Then everyone was quiet again. I climbed into my boat and sat for a couple of minutes, listening to Lava below me. It was still cranking. Maybe it was impossible to fight those forces, I thought, to go toe to toe with them. They were just too big and powerful. There were moments to paddle against the flow, to reposition, but as Harlan had been repeating, there were also moments to ride the current, to harness the energy of the river and move with it. On Upset, I’d felt that synchronicity, and I’d assumed that once you experienced it, you would carry it permanently. Yet it dawned on me that such connection wasn’t acquired once and then owned forever. That flow, that fusion of water and landscape and light—it was something that you had to constantly strive for. It was about struggling and flailing to find it once, and then again and again and again. And it would always be waiting.

I slid off the rocks, my boat slapping the water, and I was racing again toward the throat of Lava. Harlan’s voice was just as it had been at Upset Rapid—a kind of melding with my thoughts. I committed to feeling and reacting instead of thinking, letting my body move with the current. As I headed down the tongue, beneath the butterflies, beneath the anticipation, I felt gratitude for whatever the river would take from me, or whatever it would give.

My second run wasn’t dramatically different from my first. I paddled just beside the right eddy line and hit the same boils, braced as I’d done before. I felt myself going over. This time, though, I consciously willed myself to lean and lift the edge of my kayak. I bobbled for a precarious second and then shot by into the entry waves. Again, the V-Wave knocked me backward. I flipped but stuck my roll, angling farther out into the river to line up against the next test.

My entry into the Big Kahuna waves was far from ideal. I didn’t quite get around and got slammed sideways. I rolled up, enveloped by collapsing water and foam, and was knocked over again. But this time I stayed calm, closed my eyes, and surrendered to the chaos as the roiling forces flipped and spun me around.

Then the water stilled around me. My roll came easily, and I felt myself bobbing down the bottom of the Big Kahunas with Harlan’s jubilant voice yelling, “You’re through! You’re through! You did it!”