I’m right here. I’ve been a sea kayak guide since I was 19 (I’m 23 now) but I wonder where are the other paddlers my age. Most of the people I instruct are twice my age.

It seems as though the sea kayaking crowd is older and it’s whitewater that attracts younger, adrenaline-seekers. Perhaps this stems from the fact that often, people who get into sea kayaking are looking for a relaxing activity. Drifting quietly across a placid stretch of water sounds calming for many parents, but for their kids this might just mean being bored to tears.

I learned to kayak 
in a bubble—a knowledge bubble. All I knew
is what I had been
taught in a few pool
sessions and figured
out on my own. My
transition into guiding
was the big bang of my
paddling career and
the beginning of the
expansion of my skills.
Suddenly, there was so
much out there for me
to discover. I learned of
the Tsunami Rangers and watched all of the This is the Sea movies; there was Dubside, Maligiaq and QajaqUSA; I visited symposiums and joined the ACA. I rolled and surfed, went on expeditions and taught, and I did it all from the same kayak. The more I learned about the paddling world the more I realized that it’s impossible to define the kayaking experience as simply as most people do.

The view that kayaking should be purely about slowing down is too cut and dry, in my opinion. I get shudders from many sea kayakers when I explain what being back-endered in surf is like, yet nothing but praise from my whitewater paddling friends. To get younger people into the sport, it needs to be seen as exciting and challenging, requiring us to let go of the stereotypical notions of flat water and sunrises, and accept the multiple facets of sea kayaking.

I choose not to look at sea kayaking as any one of these aspects but as a means to having fun, no matter what that may imply. That’s what gets me excited about kayaking—it is whatever I want to make it. You can be young or old, an expert or a novice, Euro or Greenland, enjoy the rough and tumble world of surf and rock gardens or the quiet Zen of glowing sunsets and still be a happy paddler. Many even find an adrenaline rush and Zen in the same moment. When we choose to look at kayaking in this light, stereotypes disappear.

The challenge is trying something new. Trying different boats, paddles, partners and routes. Sea kayaking doesn’t have to fit any- one’s archetype, nor should it. We run the risk of letting the paddling world stagnate by having too many rules, stereotypes and expectations. Try a Greenland paddle in a surf ski or a wing paddle in a skin-on-frame. Try a playboat or an SUP. Find your own balance of adrenaline and Zen.

Tim Gallaway is an ACA level 4 instructor, a Greenland-style paddler, expedition sea kayaker, whitewater paddler, kayak guide and freshly graduated engineer. 

This article first appeared in the Summer 2012 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

In April 2011, the International Canoe Federation chose the Nantahala River Gorge as the site of the 2013 World Freestyle Kayaking Championships. Tucked away in western North Carolina, this whitewater epicenter has played host to slalom and wildwater competitions for years, but 2013 will be the first time in over 20 years the community has hosted an international event of these proportions.

The dam-controlled Nantahala won the honors of hosting the 2013 Worlds because of its guaranteed water releases, which allow organizers, not the river, to dictate the event’s timing. When high water brought additional cfs to the 2011 Worlds in Plattling, Germany, paddling was delayed. Nantahala organizers looked to avoid similar disruptions.

Because of the venue’s susceptibility to rock shifting and washout, it was decided that the feature, already a favorite of the locals, needed some work.

Andrew Holcombe, Nantahala local and Dagger Kayaks team manager, was one of the first to speak up for the event, “The construction of a permanent play spot on the Nantahala River has the potential to turn the area into a great freestyle destination.”

When construction began on the Nantahala last November, many river purists cringed at the sight of backhoes in the water, wing dams, sand bags and diverted river channels. Avid local boater and river guide, Bill Baxter, was chosen as contractor for the project and assured onlookers that, despite appearances, proper measures were taken. Due to water management and permits from a multitude of federal agencies, Baxter was given less than 30 days to work his magic.

“Being an old kayaker and a builder who respects nature myself, I can understand why there has been some negative feedback on messing with the river,” says Baxter. “This is natural, but my job is to see that the end product will look like it’s always been there and be a huge boost to freestyle kayaking. I might even try surfing it.”

