I’ll never forget the first time I truly felt the power of a river. It was a perfect May day on Maryland’s Upper Youghiogheny River, at a place called National Falls. The guidebooks generously rate it a Class V, but negotiating the crux is relatively straightforward: paddle hard and hit the weakest point of the hole, a recirculating hydraulic that can trap unwary kayakers. Six strokes into the rapid, I realized I’d missed my target. Now it was up to the river. I’d taken my knocks in bigger water than this. On numerous occasions, surging mountains of whitewater had flipped my kayak over left, right, and backwards. The trick is not to panic. Stay in the kayak. Don’t lose the paddle. I’d been sucked without warning into any number of whitewater maelstroms and spit out just as quickly. But this time the river wasn’t letting go.
I flailed aimlessly in the hole. Every few seconds the river would flip me upright, and I’d grab a breath and, bracing with my paddle, try to keep my head above water. I could hear nothing but the river, a sound so big it reverberated in my chest. Scenes flashed in front of my eyes: streaks of foaming white, sky and trees, my paddling partner, now out of his kayak and moving toward me with a rope. The situation wasn’t desperate. I was just getting worked, or as kayakers say, rag-dolled. I can wait it out. I repeated the mantra I reserve for such situations. “I am not going to swim. I am not going to swim.”
Then my paddle snapped in half, and I lost my edge. I pulled my sprayskirt and pushed away from my boat. The river yanked me under, held me for half a count, and ejected me forcefully downstream. I half-swam, half-crawled to the rocky shore— humbled, and newly aware of the river’s limitless force.
At that moment, exhausted, battered, and humiliated, with water pouring out of my nose, I realized why I love to paddle whitewater: to taste the river’s power. Most of the time I feel as if I’m dancing with it, tapping into nature’s primal force and turning it to my own uses. “When I’m on a remote river,” says expedition kayaker Todd Gilman, “I feel very small, insignificant, and yet totally a part of something a lot bigger than me. I get as spiritual as I’m ever able to be when I’m stuck in some gorge out in the backcountry. That’s when I’m the most alive.”
And that’s just how I felt: alive. Off the river and with a good meal in my belly, it was time to go home. Driving across the takeout bridge, something made me stop the truck and set the brake.
“What’s up,” my buddy asked.
“Look at it. It’s gone.”
“Yeah, they shut off the dam every day at 3.”
Rough water. Photo by Skip Brown.
