There’s an Italian word that perfectly describes the feeling of successfully reaching the bottom of your most challenging wa­terfall or rapid. It encompasses climbing the rocks above a drop you’ve studied, and then studied some more. It covers getting in your kayak as your adrenal glands spike. The pounding heart, quickened breathing and calculated thinking.

Can I stick this? Straight at the lip. Stay forward. Be balanced. Left rudder with subtle bow lift, dropping control stroke. Tuck and lock.

When it comes, the moment arrives and passes in a blink. Glar­ing up from the bottom of a 50-foot cascade, my fists are pumped into the air. This is what the Italians mean when they say fiero.

Fiero is pride. It’s feeling dignified and accomplished. It’s body chemicals flooding the brain with feel-good dopamine. Musicians get fiero. Athletes get fiero. And yes, kayakers get fiero. We love it.

The feeling of fiero guarantees you’ll be stoked all week—if not for the year. You may never feel fiero more than after a first descent.

Discovering and being the first to navigate any location on the planet is a remarkable feat that takes knowledge and skills to accomplish. Explorations through uncharted lands and waters throughout history have been financed for the desire to be there first—it was that, or the promise of gold. The credit of any first discovery was enough to elevate one to legendary status. Even U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt felt the first descent magne­tism when his team completed the River of Doubt, now known as Rio Roosevelt, through uncharted Brazilian rainforest, despite the dangers of the dark jungle. And what of Lewis and Clarke? John Wesley Powell. Scott Lindgren. Tyler Curtis. Ben Marr. Chris Korbulic. Tyler Bradt.

At the age of 42, my dreams of a first descent had all but faded to the occasional expedition fantasy and nostalgia for having the kayaking skills and physical ability owned years prior. From my Chilean kayakers’ hostel, it was easy to watch the young bucks charging, making their mark and sharing their latest and greatest missions. They were notching bigger drops, more laps per day and taking on harder access—the proverbial bar was rising.

It’s natural to crave excitement in our lives. For many kayak­ers, a first descent is on the bucket list. Just exploring the planet with Google Earth gets exciting when you think you’ve made a discovery. My friend, Tino Specht, did exactly that, invest­ing all of his free time, researching every detail and tiptoeing the line of gathering knowledge without publicly announcing a potential discovery.

So when Tino asked if I’d like to do a first descent in southern Patagonia, I pondered for four days. Can I keep up? Am I in good enough shape to lug my boat? Will I regret it if I don’t go? What are the costs? Do it, David, I told myself. Do it. Four days later, my text to Tino simply read, “I’m in.”

At the bottom of that 50-foot waterfall, I was filled with fiero. Then, an email came in the fall that I expected to confirm our first descent. Instead, its author said he was with a crew in 1998 that first descended the Upper Canyon of the Rio Blanco.

Damn, I thought, back to the drawing board. That fix of fiero had me craving another attempt.

David Hughes is the director of www.patagoniastudyabroad.com, a university semester abroad program for kayakers, and owner Chile’s Pucon Kayak Hostel.

This editorial originally appeared in the 2014 Paddling Buyer’s Guide. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it on your desktop here.  

Can you imagine what it would cost to build a river? This ques­tion was floated by environmentalist Mark Hume when I inter­viewed him for Rapid magazine over 10 years ago. A river con­servationist and writer, Hume used this question to argue that rivers are precious, valuable and perhaps completely impossible to replicate. I agree, but that hasn’t kept people from trying.

Man has been messing with rivers since the beginning of time—damming, channelizing and diverting. Whitewater pad­dling plays its part here, too.

Early slalom courses modified natural streams, then the Augs­burg Olympic course in 1972 was the first to be completely manu­factured from concrete. Many more slalom courses and playspots have been built or modified over the years, but all of this pales in comparison to Walt Disney World.

Walt Disney doesn’t do anything halfway. In the mid ‘90s, Disney approached Intamin, a major Swiss amusement ride man­ufacturer that had been making water rides since 1979, with a challenge: Make us a river. This was not to be another bumper-boat-type ride. Disney wanted to simulate an Asian rainforest whitewater river and provide the closest experience to whitewater rafting short of actually going rafting.

The resulting feature is impressive. Aboard a 12-person, round and guideless raft, you descend 30 feet in five minutes, bouncing through continuous class II and III, ending with one major drop. The ride also has Disney’s typically immaculate attention to detail in the surroundings.

As I’m waiting in the long line (which is also typically Disney) for my turn on the ride, I think of all of the manufactured rivers I’ve paddled.

Except for small, modified play features, any concrete river has felt pretty foreign—the water does not behave as it does in natural rivers. As we board the solid raft and secure our seatbelts—no PFDs in sight—we are assured by the grinning loading attendant that we are going to get wet.

We gain elevation up a long rollercoaster-style escalator ramp and, at the top, are dumped into the water. It looks like a real river. It sounds like a real river. If it wasn’t for the little boy across from me with mouse ears, it’d feel like a real river.

We pick up speed with the current and round a bend into man­ufactured mist, the roar of rapids ahead. It reminds me of October mornings on the Jacques Cartier River in Quebec.

The river twists and turns with complex rapids—holes and off­set waves—this would be really fun to paddle. Our boat occasion­ally bumps the side of the 25-foot wide channel, but mostly stays in the middle. We sweep around a bend to see an unmistakable horizon line. I’m genuinely surprised to feel the familiar butterflies of anticipation as we approach the lip. This could be any number of drops on the Upper Yough in West Virginia.

Wow, I think to myself, this is really good! Over the lip and down the steep slide with a woosh of soaking water at the bottom. A narrow canyon continues with more rapids until the current lets up. Just like that, the ride is over—I miss the calm float of appreciation before the take-out.

As we unload, my kids have big smiles. Somewhat unex­pectedly, they cheer, “When we get home, let’s go rafting!” And that sums it up.

Try as Disney might, it’s not the real thing. While there is the familiar pull of the current and the environment looks authentic, the rapids are completely and noticeably with­out something. It is subtle but immediate. It is enough for my kids, who spend their summers around rivers, to no­tice. The other modified rivers I’ve paddled, while certainly more real, also lacked what only natural rivers have—soul.

Alchemy is a regular column in Rapid magazine. When not on the Kali River Rapids ride at Disney, outdoor education pro­fessor Jeff Jackson spent some time touring It’s A Small World After All.

This editorial originally appeared in the 2014 Paddling Buyer’s Guide. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it on your desktop here.