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37 We also stop for a long time—an hour and a half perhaps—to play at Lanier Falls, just above Raven Rock. We pull in above the falls and run the chute over and over and surf the hydraulic in Ethan’s unloaded canoe. Lanier is formed by a ledge that crosses the whole channel, with white-water chutes on either side. Ethan is an expert, and I run the left-hand chute with him, then body-surf it with only the life vest on, feet up to avoid getting them trapped in underwater crevices between or under rocks. Then I spend a good long time relaxing in the cold whirlpool bath formed in the eddy of the chute against the downstream rocks.The sensation is refreshing and quitewonderful, thecoolwaterboilingaroundme,leavingmesemi-weightless, nudged into the slick curve of rock at my back, my ears full of the music of fast-running water. There’s another party of canoes and kayaks on the far side of the falls. One guy in particular is a real expert, shooting the sluice over and over again, surfing the recirculating current at the bottom. All at once David recognizes him as a former student from twenty-odd years ago. They enjoy a little reunion there at the falls, catching up on two decades’worth of family and jobs. David and I unload the Green Monster and slip it down the chute perfectly, only to come to grief on an underwater rock at the bottom.We strike the rock hard and head-on and get caught the way a canoe will. It broaches sideways against the rock, and then the full force of the current pushes directly at the gunwale of the canoe and upends it.We bang hard and dump the canoe.The key thing is not to get pinned between the heavy canoe and the rock, and this we easily manage to do. Once we’re out of the canoe, standing waist-deep in the rushing water, it isn’t hard to tow it out of the boisterous current , bail it, and then haul it to the downstream eddy behind the same flat rock onto which we unloaded our gear, so we can reload and push off in milder waters. No harm, no foul.We unpacked the canoe deliberately before daring the chute, so if we did indeed capsize we wouldn’t get any gear wet, and now this looks like a genius move. We were all already wet, delightfully so in the heat, so it 3 38 The Uppe r R e ache s doesn’t matter that we took another swim. My one worry is that my new hat has been swept away, and I fear that a fewdays on the river without a good hat will fry my brain. But as we’re towing the canoe toward the eddy, David alertly fishes it out of the current and I slap it back on my head, cool and dripping. I had a feeling wewould capsize at some point on the river, because all day, from the moment we got into the car, David kept saying stuff like,“I’ve never dumped a canoe in my life.”He meant it to be reassuring, since I was not very experienced—or at least, most of my experience came a long time ago—and he has been on many rivers, many lakes, in many weathers. But, as I explained to him, he never had me for his bowman. So it had to happen.You just can’t tempt fate like that. Oh, the hubris. But the chute at Lanier is a heavy Class II, and after we recover our canoe and finish bailing the river out of it, David declares manfully,“If I had to dump a canoe today, I don’t mind saying that I did it here.” I originally planned to run the upper reaches in my kayak, in which I have paddled a number of the lower tributaries. It is fast, light, and sleek and has a sturdy backrest; but when a fifth member of the expedition had a conflict and could not make the trip, I moved from solitary paddler in a sleek kayak to bowman in an aluminum canoe, and when all is said and done, it has made the trip both more exciting and more memorable—not to say more satisfying Surfing the hydraulic at Lanier Falls (AmyWilliamson photo) [3.135.183.89] Project MUSE (2024-04-25...

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