This is happiness.
I professed this to myself, victory beer in hand, as I sprawled out across the floor in the back of a Chevrolet Astro van. My paddling buddies Sam and Gary, jammed out in the front seat to a Grateful Dead cassette tape as the van carting our kayaks hustled up the hill. We had just taken off the Lower Yougheogheny River.
My Uncle Sam and I needed this day. Our pride had taken a beating after we had both walked off the river the day prior.
Going into the weekend, I knew it would be a challenge. The Lower Youghiogheny’s water level had been extremely high that week leading up to our paddling adventure. At 3.58 CFS, it was more than double the level on a typical release weekend. Still a novice, I had no business being on the river at that level, but I wanted to prove to myself I could do it.
Unloading my gear from my car, I listened carefully to my friends Craig, Lori and Katie, all experienced paddlers, commenting on how the increased level would change the river.
“It’ll be pushier.”
“There will be bigger wave trains.”
“The small waves will wash out, but others will get significantly bigger.”
At the put-in, to put my nervous energy to use, I practiced my roll. It didn’t help. My roll felt off. After months away from the river, I’d also lost some of my comfortability hanging upside down underwater. I had slacked off in the off-season and I now was feeling the consequences.
Still, I put on.
At Entrance, a long rock garden filled with holes, pour-overs and surf waves, I decided to catch the first wave to settle myself. I surfed side to side, getting reacquainted with my edges.
I watched my Uncle Sam paddle out to catch the second wave, and as he turned in the wave, the water caught his stern and flipped him. Sam attempted to roll, but missed and popped to the surface. The current carried him and his boat down stream as our friends rushed to rescue them both. Sam’s eyes caught mine and I felt both his confusion and concern.
Sam wasn’t just another paddling buddy. I’d met him on my first trip to the Lower Yough, when he took me under his wing and guided me through the rapids. He told me to spend more time in my boat and learn to feel the rhythm of the river.
“Paddling,” he said, was “all a dance.”
His strokes were fluid and relaxed, almost zen-like. Off the river, we bonded over our shared laid-back philosophy and our love of whiskey. After that weekend, I started calling him Uncle Sam.
But watching him swim Entrance shook me and shattered my confidence. If Sam, a man who’s spent many hours paddling this river, could swim through Entrance, then I was destined to swim too.
All of my friends, the experienced paddlers, were down river after Sam’s swim. I felt my heartbeat increase rapidly. I now had to rely on my own ability to read the river.
I remembered the line I’d taken through Entrance before.
Stay left.
I peeled out of the eddy and started downstream, trying to find the safe, V-shaped tongues between the rocks. But the river was pushing me too fast to properly scout.
I saw the pour-over too late. My boat slid over it, the sticky hole caught my stern and flipped me.
In an attempt to roll, I punched my paddle to the surface, but could’t catch the surface’s tension. The current was too strong. I panicked, pulled my skirt and surfaced in the quarter mile rock garden. I fought to keep my head above water and swim to shore. 200 yards below my exit point, I was exhausted, coughing up water and shaking. My boat was another 50 yards down river.
Then I learned Sam walked off the river.
His boat had ended up below Cucumber. He had no choice but to hike out of the gorge and find a trail down to retrieve it.
Back in my boat, I now faced Cucumber, the biggest vertical drop on the river.
Even at normal levels I had been afraid to run this rapid. And I was acutely aware of its consequences. The last time I’d swum through Cucumber, I’d cracked my helmet on a submerged rock.
My friends discussed the line. I was supposed to follow my friends Katie and Craig through Cucumber, with Lori behind me. But Katie and Craig were in faster river-running boats. They disappeared downstream before I could follow.
I hit a rock above Cucumber and flipped. I pulled my skirt and surfaced just as the water accelerated toward the rapid. I took a breath.
Then Cucumber swallowed me.
The momentum of Cucumber tumbled me ass over elbow, as my friends rushed to rescue me.
In the eddy, I collected my gear and tried to collect myself. Three in our group swam. Sam walked off the river. We discussed taking out at the loop. I was ready to quit.
Then Katie came over.
“Stay on my stern,” she advised.
She told me to drive hard with every stroke. She wasn’t going to let me swim again if she could help it.
I followed her through Camel Walrus, leaning forward and driving my paddle into the water as I punched through the hole.
