The EXPERIENCE of RISK
Marion
Franck
July 28,1999
I headed off to Otter Bar Kayak School with the usual amount of tension.
The site is remote and lovely, the food and instructors are superb, but the river, like an unknown bridegroom, is paramount, and it changes with each year’s weather and water conditions.
This year, as we neared the end of the winding three-hour route from Interstate 5 to Forks of Salmon, I looked over the precipice to see that the Methodist Creek run, my old buddy, was down to a boat-scraping trickle. I should have expected that in July, but it made me anxious, as if I someone had snatched away my favorite paddle.
I got over it.
It’s hard to beat the pleasure of being on a river, any river, during a heat wave, and it turned out that our new run was fine, easier than Methodist Creek. It was refreshing to work on skills, rather than adrenaline control.
On Friday, my tension, which had melted like sunscreen on a warm back, reappeared as I listened to the “chalk talk”. Peter K, our head instructor, drew a graph to show that when a person boats entirely within his or her comfort range, that person may have a pleasant day but she won’t experience a “peak adventure”.
“Take Marion’s run yesterday,” he said, as the muscles tightened in my neck. “I asked her how it went and she said, ‘We saw a bear’. It doesn’t sound as if her skills were pushed much.”
Because I like Peter, I didn’t argue out loud. But spotting bear tracks in the sand, then seeing the bear himself, black, shiny and active, had been a real treat. What’s so great about going into one’s zone of anxiety anyway, I wondered, when a person can find pleasure in observing nature? The week of easier water was going just fine.
But then Peter took me and the other intermediate boaters aside and suggested we run an unfamiliar section of the Klamath River which offers three formidably named rapids: Little Ikes, Big Ikes and Super Ikes.
“Yikes the Ikes!”
“You’re ready,” Peter said.
From past experience at Otter Bar, I know that when a teacher says you’re ready, you are. On the other hand, I knew that if Peter suggested the run, it would be a step up.
When we arrived at the river and walked across boulder fields to scout the first rapid, tension coiled around my chest, and I found myself contemplating each placement of my foot, as if every rock might be unsupported. Peter began to explain our route, and I finally had to look up at the river, which boiled and bubbled and crashed on rocks.
Our plan seemed reasonable, and I wanted to go. I knifed through cascades of water, maneuvering my boat almost exactly on my chosen line. I pumped my paddle in victory.
At that moment, Peter was right: it was better than seeing a bear.
Marion Franck writes a weekly column for the Davis Enterprise, in Davis, CA.