To prepare, Rob and I went to Bear Creek Lake, just fifteen minutes from my house. We paddled around for a while, and Rob suggested I try to paddle in a straight line, keeping the boat going in one direction. The wind pushed against my bow, and I felt the boat turning. I tried to adjust by paddling harder on one side or the other.

“Big E, you’re turned around backwards now,” Rob shouted, “and paddling in the opposite direction!”

A bit later, “Ah, now you’re heading sideways toward the shore…” And I felt my hull scraping against gravel and rocks.

“Now you’ve veered right … and now you’ve done a 180 and you’re heading back to shore.” More rocks scraping under my boat.

Next, we decided to have me follow Rob as he paddled just ahead, blowing a whistle he had tethered to his neck. I was accustomed to following sound in other sports like skiing and trekking, and I’d experimented with following Harlan’s whistle on the Grand Canyon. But even with Rob’s whistle and the flat water of Bear Creek Lake, paddling proved difficult, as the kayak turned sharply with each hard stroke, and once it began veering, it was difficult to get it to track in a straight line. We zigzagged around the lake, and I was constantly making adjustments to try to follow Rob, still unable to tell exactly which way I was going.

“We’ll continue to hone our system,” Rob said, “but the most important skill for whitewater kayaking is having a bomber roll.”

“Can we settle for decent?” I asked.

At the put-in to the Gates of Lodore—a forty-four-mile stretch of the Green River—we stood cooling off in knee-deep water and splashing ourselves. It was a hot July and the temperature had broken one hundred degrees. The river guides went through a pre-trip safety talk and showed everyone how to properly put on their PFDs.

We had a pretty big gang—my dad; my brother Eddi and his two oldest children, Edwin and Brooklyn; plus Rob and another family. Rob and I would descend in hard-shell whitewater kayaks, while the rest of the group would ride in rafts. We’d also brought along a couple of duckies like the ones I’d tried out on the Grand Canyon.

The rafts cast off downstream. I could hear the kids’ happy voices chattering excitedly, bouncing off the river’s surface. “Bon voyage, brave, strong kayakers!” Ellie yelled as she, too, cast off.

I stood next to my boat on shore, kicked as much sand off my feet as I could, and slid inside. I stretched my neoprene spray skirt down tight over the lip of the cockpit, tightened the strap on my paddling helmet, and followed Rob’s voice and the screech of the whistle out into the easy current.