Chattooga: Descending into the Myth of Deliverance River

Approaching the Bull

Approching the Bull SECTION III FROM FALL CREEK TO SECTION IV AT WOODALL SHOALS This page intentionally left blank These games, these contests, these grunting conversations of body to body, father to son, are not substitutes for other ways of being alive. They are the sweat and sweatything itself. SCOTT RUSSELL SANDERS Hunting for Hope SIMPLY WANT to get back on the river,but it's taken us longer to find the Fall Creek put-in than weexpected. Driving in off Highway 76 we stopped at Bruce Hare's Chattooga Whitewater Shop to ask directions. The shop sits on a hill and is a landmark—a place to stop and confirm a river level, buy a missing piece of equipment or a new boat, or, like us, ask directions. After directions, we somehow miss our turn anyway. I'm driving. I'm talking too much and not watching the road enough. Dykes Blackmon is my copilot. He's a former student of mine, and wehavefiveyearsto catch up on. When I realize we're lost, I ask Dykes to glance down at his feet and grab the dry bag with the river guidebook in it. "What's the number of that Forest Service road?" He opens the book on his lap, and clarifies , "Stay on Forest Service Road 722." Rob, my soon-to-be stepson, is pushed in behind the seat withall the gear. He just wants to get to the river. He's fifteen and his frame is already over six feet. Riding all morning in the back of a truck twisted in like some contortionist is not his idea of fun. He shifts from side to side. He listens as we haggle over road numbers and distances. I According to the tiny, green square government road signs with numbers on them, weare on 722, but instead of depositing us at the trailhead above the Chattooga, the gravel road dead-ends in a front yard among a spray of panicked chickens. Briefly I pause in the driveway and take in several abandoned vehicles up on blocks and the tumbledown house wedged between big hemlocks at the end of the drive. "Where you going, city boy?" I sayasI quickly put my old Toyota truck in reverse, mimicking one of the Griner brothers taunting lost Lewis Medlock in Deliverance. "It ain't but the goddamn biggest river in the state." As we drive on through Forest Service land I conclude weshould have stayed with the certainty of old pleasures.A river-running creature of habit, I'm not used to breakingup the Chattooga in this(for me) new way.I've always preferred the more popular runs on Section III, a trio of choices: the almost-three-mile sprint from Earl's Ford to Sandy Ford, the day-long almost-thirteen-mile leisurely float from Earl's Ford to the 76 bridge, or the ten-mile run from Sandy Ford to the 76 bridge. Each choice has its pleasures. Each has its advantages. Tradition while running rivers is one advantage that is not overrated. I like the idea of getting to know a river in all its moods, and the more descents of a familiar section in a lifetime, the better you know it. In my mid-forties I began to think often of my lifetime of rivers and develop the concept as I floated down the Chattooga, Lawson's Fork, the Nantahala, the three rivers I will probably always know best. They are all very different rivers and cover the variety available in the southeastern piedmont and mountains. Lawson's Fork is my home river, a piedmont stream running through Spartanburg prone to pollution and crowding from subdivisions and strip malls. In spiteof the river's impaired state, Lawson's Fork revealsitsbeauty to me each time I paddle there. There are six or seven rapids in the stretch I usually paddle, and when I am lucky enough to catch the river after a thunderstorm or in spring rains, several of the rapids can approach the Chattooga in excitement. I worked in the NOC 158 CHATTOOGA store on the Nantahala, a swift tourist stream on the flank of the Smokies in western North Carolina. For the better part of a decade I paddled it as a daily discipline. I learned to see past the hundred thousand rafters to the river beyond. I've somehow made it past the twenty-year...