| The Material World |
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| Written by Doug Ammons |
| Tuesday, 01 January 2008 01:53 |
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Does the construction of whitewater parks bring nature to us, or take it away? Over the past few years, the creation of several dozen whitewater parks has opened up a peculiar situation in kayaking. Not everybody feels this by any means, but some of us who were lured to rivers by the natural beauty now feel uneasy about the collision of two opposing goals—the original ethic of experiencing the natural world versus driving a bulldozer into the river to make it do what we want. Originally, many of us went to the outdoors to experience a greater world where human concerns were small and nature spoke with its true voice. Probably nowhere else can people experience so directly one of the powers that shaped the world than while kayaking a wild river. Our ideal was to adapt ourselves to the river, learning its language and following its path. In contrast, there has been a concerted movement among whitewater aficionados and economic developers to create play waves, rapids, and even entire circular whitewater rivers run by pumps. The goal here is different; it is to maximize our fun by changing the river—or even creating an artificial river—to suit our desires. There are many arguments pro and con. Some assert these changes will bring kayaking tourists to mountain towns or fill a need in places where there is no river or whitewater. The parks would help people hone their skills and introduce a huge number of spectators to a sport they’d otherwise never see. Plus, if we have the power to do it, why not maximize our fun? I don’t want you to get the impression I hate these things. Actually, I was doing this on a smaller scale years ago in the 1980s. In what used to be a mucked-out irrigation canal, I spent a lot of time freezing my butt off, building eddies with wire mesh cages and piling rocks, rolling boulders half the size of a sofa, and stringing wire to hold slalom gates. I even built a surf wave by maneuvering large chunks of cement and some of my own ready mix to solidify the piles at low water. I did a lot of it at night to avoid scrutiny. For a number of years when the water rose, I had a nice little slalom practice site, and just downstream a little surf wave with perfect eddies to cartwheel and squirt in on either side. Gradually, with winter’s thick ice prying things loose and high water shoving anything movable downstream, nature dismantled my work. Another case is the creation of a great playspot, Brennan’s Wave, here in Missoula, named after Brennan Guth, a friend, excellent paddler, and widely liked hometown boy who drowned March 15, 2001, on the Rio Palguin in Chile. For as long as I remember, there was an old broken weir just downstream of the Higgins Bridge with rebar sticking out of it. Originally put in place by the Orchard Homes Ditch Company in the 1920s to maintain flow into their ditch, it crumbled over the years, leaving a dangerous hazard. However, high water gave a glimpse of what was possible. The crumbling pile of cement and rebar created a sticky, violent, dynamic hole, but without a good eddy. The place was a handful. You also had the nice thought that just underwater lay that rebar, as chunks of the weir with twisted rods of three-quarter-inch steel were littered downstream. I lobbied hard to replace it with a designed feature that would give the ditch company its head while also making a non-lethal playspot. The city’s redevelopment department thought it was a great idea, but the time wasn’t right. There were too few paddlers in town to make any difference, the fishermen didn’t want anybody touching the river, crumbling weir or not, and the ditch company treated me like I was insane. This same project finally was pushed through as Brennan’s Wave two years ago, 18 years after the first attempt. The difference was a combination of private backing, patience by the several people to see it through, 50 times as many kayakers, development of the riverfront park system in Missoula, and the motivation of honoring Brennan after his death. Whether we like it or not, rivers change. And whether we build spots to honor friends, create competition arenas, or just to have fun, the questions remain. For the 1996 Olympics, the dewatered part of the Ocoee River was made into a slalom course. The thought went, “It’s a dead river, so why not make it useful?” It occurred to me at the time that this is exactly the argument people make about salvage logging after a fire. The trees are dead, why not use them? If you accept the one, it is hard to argue against the other, suggesting we should be careful about where our choices may lead. The question is, how does changing a river to enhance play features fit with respect to a naturalist ethic? How does the will to control the river itself fit with our desire to be challenged? I’m not taking sides, because I see there is value in both and exchange across them. Clearly, my past efforts show the same compromises. I think it’s worth