Getting My Roll On: Whitewater Kayaking as My Metaphor for Life
by Jennifer S. Dail
“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.”
(A. A. Milne, Pooh's Little Instruction Book)
About a year-and-a-half ago, I began kayaking after meeting my husband, Garth Brown, who convinced me to give the sport a try. Like many others, I quickly fell in love with the adrenaline rush and beauty of whitewater kayaking. However, I faced a steep learning curve and a high frustration level, and I realized I had not recently had to learn something with which I had no prior experience.
This learning curve had a whole other element for me, too. Have you ever tried to learn how to do something from your significant other? People aren’t lying when they say it doesn’t really work! Garth taught me a lot about the basic paddle strokes and river-reading skills, but teaching me to roll presented a challenge our marriage did not need. My frustration level was so high that cuss words started flying from my mouth and off Garth’s back very quickly. Garth was a champ about letting my loud F-bombs roll off of him, but because of my frustration level (and likely his unspoken one), he hesitated to really push me. I need someone to push me if I am going to learn to roll, which is the one skill that will take my paddling to the next level.
Fortunately for me, Garth’s ego isn’t so big that he doesn’t realize the impossibility of this learning scenario; therefore, he is very wiling to hook me up with other teachers. Also, through this process, I realize that my mind gets in the way of my roll; it is a mental process. While several people have worked with me, Chuck Armentrout with Urban Currents has proved phenomenal in helping me with my roll. While he encourages me, he doesn’t let me get away with stopping just because I claim I am tired or don’t want to hang out upside down underwater anymore (I think that’s supposed to be my motivation to upright myself). Unlike my husband, Chuck won’t just roll me up if I miss my roll; he makes me go back under and set up again because that is what I will have to do on the river.
I do not fully have my roll yet, but I have learned many other things about whitewater kayaking and how I approach life through the process of learning to roll; whitewater kayaking has become the lens through which I perceive my approach to daily living on and off the river.
Self-Confidence and Performance are Closely Related
Self-confidence and performance closely connect. I never grew up participating in sports, gravitating instead to more indoor, artistic activities, so I have never used athletic as an adjective to describe myself. Embarrassingly, I starting kayaking at my highest weight and convinced myself that because of that weight, I can’t do what others can, including rolling. Never mind that other boaters on the river do not possess model figures, and they can roll their boats. Nonetheless, I have trouble seeing past my own perceived limitations of my weight and body, but when I begin to let go of my self-conscious internal dialogue that tells me others are judging me, I start to experience success with my roll.
Life throws so many things at us that can beat us down: work, the daily grind, family and friends. Those beat downs chip away at our self-confidence in a variety of areas and, in turn, negatively affect our performance in those areas. Simply put, we must let go of all the personal junk in our head and focus on the specific task to perform at our fullest ability. Sometimes the great paradox is that the harder we try not to think about the junk, the more it permeates our thoughts. With rolling and life, I experience more success when I focus on what matters.
Focus on the Task at Hand
At first on the river, I could only think about the things that scared me, such as running Nantahala Falls. I used self-talk to get myself through the falls, saying things like, “People run the falls in pool toys; I am certainly okay in a kayak.” The Bump on the Nantahala is my nemesis. Go right and the wave hole followed by a pour over presents no threat, but somehow I manage to miss that far right line. Every time. My swims there result from my focus on The Bump as my nemesis rather than on the line that I need to take to avoid it. With this mentality, not surprisingly, I swim.
When Chuck started teaching me to roll, he said, “Focus on the task at hand. Don’t worry about all the other stuff.” Such obvious and simple advice that offers so much; if I am worried about other things, I can’t accomplish the current task. The reverse holds true: If I focus on accomplishing the current task, I can’t worry about what might go wrong.
Pick Your Line and Ride It
Not unlike other novice kayakers, I feel much uncertainty about which line to choose on the river. I approach a rapid and look at Garth, asking where to go. Like a good teacher, he asks what I think and why. Regardless, I still feel much anxiety about the possible consequences of choosing the wrong line. What if the wrong line flips me? What is the wrong line has a lot of shoals and makes me work hard rather than just riding out the wave train? Never mind that the stakes for picking the wrong line on a Class II river are low; I still have the internal conversation.
Like Robert Frost’s narrator in “The Road Not Taken,” we face choices in life, and human nature makes us worry about making the wrong ones. We ask, “What if?” and worry about the potential consequences of choosing the line not taken. We can plan and scout lines, be we can never know for certain the outcome of our choice beforehand. Yes, we can minimize risks, but are the most fun lines the ones we just pick and ride? What if we approached the lines we face in life that way, too? I have more fun and don’t take myself too seriously when just ride the line.
Failure is Scarier in Your Imagination than in Reality
Until I took my first swim, I feared it. Who doesn’t? But that fear caused me to tense up in my boat, making the likelihood of swimming all the much greater. My first swim was at Delabar’s Rock on the Nantahala. I lost my line and got pushed right into the rock. Since the other paddlers in our group were ahead of me, I pulled the skirt and swam to the bank. Like most first-time swimmers, I forgot to hold on to the boat When I got to the bank, after trekking through briars and brambles down to where Garth had tied my boat to a tree, I hit a fast-flowing feeder creek that cut of my path. I walked back and jumped into the frigid water to swim to my boat. Swimming by, I tried to grab the loop on my boat’s stern and missed it, which resulted in another boater helping ferry me to the large eddy and beach on the other side of the river. I had cuts and bruises , but man, was I happy! That swim was nothing compared to the one in my imagination! My imagination had produced the epic swim every boater hears horror stories about, the swim that re-circulates you in the hugest hydraulic known to man as you fight your way out of it.
Imagination conjures up incredibly real images that somehow become part of our truths until one day, something like my swim happens to completely shatter that truth. We fear failure because we live in a culture that highly values success; we judge people based on their success. Failure often seems far worse than it is in reality. Failure can make it seem that we have not succeeded with something when, in fact, it really presents an opportunity to learn, which can lead to even greater success. Some of the best lessons I have learned in life, at work, on the river have come from my failures, and I approached them as learning opportunities. If we are receptive to them, failures on the river will make us better paddlers.
Depending on Yourself Boosts Your Confidence
When I paddle with others, I feel self-conscious about possibly swimming, needing their help, and holding up the group. I let them know that I will hang out for the bow rescue if I cannot roll. In fact, I will hang in there for quite a long time because I don’t want to impose on others by making them stop to help me if I swim. Yes, we are all dependent upon each other on the river in many ways, but I feel like my lack of a combat roll means that the group needs to babysit me in some way. The primary way in which developing this skill will take my paddling to the next level is by boosting my confidence; it’s priceless!
Marriage has probably presented as challenging an adjustment for me as learning to whitewater kayak because for about fourteen years prior, I lived alone and owned my own condo. Now I have to face someone else’s clutter and remind myself that in the big scheme of things, it doesn’t matter if Garth left dishes in the sink. Don’t get me wrong, I do not wistfully long to have my single adulthood back, but I think it played a pivotal role in building my confidence and sense of self. Strong self-confidence helps you realize what really matters and helps remove your focus from the smaller, trivial items in life. Just as self-reliance have helped boost my personal and professional confidence, I know that developing the same self-reliance on the river will boost my confidence in my paddling.
Even though I am still learning to kayak, each day I learn just as much about how I approach life as I do about how I need to approach the river. Metaphors helps us structure our thoughts about the world in which we live, and they help add imagination and life to our day-to-day world. Perhaps using kayaking as my metaphor for life allows me to bring the river with me, even when I cannot go to it. Like the river, I know there is not hurry in life; I will get there someday.
