Exhausted and chilled, I gasped for breath in the eddy, letting its surge push me up into the bushes again where I could cling to an overhanging tree branch for a moment before going back into the hole.  I was hand paddling today, so instead of grabbing the branch with my hands I had to sort of drape my arms over it, like a cat wearing boxing gloves, in order to find any purchase.

 I was nearing the end of my physical limits.  I’d been going into this hole for some seven hours, with varying degrees of success, and now it was beginning to tell.  If I closed my eyes, the world would begin to spin uncomfortably.  If I clung too tightly to my tree branch, my arms would tremble with fatigue.  I did neither of these things, choosing instead to breathe the life-giving air with gusto and look up the eddy and into the hole again.  I needed this.  It was too soon to stop.

 This hole was a masterpiece of hydrology, a work of wonder, a schizophrenic weave of chaos and order- one side clean and smooth, straight force lines and turbulent aftermath, smooth entry curves describable with the most elegant of math, stunning in its simplicity and beauty- while the other surged and roiled, impish, capricious.  If the river had a mouth, this hole was it’s best early Elvis impersonation- a curling lip on one side, part smile and part menace.

A fold on the right pursed the pile upon its lips, containing it in place lest it run riot and consume the rest of the river.  To the left, below, writhed an eddy, undulating powerfully upon itself like a bushel of snakes checking their pockets to see where they left their car keys, then deciding they must be in the other pocket.

 I’d probed this hole a hundred times today, two hundred, three, but it never let on that it knew me, so I returned the favor.  Our interaction, though intimate, was not personal for either of us, and that’s what I needed just now- a wild enough ride to demand full commitment, without ego, just an elemental contest of forces. We danced as hungry strangers do, combatants, lovers, never quite making eye contact, a moth and its flame, occasionally for the barest of illuminating instances becoming one, a singular expression of boater becoming hydraulic… but the moment would inevitably slip if I pushed it too far or not enough, my own gyrations would fall out of phase with those of this relentless river-smirk, and the ride would end, one becoming two in a swift and violent eviction. I would either be gulped down its throat to resurface downstream chewed, digested, or dribbled  off the back of the pile and onto the eddyline, a resurgent collision between speed and pressure, gravity and equilibrium, a liquid riot of writhing collision, a rugby team eternally meeting a pack of cyclists in a game of ‘red rover’, at top speed.

 Again I ventured in, stroking across the eddyline, feeling my hull hesitate as drag and lift sorted themselves out, and again scudded across the pile to the far corner, where a spin into the rolling fold would kick me up on the pile, where good things would happen.  A fast hand-plant behind my back, a reach upstream, and my stern once again probed the muscle of the current, and time began to slow down.  Even on smooth hits like these you can feel the turbulence of water peeling past the end in the current, a thousand belligerent tugs in a thousand different directions each playing a different note, reverberating through your boat and body until you’re not sure if it’s you or the water or both that is singing.

 A stroke and a driving twist of the abs, another end, this one smooth, with no bounce, and I closed my eyes, feeling rather than looking, and this time I let the boat do its own work- no strokes, just balance and lean, and it obliged- end after end, each throbbing with the tone of a thousand notes, singing deep in the bottom of my chest, music and rhythm becoming water and flesh, sparking their own echoes in the vaults of my mind, each a flare of light fired in a synapse, tickling dark areas normally un-plumbed by consciousness, riding the quark.

 It was enthralling, this ride, and I surfed it as surely as I did the hole, with gleeful abandon and no pretense of absolute control.  Right now, at this moment, there was no past and no future, no self to distinguish from other- or was it no ‘other’ to distinguish from self? The distinction was unimportant. Right now there was nothing but this place, this pulsing sensation, and a sense of wonder tinged with a ruddy joy and a hint of sadness.

 If you accept the premise that eventually the dancer becomes the dance, you understand the idea of the paddler becoming the water, and the thought of the conscious mind abdicating in lieu of the subconscious cannot be far behind- they are all aspects of the same thing.  There’s a process, whereby you shed layers of resistance, peel back levels of identity until nothing is left but your true self, that part of you that’s insanely old but knows how to laugh like a child, the part of you that doesn’t learn easily but never forgets and never has to think about anything… this part of you is vast and powerful, reflexive and joyous, isn’t bothered by questions of ethics or diet or fear or restraint.  If this part of you ruled the world there would be no war, but plenty of ass-kicking to sort things out in a sportsmanlike, interesting way and we’d all be home in time for double helpings of dessert.

 The ride began to fall apart, as they all do, in little ways, before oscillating out of control and my failing strength was not enough to salvage it.  I recovered into the eddy, head spinning, unsure if it was my blood sugar running out, lack of air at this altitude, plain old dizziness from flopping around in the hole… it wasn’t important.  I didn’t wait for it to subside, just got enough air to lighten the leaden feeling in my arms and went back in the hole, back to the dance, a moth to a flame.  When that ride ended, I went back again.  And again. And again.

 I don’t know precisely why.  I wasn’t working on technique, I wasn’t counting ends or going for personal records, I was just doing it, compulsively, because something about it made me feel good and I needed that now, needed it badly.

 I stopped paddling that day when I couldn’t do it any more, when getting back into the eddy required more strength than I had in my arms, when getting out of the boat required two tries and falling over afterwards, when getting through a meal afterwards involved serious concentration to stave off a narcoleptic attack that would have landed me face-down in my soup.  I’ve ‘hit the wall’ before, and this was definitely it- my blood sugar was somewhere down around the interest rate I get on my checking account, my blood pressure was doing the limbo and winning, my core temperature was normal… for a pet iguana whose hot-rock has been unplugged for a few days.  I huddled in front of blasting heat in the car and couldn’t get enough.

 It had been like that a lot lately.  I couldn’t get enough of anything worthwhile, it seemed.  My lungs weren’t getting enough air in a room full of it. My ‘inner child’ was out for donuts, and hadn’t left a forwarding address. The best I could seem to come up with was to get myself so tired that my sleep was at least good and even then I woke up tired.  …but somehow the next day I had a bit of mischief in my eye, maybe a slight curl to one side of my lip… The King isn’t dead, baby.  He’s out there riding the quark, on a channel near you.