considering the problems and implications. Like all of its adventure-sport cousins, whitewater kayaking began with a sense of loving the outdoors, being close to nature, and for some of us, the enticement of being in places that were huge, empty, and beautiful. The goal, often unspoken in our youthful minds, was to experience mountains and rivers on their own terms, and we relished the confrontation of cold and struggle, and sought to live within powers that were far beyond us. It was always taken for granted by dam builders, miners, and engineers that one could—and should—shape the natural world like clay to do the bidding of humans. Natural resources were there to be used, and it was a sin to leave them lying in the ground, or in the case of rivers, flowing in their natural course, when we could make use of them to run a power plant or store irrigation water for parched farmland. It’s curious that this mindset has made an end-run around our Earth Days and green sensibilities to embrace the excavators, cement, and backhoes in the river. It’s no longer to make electricity or grow things that people eat; it’s just to have fun. Surely we have undertaken this with less entitlement and more sensitivity to the land, and we’re not asking to put entire rivers in pipes, de-water a riverbed, or flood a hundred square miles of land with a dam. But the same thing is happening and nobody has taken a step back to ask what it might mean. Features that we used to go to in order to escape the artificiality of a city now are being recreated by our own hands for our own purposes. Is the six feet of space around us on a surf wave or in a hole the only thing that matters? Isn’t that a bit self-centered? We‘re in the early adolescence of what might be done. Perhaps the biggest quandary that juts its face into the scene is what confronts me when I think about going to Brennan’s Wave. I’m not so sure Brennan would have spent much time at his namesake. He paddled all over the world, eagerly going places for new and different challenges. I’m certain he would have liked a good playspot to hone skills, work out, or enjoy a session five minutes from his house. I am equally sure that he, as somebody who was philosophically minded, would be asking questions. Where will this lead? Perhaps to a renaissance in the number of people who will enjoy and value free-flowing rivers. Or, to a giant distraction, where those who like the convenience, but lack the desire to escape into the real nature, stay in the city and leave the wilderness to others. Maybe it won’t lead anywhere. Only a few dozen dedicated paddlers seem to frequent Brennan’s Wave, despite its being there 24/7. When the Lochsa is in, there are even fewer. I don’t have answers, and sometimes I think the questions don’t even matter. I went out one time to Brennan’s Wave last spring. I’d passed over the bridge while on an errand, looked down at the river as I was driving by, and saw the usual hole had been transformed by the high runoff into a beautiful set of waves. It was raining, nobody was out, and it struck me that after 25 years of paddling on it, and decades of living by it, the river was showing a side of itself that I’d never seen. I went home and got a boat. I was rusty, but ferried out to the center wave. It was four feet high and 40 feet across, a beautiful, big surging green animal, and I spent the next two hours cutting back and forth, spinning, backsurfing, and carving. It was quickly clear why nobody else was out. The bridge was almost directly above me, and downtown just a block away. It was rush hour with cars passing, honking, sirens going, people walking, but out there on the water, I was in another world. The river silenced it all. The last sunlight came through a break in the clouds, showing a rainbow right over my shoulder. Sitting in the boily eddy behind the little island, the blackbirds wrestled in the dripping willow bushes right over my head, trilling in the final sunlight. The swallows dove over the top of the wave, circling up high and swooping down to shoot past me just off the water. I thought about Brennan. If he were still alive, he’d have been right there beside me—just like it used to be—the only ones out at twilight as it started to rain again. In the sounds of the rushing water and the blackbirds’ song, I could almost hear him talking about this artificial wave, Brennan’s Wave, a little embarrassed it was named after him but happy it was here. In my mind, he and I talked about the problems with artificial whitewater. I don’t remember all he said, but I remember his meaning. Maybe we made the spot, maybe the excavators set all those boulders down to create a ledge, but this wave was as real and as beautiful as anything could possibly be. The river took what was artificial and transformed it into living water. There was no paradox. All that was necessary was the right frame of mind and the flowing water. Doug Ammons ( www.dougammons.com) is a world-class kayaker and author of The Laugh of the Water Nymph. Originally Published, Paddler January-February 2008 |
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