Harlan seemed a bit reluctant at first, but soon he had warmed up and was rolling on the wild tale of his recent attempt to break the speed record for kayaking down the Grand Canyon.

“I’ve always been infatuated by water,” he started, “how it flows, by its energy and power. When I was just starting out as a Grand Canyon guide, I used to look out at the water from the beach as it rushed by and think, we’ve stopped for the night, but the river never stops. It just keeps moving.”

As he spoke, I got a sense he was reliving that scene in his mind, seeing the moon’s reflection off the rippling water. “I didn’t care so much about breaking records,” he said. “I was more interested in experiencing the Grand Canyon the way the river saw it, to ride the flow, almost like current. Fourteen years after that seed was planted, I felt ready, and it all came together: the goal of kayaking the entire length, 277 miles nonstop and alone. I launched at midnight, right on the peak of a forty-five-thousand-cfs flood stage.”

Harlan had paddled through the night, everything going smoothly, on pace to crush the speed record that had been set way back in 1983. However, just below Grapevine Rapid at mile eighty-two, a giant boil slammed him into the canyon wall and trapped him there, stuck between the boil and the rock. It flipped him and pounded his boat for a long time. After several roll attempts, he pulled his skirt and wound up swimming three miles downriver before he could retrieve his boat and kick to shore. “I drained about three gallons of water out of each pant leg in my dry suit,” he said. “I was so pumped full of adrenaline, I got back in and paddled down to Phantom Ranch where I had a food cache.”

Refilling his water jug at the spigot, he noticed his hand was bright purple. “It kind of stopped working,” Harlan said. “It was seizing up, and I couldn’t rotate it or hold my paddle very well.”

So, knowing he was only a third of the way, he made the painful decision to abort his attempt. He shouldered his one hundred-pound, eighteen-foot-long kayak and hiked 4,500 feet out of the canyon.

The next morning, I retraced our journey of the previous year. This time, I kayaked through the inner gorge, the same roiling canyon where the Gypsies had swum and where Gypsy John had almost lost his life. And I paddled through Whirlpool Rapid, where I’d had my meltdown.