After a couple of feeble attempts, I ran out of air, pulled the skirt, and exited. As the vortex drew me around and around, tugging at my legs, Rob dropped in beside me, and I grabbed the stern of his boat.

“Hang on!” Rob yelled as the spin accelerated in a tightening circle. As we flushed down the world’s largest toilet bowl, the whirlpool vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Rob paddled me toward shore. “I thought I’d seen it all,” he said, “but being sucked down a ten-foot whirlpool is definitely a new experience. It was so deep, I couldn’t see the horizon.”

At night at camp, against the chirping backdrop of cicadas, I lay in the sand, trying to calm myself down and recover from the forces of the river. I was just glad to be on stable ground. We built a fire, told stories, and got to know each other. Everyone especially wanted to hear some stories from Rocky, and he told us the improbable way he’d gotten started.

“I bought my first kayak,” he said, “after a UC Davis outdoors program trip on the American River. It was before I even had a car. I caught a ride from college to Lake Natoma, bought the boat, a paddle, and a spray skirt, and paddled home to Sacramento—about 120 miles down the American River. I hadn’t brought food, but figs and blackberries were in season, so that’s all I ate for four days.”

“Wow, that’s quite a solo journey,” Rob said. “How experienced were you at the time?”

Rocky thought for a moment. “It was only my third time in a hard-shell kayak, but I was hooked.”

That had been the start of two decades of wild and crazy solo adventures, the last fifteen years of which had been devoted to Mexico and Central America.

“For me,” Rocky said, his high voice lilting and gentle against the snap and sputter of the fire, “paddling has always been about adventure. Lots of people love the thrill of the rapids, or going over waterfalls, and sure, I like that aspect, too. But even more, I like being in a kayak on the water because it’s the most natural way to travel through a river landscape. Gliding along on the river, at its pace, on its level, and on the river’s terms.”

I really liked what Rocky was saying. Although scary and intense, the rapids themselves comprised quite a small portion of a river trip. There was much more that made river trips memorable. Spending time with good friends you trust, experiencing amazing places, pushing the boundaries of your abilities, facing down fears. River trips had it all. I also really liked Rocky’s careful and inquisitive approach. Rob had told me that Rocky was constantly charting and mapping every drainage, access point, and location where springs flowed for fresh water.