Drive. Drive. Drive.
I made it through upright.
It was a small victory, but I needed it.
Then I looked downstream at the next rapid and realized I didn’t want to do this anymore. That settled it. I was taking out at the Loop.
Taking out at the Loop was bittersweet: simultaneously I felt relief and yet also the heaviness of defeat with every strained step carrying my gear up the steep trail.
We headed to Falls City Pub for a beer and a venting session. The beer helped to numb my bruised ego, while the shot of whiskey was my chaser for the spicy truth Craig delivered.
“You are perfectly capable of paddling the Lower Yough at that level. You have the skills. You’ve paddled the river before. You defeated yourself before you ever put on. And Sam’s swim, that’s when you decided your day was over.”
Gulp.
He was right.
This wasn’t the first time fear had convinced me to quit before I’d actually failed. I had a habit of imagining everything that could go wrong, then reacting to that possibility instead of what was actually happening.
Craig witnessed it on the river.
When I was scared, I stopped paddling aggressively. I became reactive. On the two occasions I flipped, I’d had what Craig described as a “deer in the headlights” look. Instead of planting a blade in the water and driving forward, I held my paddle parallel to the water, as if waiting for the river to tell me what to do.
Craig had seen me on my best days on water. I was loose. I joked. I played. I acted like a goofball. Fear had squeezed all of that out of me. I had spent the day trying so hard not to fail that I’d forgotten the main reason for being there: to have fun.
That realization bothered me more than the swims.
That night at the Ranch, Uncle Sam gave me a different lesson.
Sam and I traded stories from the day’s disasters over whiskey. He laughed as he told me about his “walk of shame” through town.
“Do you know how many people were willing to point out I had only one shoe on? No man, like I have noooo idea?”
A miscommunication sent his kayak to the Loop while he hiked to Cucumber to retrieve it, stretching the quest for hours. He even stopped at the local market to help his wife shop, still wearing one shoe, before finally making his way back to his boat.
Despite the swims, the lost shoe and the boat-recovery fiasco, Sam was all smiles. He wore the entire event like a badge of honor and turned the day’s misfortunes into one hell of a campfire story.
I’d spent the entire day trying not to fail and felt miserable. Sam had spent his day failing and somehow having a great time.
That’s when it clicked. The swim hadn’t ruined his day. But I’d let it ruin mine.
The next morning, over a pot of coffee Uncle Sam and I made a promise: we wouldn’t walk off the river.
At the put-in, we practiced our rolls. Then we went returned to Entrance.
Sammy ferried toward the same wave that had flipped him the day before and surfed it confidently, as if nothing had happened.
I followed Craig through the rapid, missing the pour-over that had shaken me the previous morning. I made it through.
Sammy and I exchanged a quick glance and a nod.
One rapid down. Then came Cucumber.
I took a deep breath. I leaned forward and paddled aggressively, but the rushing water spun my little Dagger Agent around. Suddenly, I was facing upstream. I froze and all the kayaking knowledge in my brain disappeared.
I tipped over.
Again, I swam Cucumber. But this time, something was different. I stood up, climbed back into my boat and started laughing.
I’d swum the same rapid twice in two days. But today’s swim didn’t feel like defeat. I’d stopped treating the swim as failure, as proof that I didn’t belong there.
Lori gave me a phrase that finally stuck:
Embrace the swim.
I used to think it meant swimming was part of learning the river. But I realized it meant something more.
You could see the swim as failure and beat yourself up about it, or be humble enough to chuckle about it later. It’s all your perspective.
Uncle Sam and I kept our promise and finished the Lower Yough that day. No walk-offs.
As I sat in the back of the Chevy Astro, the van rattling up the hill, I reflected on the last two days.
This is happiness.
My victory beer tasted that much better.
I had just landed at the Salt Lake City Airport, traveling alone for the night. It was 10pm, frigid cold, and snow was in the forecast. As I waited for the shuttle bus to take me to my rental car, a suave, well-dressed, man approached me asking me where I was headed. This scenario sounds like a mother’s worst nightmare, a scene that could be set in a Hollywood horror movie. “Don’t talk to strangers!” my overprotective mother’s voice popped into my head. If I were to take my mother’s advice, I would have shied away at his first attempt at conversing. But if I did take my mother’s advice, I would have missed out on one amazing opportunity.
