“Keep going!â€
This was bad advice. The nose of the canoe was in the eddy and the tail was caught in the swift current. This, of course, swung the canoe right around, and so we ran the rapids backwards.
Not a particularly auspicious start to a week of running rapids down the White River. Being Irish, however, we were ready to accept that running the rapids in the conventional way would merely have been predictable – this way it was poetry.
We were in the geezer canoe. Between us, Jim and I had been paddling flatwater for a third of a century, but we had never done whitewater. Our good friends Michael and Ann invited us to join them on the White River in early May “so that there would be enough waterâ€. We accepted, and thus began a week of unadulterated fear interrupted very briefly by blasts of adrenaline and unabashed machismo. Jim, whose only previous experience with whitewater was cold water in his morning shower, got particularly cocky as we continued to chalk up a series of near-death experiences in swifts and class I rapids. “The word for today†cried Jim, as he woke up one morning half way through the trip, “is Glory!â€
There was certainly “enough waterâ€. I was mesmerized by the extraordinary power of the river as it surged over the several falls and the bigger rapids. What kind of canoeist or kayaker would ever attempt these? For Jim and me, there was never any hope of battling the river – we learned quickly that the only hope of moving in the water was to do only what the river permitted.
The uneasy respect we had for this beautiful river continued to grow as it gained in volume approaching Lake Superior. This was not expected to be a spiritual experience, but only a person of a very mean soul indeed could fail to reflect on the vitality of the river and of its rocks and trees and skies. Under Mike and Ann’s wise teaching during the week, we gradually became a part of this glorious place.
Deep beneath our learned Christianity we remembered the ancient reverence for the gods of such places.