September 20, 2024
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Journeys have been on my mind. Possibly because I’ve been close-reading Moby Dick for some time now, I am thinking of seas, and adventures, ships and boats, of long walking, of trial and tribulation. So, as part of my summer fun reading, I picked up a book that has been on my shelf for far too long: The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History through the Heart of the Grand Canyon by Kevin Fedarko. I was immediately smitten with the journey, the people, the dangers, and the drama.
Fedarko’s book describes the fastest trip down the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon, made in a wooden dory. More than the speed, the bizarre twists of seemingly unrelated factors that affected their journey ultimately surprised me the most. The book does not truly glorify the journey or promote the idea that we should all crave speed. Rather, it examines the necessarily complicated scenarios which led up to and accounted for some of the craziness of any given moment in their journey. The book also demonstrates the connection between true knowledge and the seemingly tedious nature of learning. Theirs becomes a sort of river wisdom. The men who studied the river knew it by heart, despite the fact that rivers always change.
Because rapids change from year to year, depending on the year’s runoff, the rapids can be impossible to understand. Fedarko explains:
“One of the things a novice boatman realizes upon meeting white water for the first time is that the waves in a river are not at all like those in the ocean. The most salient difference is that in the ocean the water remains in a fixed position and the waves move in lateral pulses, almost rhythmically, often predictably, and generally in more or less the same direction. On a river, precisely the opposite set of mechanics unfolds: the water moves downstream, while the primary hydraulic features of a rapid – eddies, whirlpools, and waves of all shapes and sizes – essentially remain fixed. Among many other consequences, this means that while ocean waves tend to be far larger than their riparian counterparts, a stretch of white water on a fast-flowing river can achieve an explosiveness that is rarely encountered on the open sea.…
“Among the many problematic features lurking within the interior of a rapid, perhaps the most treacherous is known as a hydraulic jump, or in a river runner’s parlance, a keeper hole. This is a crater that forms on the surface of the river as water races across the top of a submerged ledge or boulder. Large keeper holes can achieve formidable dimensions – sometimes up to thirty feet deep and fifteen feet wide – and they are often paired with an enormous stationary wave, or ‘haystack,’ on their downstream edge that breaks back upon itself, and is thus constantly flushing anything buoyant – a raft, a wooden oar, a person wearing a life jacket – back into the hole in an endlessly recirculating swirl….
“Although keeper holes often form the deadliest part of a rapid, a host of other features must also be navigated, including boils, laterals, cauldrons, eddy fences, rooster tails, and always, of course, boulders.”
And despite the fearsome, awesome power of these keeper holes and rapids in general, guides knew very little about their dynamics. In the beginning, some of the river guides actually got to know rapids simply by throwing sticks into the water and watching the effects, patterns, and movement of the sticks. Fedarko continues:
“No two of these challenges were alike, and when Litton’s crew came to realize that the linchpin of good boatmanship lay in fluency at reading water, they all became devoted scholars of the current. The bulk of these studies took place when they anchored their boats at the top of a nasty stretch of the river, climbed to a vantage on the cliffs that afforded a comprehensive view, and sat down on the rocks to dissect the rapid with their eyeballs. At irregular intervals, one of them would stand up, pad back to their anchorage point, gather up an armload of driftwood, and start tossing it into the current. As the sticks hurtled downstream, the veil that concealed the matrix of white water was pulled back and the crew was able to take apart the features piece by piece, mapping them out in their minds. This they would do for hours, watching and waiting as each of them framed a plan. Then they would select another vantage that offered a slightly different angle and go through the whole exercise over again.”
What seems like child’s play is actually incredibly instructive. They then spent hours discussing, plotting, planning, and eventually attempting to pass the rapids in boats. In this way, over the series of a handful of years, the novices became experts and the experts became incomparably knowledgeable. Their practice proves their love of the river. It also offers an excellent example for anyone who enjoys the art of learning. The journey requires a level of tedium and exactitude that cannot be matched by mere interest. To know something so perfectly, one must research and observe as if a master. This group of river guides gained knowledge, camaraderie, and self-awareness in a way that is only possible through deep study.
While The Emerald Mile covers much more territory than I present here today (such as politics, hydraulics, boat design, tourism, dams, ecology, etc.), the book grabbed me with its lessons in education. It confirms that if one loves a subject, then the act of studying transforms from tedium into something more provocative.
Three men worked as one to set the speed record for a wooden dory down the entire stretch of the Grand Canyon. To me, Kenton Grua, Steve Reynolds, and Rudi Petschek epitomize what it means to be a student. They found a subject that they loved, then set goals, gathered data and knowledge, and failed a number of times before they ultimately succeeded. What could be more inspirational than that?
Photo credit: Shutterstock/ Francisco Blanco
