The Patriot Post® · Whitewater at Night

There are few things in my life that have focused my attention more than navigating heavy whitewater rivers at night. In the early 1980s, there were some endeavors and places that time had forgotten. The vibe was still the late ‘60s and charitably perhaps the early '70s. Since the statute of limitations has run out on anything we might or might not have done or who might or might not have been involved, I can tell you that I was working as a professional whitewater guide on southeastern rivers, and the calendar was definitely behind at least a decade or more.

Guides that work in groups down heavy whitewater rivers tend to become a tribe, as we were constantly and situationally aware of the fact that at any given second the smallest miscalculation can collapse a fun adventure into a chaotic maelstrom of survival. We depended on each other. When catastrophes did happen, by nature the competent guides rallied together, took charge, and brought order to the chaos with the ultimate goal of keeping our clients and fellow guides alive.

We were the best on the river at our venue’s runs, as our founder insisted on the majority of us having advanced river rescue and first aid skills. We were the first outfitters on the river to attain and perfect these skill sets.

So how was it that a small portion of this experienced and professional tribe decided to run a class III-IV whitewater river at 1 AM on a full moon night naked?

Easy. One of the craziest of the tribe was also extremely well read and quoted Langston Hughes’s poem “March Moon”: “The moon is naked. The wind has undressed the moon. The wind has blown all the cloud-garments off the body of the moon. And now she’s naked, stark naked. But why don’t you blush, O shameless moon? Don’t you know it isn’t nice to be naked?”

Somebody said: “Tonight’s a full moon. Why not?”

The well-read one followed with the opening of another Langston Hughes poem: “I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins…” And we did indeed know this river…

This river run became known as the “Moonburst” with intended double entendre. By necessity, this was a stealth mission, as it would have been highly frowned on by just about everyone not crazy enough to participate. The escapades of youth — and thank goodness there was no Internet or YouTube. In fact, come to think of it, maybe it didn’t happen at all…

What did happen a decade later was driven by the musings of a very experienced fly fisherman who was also the creator of one of the most effective flies ever presented on the rivers of the Southeast, the Isonychia CDC.

Several of us had been camping for a few days on the banks of our home river, and this guru at an adjacent camp recognized a mutual friend and wandered over. When a guru of a sport sits by your fire and offers opinions, the wise take note. His opinion on why we hadn’t been catching the really big trophy trout was the fact that, on or around a full moon, the big fish tend to be nocturnal feeders, and we had been fishing by day and lounging by the fire at night.

We were slackers! And this night was a full moon.

So we launched an epic if ill-advised 1 AM float tube run on one of the South’s premier whitewater rivers and trout fisheries. A float tube, by the way, is basically nothing more than a large truck inner tube covered in nylon with a sling for a seat you sit on with your legs dangling under water. It is a very interactive and sometimes awkward and personal way to experience the river.

During the two-mile hike up an active rail line including a 50-yard-high and 1/8th-mile-long elevated rail trestle to get to our chosen put in, I remarked: “Our guru and mentor is sawing logs in his sleeping bag. And if a train came along about now…” I was cut off in mid-thought as a friend replied, “Well yeah, maybe he’s caught enough big fish.” I said, “Yeah, advice notwithstanding, maybe he’s not crazy.”

The subsequent three-hour float was stunningly beautiful in the moonlight punctuated by moments of pure terror and adrenaline dumps. At the top of the heaviest rapid on the river, a submarine-sized brown trout rolled in front of me mere feet away. I could see his eyes and open gills in the moonlight. His tail then flicked the water as he returned to the unseen world we were trying to unlock.

That tail flick seemed to say “You really are crazy, aren’t you?”

Sometimes the wise give counsel and then sleep soundly while the impulsive and passionate follow their wisdom.

Thankfully we all survived, and no denizens of the deep were harmed as they were released. And they most certainly were the largest fish we ever caught on that river.

The wise one slept soundly in his camp around the dying embers of a fire perhaps older and wiser than all of us.

We, the impulsive, took a shot at what only youth can deliver as a timeless memory held in old men’s dreams.