That evening at Tuckup Camp, the blazing sun finally passed behind the canyon rim, and the air grew soft and still. I sat on the sand, alone, at the river’s edge, reflecting on my experience at Upset. It felt like six years of kayaking culminating in one brief but perfect moment, and I wanted to remember, to bask in it for a little longer. Harlan had said the river was too big to fight against. My ongoing dreams had been of the river swallowing me, pulling me down into darkness, into nothingness.

Climbing mountains hadn’t really prepared me either, I thought. Climbing was more about bringing yourself forth, asserting your will over an extreme, inhospitable environment. Yet trying to apply that learning to rivers had failed. Perhaps, the secrets of a river were not revealed by trying to exert the ego over it, but rather by letting go and allowing the river to consume you, all the way down to the core, by simply giving in to the unknowable and writing music you would never hear. By surrendering, it allowed the river to erode everything and wash away the crust, until there was nothing left but that inner light, the same one I had felt many years ago within Terry Fox. Unencumbered, that light was free to flow out and fuse with the landscape, with the energy of the unstoppable river. Maybe this was as close as we could ever get to understanding, just a brief mortal flash of that light connecting with something bigger, something mysterious and infinite.

32

That evening, I asked Rob what made Lava Falls so challenging. In a river renowned for its powerful rapids, Lava definitely got the most attention and respect. It was the king of the canyon.

“Rapids form in three distinct ways,” he replied. “First, there’s a narrowing of the river channel. Next, there’s an elevation drop, in this case about thirty feet from top to bottom. Both of these increase the velocity and turbulence of the current. And third, there’s an uneven riverbed where boulders, shelves, drop-offs, and solidified bodies of magma all obstruct the water underneath the surface. Lava Falls is an example of all three factors coming together in a perfect storm. It’s rated 10 out of 10 at all water levels.”

“In March of 1995,” Harlan added, “there was a massive debris flow, like a flash flood on steroids. A monumental rainstorm sent soil and rock, all the way up to boulders the size of SUVs, cascading down Prospect Canyon, left of Lava. That event constricted the river by about 50 percent.”

“What was it like before that debris flow?” I asked.