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islinn and I met in college and bonded over Above the rapid, our instructor disappears over the drop
cappuccinos and boiled perogies. She worried like a mother without a word. Aislinn is calmly coaching, as if I am her
about my regular diet of Pop-Tarts and Lucky Charms. We personal responsibility. The sequence to the roll she taught
shared a penchant for dreaming about far-away places too me just three days earlier flickers like a dying light bulb in
remote to make Outside magazine’s 50 Trips of a Lifetime the dim labyrinth of my memory.
and trying our luck at things that scared us. “Just follow me.”
That’s how I find myself scouting from a slippery bank I see her slip gracefully up the massive green tongue
as my first class IV resonates like the third beer on an and slide effortlessly across the wave into the eddy below.
empty stomach. A kaleidoscope of frantic foam, lashing The curling wave arcs above me. Water rushes my face and
tongues of dark water and air saturated with the river’s chest like a schoolyard bully in a game of Reeds. My boat
breath. The din of the whitewater drowns out the voice of stalls on its stern, then pirouettes and rolls upside down in
my instructor—a callow hotshot who turns away to gaze at what amounts to the only graceful part of my run.
the wave for vital, entirely inaudible periods of his briefing. I swim.
My stomach flutters. A rabble of butterflies is trying to Boils claw at my feet and threaten to hold me forever in
escape from its knotted clutch. With blissful ignorance and the deep, black water. I drag myself onto a rock, shaking
naïve optimism, I conjure an image of my boat slipping and swearing. Adrenaline courses through numb limbs. I’m
cleanly through the galloping whitewater. My faith in my a fighter who’s just lost after 15 rounds in the ring.
fellow paddlers is unquestioning. Kayakers are transformed I might have left kayaking forever right then. But
into knights; their boats are loyal steeds. Smelly neoprene Aislinn wouldn’t let me. When my wit had fled to hide in
is shining armour. Besides, nothing will go wrong, Aislinn vaulted towers high above the water, she brought me back
assures me. to the river. And when I did my first combat roll later that
We are opposites in many ways. Aislinn is lanky and day, I quietly thanked her.
graceful where I am powerful and clumsy. As a climber, she We now live at opposite ends of the country. Our lives
moves up rock like a feather caught in a rising thermal. I still revolve around paddling—hers in giving instruction
scrabble below her, using brawn and grit without technique and advice, mine in telling stories. Perhaps we have each
or strategy. She takes to kayaking with equal elegance. other to thank. —VIRgInIA MARShALL is the assistant editor of Rapid.
Rapid early summer 2009
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