Horizon Lines
We humans love knowing, even more so controlling. Our fate, our lives, other people, circumstances, etc. So, few things cause more anxiety in life than a horizon line, be that mental, physical, emotional or spiritual. A horizon line means you don’t know what’s on the other side. If you can’t know what it is, then you certainly can’t control it.
A horizon line makes a great teacher because it reveals to us that we, in fact, can control only one thing, and that is our reaction to the not knowing. I don’t think many people ever get that beautiful lesson in life. That’s why I want to use this essay to thank paddling.
Paddle almost any river or creek, and you quickly see that, quite literally, the sport is full of horizon lines. That’s because a river flows downward along whatever gradient geology determined millennia ago. If the gradient is steep enough, you end up at the top of a rapid and can’t see what lies through and below it. In these instances, one is faced with a choice. You can crave that control of knowing and let it transmogrify into anxiety—or worse, fear and panic. Or, you can have faith in yourself.
It may sound passive. However, having faith in oneself is anything but passive. You don’t just get it. You must earn it. Again, I have to thank paddling here because it forced that lesson on me. Only through hours on easy whitewater doing the same moves over and over again, carving the memories into my muscles, did I earn the faith that I could make the hard moves. That faith came through work and also respect.
I had to respect that the river could hand me a severe beat-down if I’m not careful. The Class V Green Narrows in Western North Carolina has beaten me down hard, and even the Class III Ocoee River in East Tennessee has humbled me. That’s another element of faith—humility. All of those memories, both in mind and body, have over time prepared me for horizon lines. And not just the horizon lines of rivers. Once more, this is where I thank paddling for teaching me what so few people are fortunate enough to learn.
After facing the very real and physically consequential horizon lines of say, Bear Creek Falls on the Cheoah River, I find the metaphorical horizon lines to be so much softer, easier. Not always. Just this February, I had to make the tough decision on which doctoral program I would enter: The University of Tennessee in Knoxville or the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Both horizon lines bar me from knowing right now what future I could have. Eventually, with a calm breath, I knew and picked my decision, which was the program closest to the whitewater horizon lines I’ve loved and learned from so much. Go Vols!
Eventually, we all go past some horizon lines, make the decisions that decide our fate. And you know what? Whatever we feared that could go wrong rarely happens. Or, sometimes it does, and we handle it better than we think we would. I remember running this one rapid, Zwicks, on the Green Narrows. It’s a Class V rapid with a super retentive hydraulic at the top of it followed by a second, larger hydraulic at the end. After a doofus move, I landed squarely in the top hydraulic, getting surfed and appearing to my friends as though I were about to swim out. Fortunately, I had been surfing in playful hydraulics all summer on other rivers, so I had faith I knew what to do. After a while, I did manage to get out of the hydraulic and run the rest of the rapid fine.
After our decision to go past the horizon line, typically everything works out, and years later we can look back at our lives and be happy with where we are. My career had been at the forefront of my life for most of my 20s, and I’m sure I could have found some aspect to Boston or Los Angeles, some sport or activity, that would have replaced paddling and kept me happy. But I chose paddling. I had faith that the whitewater sport was what truly made me happy. So, I moved back to the East Coast and found home in Western North Carolina, putting my career on the backburner. I haven’t regretted that decision for a second.
This is not to say we all always live without regrets, but aren’t they typically of the horizon lines we didn’t cross? The knowledge we’ll never have? The “what ifs?” Remember, humans love to know. Not acting is as much a choice as acting. We have control over both, regardless of how we feel at the moment. So, perhaps the regret is that we chose to go against our nature. Every time I paddle, I’m practicing not only how to stroke and roll but also how to choose to act.
I’ve always needed the practice, too. We all do, and we never will not need to because the longer we stay in our insular personal and social bubbles, the faster we go back to thinking we can control externality. And here is my last thank you to paddling. Every time that current first pulls the bow of my boat downstream, the river reminds me that I am significant only to myself. That’s beautifully humbling, and freeing! As a human I may love knowing things and even feeling at times as though I can control things. But as a paddler and as the individual the sport has shaped me into over the years, I love that all I have to do is cross a horizon line.