In the days when playboats were more than eight feet long, when freestyle was called rodeo and pirouettes were a hot move, paddlers had a problem.

It was the early 90s, and the Pro-Tec and Wildwater helmets of the day worked well for protection but did little for sun protection.

People layered baseball caps under their helmets to add a brim, but the pressure of the hats’ buttons pressing into their skulls meant every paddling session ended with headaches.

Around the same time, Patrick Kruse sat in his Seal Beach, California, basement apartment trying to solve a dilemma of his own: how to launch his startup gear company into the world of whitewater and stand out against other manufacturers.

A paddler himself, Kruse had heard complaints about the baseball cap conundrum.

After a two-day flurry of cardboard and fabric cutting and pasting, he emerged with a design that would push his new business into the mainstream.

The Salamander brim was a hit.

For years, every Dagger Crossfire and Perception Pirouette contained a paddler whose helmet had a sticky Velcro strip and colorful, three-inch, foam-filled visor.

It came out in more and more colors and jungle and hibiscus patterns that would’ve made the Fresh Prince proud.

More than two decades later, the same brim comes with the same Salamander logo on the same 600-denier poly-cloth and Volara foam with Velcro-705 molded hooks, as when Kruse first designed it.

It remains on Salamander’s best seller list and is easily the company’s defining product.

In the late ‘90s though, helmet companies like Orosi started catching on—modern helmets emerged with built-in brims and started turning heads.

The Salamander does offer one advantage over built-in brims, says current owner, Shane Preston, who’s been with the company for six years. “If a kayaker is upside down, the bill will actually flip back rather than catch the water and yank your head back.”

Today, companies like Sweet Protection, WRSI, Shred Ready and Predator all make brimmed buckets of their own. But Salamander lives on.

The company still sells 2,500 visors every year, although for the most part, it’s not us buying them.

“To be 100 percent honest, it’s the horse industry—they love these things,” says Preston.

Salamander now sells 20 times more brims to its equestrian market than to whitewater paddlers. The visors fit on riding helmets just as well as they once did on whitewater helmets.

He’s also selling to bike and ski shops.

“For the hot kayakers, not too many kids are wearing them because they’re a little dorky looking,” Preston says. “But they work. You can’t deny that it gives you some nice protection.”

Salmander’s original visor designer Patrick Kruse now runs a company called Ruffwear selling performance dog gear in Oregon.

Three years ago on a hot summer day he was driving down Highway 395 towards Red Rock Canyon when a giant grin spread across his face. On the side of the road he saw a crew of 20 or so road workers, each with a bright red Salamander visor Velcroed to their hardhats.

This article first appeared in the Summer/Fall 2014 issue of Rapid Magazine. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions, or browse the archives.

Without a paper map to guide me, my interpretation of a wilderness area looks more like a map from the 16th century. Without satellite precision it’s rough and hypothetical, with notched portages marked Here Be Blackflies and picturesque campsites denoted by smiling suns.

The lakes, river and creeks form the skeleton of the map and land out of sight beyond hilltops fades into obscurity. It’s not quite to scale—landmarks loom larger than life, proud and prominent, and hazards are rendered with a giant’s bold hand. Thankfully, this mental map is underlaid by an accurate paper one.

I’ve always been entranced by maps. They share more than simple topography and route finding. Through the winter I paper my floor, not just to allay cabin fever, but also to wonder what’s over that next rise, beyond that next portage, always looking for rivers and lakes previously unseen. On a trip, I love to curl up around the fire and familiarize myself with what lies a mile distant in the west or five miles off in the east.

Not everyone shares this level of enthusiasm for placing their route within the context of a 50-square-mile area. Instead, some use their map only as a navigational aid to get from A to B. While I’m feeling blissfully small in an interconnected and unfurling wilderness, I sometimes wonder if my map-ambivalent counterparts are enjoying just a series of beautiful lakes and rugged trails occurring in an arbitrary order.

Set up at camp, we tell tales about past trips. A never-ending portage, a vicious storm, waking up to a bear peering into the tent—but I’m surprised when reminiscing is followed by, “Hey, where were we when that happened?”

While mapping wild land has grown sophisticated as a science, our own familiarity with wild places has become fragmented. Paradoxically, we live in a world where we can peer down from space into distant forests to trace a wilderness route, yet the true knowing of wilderness places is in short supply.

Less common today is the intimate knowledge of place. Indigenous communities built this knowledge over the generations and it allowed them to travel over the land using stars, landmarks and oral stories as guides.

While I can’t lay claim to the gift of rooted generations, there are a handful of wilderness areas where I’ve felt a sense of place, where even with eyes closed the landscape unrolls in all directions and I could paddle and portage for days without needing reference. It’s a surreal and wonderful feeling when the map becomes drawn inside.

Whether it’s a paper map or a map of the mind, when paid attention to, the blue lines and green swatches become a treasure trove of personal history. It’s a storyteller of geography, yes, but if we listen, it’ll also recount our own stories back to us. —Kaydi Pyette

Get the full article in the digital edition of Canoeroots and Family Camping, Summer/Fall 2014.Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions, or browse the archives.