OCOEE

I have friends who think that life doesn’t get any better than when you sit in a comfortable place, with sweet tea and a good book. Don’t get me wrong; I like all of those but it does gets better, it can get a lot better. I’ve been dabbling in White Water since I was a teenager. A friend and I cut up some large tree limbs, lashed them together and rode the Blue River in flood stage. Instead of life jackets we had plastic jugs tied together with clothes line rope. We put in where the river was narrow and fast but not too deep. As side streams emptied in, its volume increased and whatever control we had over our makeshift raft, vanished. We were just flotsam in a roaring stream that dragged us through treetops, sharing space with all manner of floating debris. With only a foot or two of clearance under a highway bridge, we knew we had to get out. The fact that we both walked away from it is testimony to good luck.

We didn’t tell anyone because it was a foolish thing to do. There is "Crazy" and there is "Stupid." Rather than impressing someone we would have only proven our stupidity. But I did get the “White Water” bug. Over the years, canoe floating in Michigan and Missouri has been great fun and risks were minimal. Then there have been commercial floats on the Arkansas, in Colorado. Plunging down into and coming up out of those monster hydraulics is better than any book I ever read. Each time, I promise myself that we’ll do it again. The last time was four years ago. 

In the Great Smokey Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina, there are two, very special rivers; the Ocoee and the Nantahala. Both drop through steep, narrow gorges with channels full of boulders and outcroppings; the best white water east of the Rocky Mts. In 1996, kayak events for the Atlanta Olympics were staged on the Ocoee. I was there last Friday. There were a few shallow pools between rapids and a thin trickle of current here and there. At the White Water Center they told me, “. . . come back tomorrow.” Lake Ocoee is just upstream, behind the dam. During the week, they hold water back but on weekends, they send it down for kayakers and rafters to ride down the gorge. I did come back and the transformation was awesome. Hundreds of cars, kayaks, rafts and thousands of people, all pointed down stream. Ocoee was running 1,400 cubic feet per second, perfect for both safety and thrills. I watched for a while but had too many miles in front of me to linger. 

Next summer, my daughter and I are floating the Colorado; Lee’s Ferry to Diamond Creek in the Grand Canyon. That will take eight days but I can wait; I don't have a choice. But I’m looking for someone to go with me to the Ocoee, some other time, before I get too old to pull a paddle. I’ll always want to go again.