“When I was a boy,” said my father, “we had herds of deer bigger than that come right up behind the cabin and graze on our potato plants.”

To me, that seemed an eternity. “Was that before the Civil War?” My father laughed, and the sound startled those deer remaining. They ran up the bank and were gone.

As we proceeded, the stream became faster. Now there were occasional rocks to avoid, with white foam flecked around their upstream surfaces. My father warned us to keep a sharp lookout for underwater dangers and snags.

Disaster, when it came, was sudden and unexpected.

We turned a curve in the stream, and all was tranquil and laughing, for my father had just finished chastising Tim for catching a “crab” with his paddle. Then we were suddenly in a raceway of white water and black, forbidding stones. My father yelled: “Tim, paddle with all your might! Lizzy, take the extra paddle and face front. Push off any stones you see. I’ll steer. Call out the channel.”

My heart sank. I had never “called out the channel” before except in a rowboat while stalking frogs on a summer evening. But there was no choice now, so I scanned the water ahead and watched like a hawk for dangers beneath the surface.

We were racing downstream now like a four-horse rig on its way to the fair. The channel seemed clear, so I kept silent. My father was busy shouting to Tim—“Paddle right! Paddle left!” The canoe kept right end to, however. While there was a slight element of fear, I was thrilled and laughed each time we shot past a threatening outcropping of rock.

Then the channel narrowed, and I began to shout: “Rocks on the right! Look out ahead!” Tim stroked as hard as he could to give us steerageway, and my father, perched high up on the stern of the canoe, watched and steered our fragile vessel between the stone walls of the rampaging stream. They shot past us like the bridge supports when we’d taken a train to Albany, white blurs caught only in the corner of the eye. From far in front I heard an even more frightening sound—the roar of white water. “Rapids ahead!” I shouted, but it was no use. There was no way we could avoid them. We sped between the ever-higher walls. Now the waves that backed up behind some of the underwater reefs cascaded into the canoe, drenching me along the way. I held my paddle ready, and once had to jam it against a floating tree trunk that threatened to capsize us. The impact numbed my hands, and it was all I could do to hang onto the paddle.

“Paddle right!” my father shouted to Tim, and the canoe sluiced to one side, barely missing an underwater ridge I hadn’t seen. There was no word of reproach, but I knew I had failed and had almost scuttled our fragile craft. Guilt rose in me like seasickness.