so great and powerful, that it’s nearly impossible to think of its extinction. Yet within the next decade, most of the major rivers in China will be backed up behind dozens of cascading dams, many of which will dwarf American giants like the Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado.

Closer to home, the vast rivers of Quebec are falling victim to hydropower development. Despite an organized resistance, major dam-building programs persist. Now in the crosshairs: the Rupert River, which plunges from massive Mistassini Lake to James Bay. Hydro Quebec planners want to build five dams on the river and divert 92 percent of its flow. The Kipawa River—a 10-mile whitewater classic flowing into the Ottawa River near Pembroke, Ontario, is also targeted for hydro development. If the dam is built, it will drown what Canoe & Kayak magazine calls “simply one of the best, perhaps even the best, intermediate whitewater run in Eastern Canada.”

While dam-building continues at a frenetic pace in many parts of the world, the trend in New England has been to remove them. In 1999, the Edwards Dam was removed from the mouth of the Kennebec. But this was no Grand Coulee; at 25 feet high and 917 feet wide, the 162-year old timber and concrete structure was relatively minor by modern standards. The much-ballyhooed dam removals in New England affect small dams, most built in the 19th century to support small-scale agriculture or to power mills. The massive concrete edifices plugging the planet’s arteries aren’t going anywhere.

There’s nothing like the feeling of paddling on a natural river. Dam water is clear and cold in every season; natural flow is often thick with sediment, smelling of the earth, cold in the winter and spring and warm during the hurricane-driven summer storms. Recent years have been generous to New England boaters, but subtle changes portend harder times.

“It’s feast or famine,” says Julia Khorana, a member of AMC’s Boston Chapter who works for the Organization for the Assabet River. Rivers are rising higher and falling faster than previous norms. That’s particularly true of river systems that include urban areas, like the Assabet in Eastern Massachusetts. Sprawl has drastically changed the ability of many urban and suburban watersheds to absorb water. Rather than seeping into the ground, precipitation quickly washes over the impermeable concrete, into streams and out to sea. Less of the precipitation penetrates roads, buildings, and parking lots, which means less is available to replenish groundwater tables. And along the way, the runoff picks up heavy concentrations of oil, lawn fertilizers, and other chemicals. Anyone who has paddled an urban river at high water becomes viscerally aware of these effects. I’ve seen rainbows of gasoline and oil spreading in eddies, river water literally foaming with phosphates. Fertilizers washed into the rivers fuel summer algae blooms, which suck up oxygen and suffocate fish by the millions. “It stinks,” Khorana says.

The urban watershed is similar to that of a desert, where the sun-baked hardpan repels water. The result is fl ash fl ooding, followed by a rapid return to drought. “The only thing to do is build reservoirs,” Kimball says, noting that over time the demand for power and water will increase with the population. Call it the Catch-22 of hydrology.

A few months after my beat down on the Upper Yough, one of my paddling buddies called.

“Gooney’s is up,” he said. “Can you get the day off?”

Gooney’s Run in Virginia is one of the rare treats of Appalachian whitewater, a technical Class IV creek boasting nonstop action. Or so Jeff Wolfram and I had heard. It only comes up a few times in a good year; some years it doesn’t run at all. Now, after months of frustration, a spring snowstorm followed by a drenching rain had done the trick. I called in sick and loaded my boat onto my friend’s truck.

We drove into the foothills, through farm country and finally into the woods. The leafl ess trees were our only witnesses as we pitch-poled through thigh-deep snow. The fi rst rapid was a jumbled mess of downed trees and driftwood. A strainer. This little stream has no place in whitewater lore, but today it’s more extreme, more challenging, and more real than the mighty Yough. Around every corner we found something new. We never would run this river again, not even if we were fortunate enough to catch it with water. Creeks like this change every day. The water that brings them to life fi lls their channels with stray wood, erodes their banks. Makes them unique.

Gooney’s Run will soon subside as the snow blanketing the small watershed melts away and rushes downstream. In the summer, I’ll plant my hiking poles and cross it in one bounding step. But now, the creek is in control. Nature is in control. And it feels good. 

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