Campfire COMMUNITY | CONTRIBUTORS | EDITORIAL | WILD RICE | CANOESCAPES
WE FLIP THIS THING OVER?” —BOBBY,
DELIVERANCE PHOTOS: LARRY RICE
“HEY, WHAT HAPPENS IF
[ WILD RICE ]
WHEN IT COMES TO TOUGH RIVERS, THERE’S NO GETTING OFF EASY
It was spring, 1975. I drove south with a handful of friends from Chicago to tackle the raging river that author and poet James Dickey had mythologized a few years earlier. We were among a huge wave of city slickers making a pilgrimage to north Georgia’s Chattooga River after seeing the disturbing and powerful movie, Deliverance. Like many of our fellow adventure-
seekers, we had no idea what we were get- ting into. Before the 1972 release of this Academy
Award-nominated film, only a small num- ber of paddlers had explored the Chat- tooga’s remote, thickly wooded gorges. However, in 1974, due in large measure to its abrupt and unexpected fame, the Chat- tooga was designated a National Wild and Scenic River and boating use skyrocketed to roughly 21,000 float trips per year. Not surprisingly, a fair share of these giddy rivergoers were ill-informed and ill-pre- pared. During the year after Deliverance appeared in theaters, 31 people drowned while attempting to paddle the same stretch of river featured in the film. We knew none of this as we camped peacefully along
a manageable upper
stretch of the Chattooga. Te follow- ing morning we entered Section III—a 13-mile run of class II–IV drops and ledg- es. We endured several capsizes and bruis-
DELIVER ME FROM EGO
ing swims, loaned wetsuit jackets to two other canoeists we found on the verge of hypothermia and helped evacuate a kayak party that had suffered a near drowning. One of our canoes, my buddy’s prized
17-foot aluminum Grumman, never left the river. It remained wrapped like a shiny pretzel around a mid-stream boulder be- tween the vertical rock walls of the Nar- rows, a sobering reminder of our arro- gance and ignorance. Not even knowing it was there, we mi-
raculously stayed upright through noto- rious Bull Sluice, a killer class IV, before reaching the take-out in the dark. Hum- bled, bloodied and chastised, our only consolation was that we had finished the trip in better shape than Burt and Jon. Now, decades later, I hope I’ve learned
at least a few things to help smooth those choppy waters. But this I confess: when I think of returning to the Chattooga, I can’t shake a little lingering dread. Still, the remarkable thing about river
tripping is also my inspiration for a se- quel: no two runs are ever alike. Which means that one day I might be delivered down the Chattooga with a smile on my face instead of an arrow in my ego. Buena Vista, Colorado-based Larry Rice
runs rivers about 100 days each year. Te next time he tackles Bull Sluice, he’ll be count- ing on skill, not luck.
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