The grand opening of the Freestyle Wave was held in December 2011, but the finished product remains a work in progress. There have already been two tweaks to the feature and a third is scheduled for this spring. While the engineering continues on the wave itself, the community is working to create an event worthy of international status by September 2013.

“Whitewater recreation is not only an important part of the local economy,” says event coordinator Zuzana Vanha. “It is important to much of the community on a more personal level.”

According to Joe Jacobi, CEO of USA Canoe/Kayak, the governing body for whitewater sports in America, everyone stands to gain from the main event.

“Bringing the freestyle championships to the Gorge is a double opportunity,” he says. “The event could revitalize the Nantahala Gorge, the country’s cradle of whitewater competition; and at the same time, it could raise the profile of whitewater freestyle for North American audiences.”

This story originally appeared on page 19 of the Early Summer 2012 issue of Rapid magazine. Read the entire issue here.

My favorite book was recently adapted into a movie. But don’t bother seeing it, the Hollywood hacks butchered an iconic river book into a predictable love story—the wrong kind of love story, as in, not love of rivers.

David James Duncan’s 1984 classic The River Why was handed to me by a guide from another rafting company on the scout above Cataract Canyon’s Number 5 rapid. The worn pages spoke to me as they had to the many guides who’d read it before.

A quick look at the book makes you think it is about fishing, but it’s not. It’s about rivers, coming of age and looking for the meaning of life. Yes, there is some fishing, but don’t let that get in the way. Gus Orviston, the main character, hermits up in a remote Oregon valley to sort out his life, and one day, hiking high above his adopted fishing stream, he sees the river’s course scrawled across the valley. To his surprise, in a sort of cursive river writing, he plainly sees the river’s path spells the word “why”.

River guiding is a form of purgatory. It is somewhere between inferno and paradise; suffering and enlightening. In return for spending time in beautiful places, pulled by the current, one gets long days and responsibility disproportionate to the pay, a lack of everyday conveniences, and having to deal with clients. From my experience, these folks fall into a 10:1:1 ratio. For every 10 somewhat anonymous nice clients, there is one individual that is totally amazing and one total pain in the ass.

The trying trips are when this ratio is weighted on the back end. The strange trips are when the ratio is 0:5:5 and there are only five people in the raft.

I had such a trip in the Green River’s Canyon of Lodore. My boat included a 250-pound, heavily medicated manic depressive firefighter; a young woman just released from six months in the hospital on suicide watch; a 60-year-old woman with 20 percent vision; the female owner of a Charleston strip club; and the manager of an army boot factory inGeorgia. One fell asleep in the raft several times a day, one couldn’t be trusted to go beyond eyesight and one didn’t have any eyesight. The strip club owner was exceptionally coarse and the last was exactly as you’d expect of an army boot factory manager. They were a rag tag breakfast club, individually annoying and exceedingly exhausting.

At the time, pure suffering; in retrospect, enlightening. Taken as a group, I wouldn’t have traded them for anything. It turned on its head what I thought river guiding was all about.

David James Duncan is such a writer that the reader is pretty sure The River Why is his life story (that is, until one reads his novel The Brothers K and thinks that, too, must be his life story). It is funny and intimate, the type of narrative that makes you feel like you are inside the story. Gus thinks that this river that spells “why” is taunting him to find the meaning of life, until he slowly realizes it is not asking, but telling him, Why. “This,” writes Duncan, with what I imagine to be a wide sweep of the arms to include the river and all it touches, “all of this, is why.”

The challenges of rafting moderate whitewater seemed pretty inconsequential compared to the life histories of the cards in my raft. I was mature enough to realize that guiding was not all about me; until then, however, I did believe it was all about the rapids, the challenge, the hash marks on the map. But a blind lady giggling with surprise as we crashed waves, a suicidal girl finding the courage to try guiding the raft through an easy rapid, a strip club owner asking if it’s okay to say the Lord’s Prayer at sunrise… For these folks, it wasn’t about the rapids, but about the river, the current of life, carrying them downstream.

My 0:5:5 made me realize that this, all of this, is why.

This story originally appeared on page 18 of the Early Summer 2012 issue of Rapid magazine. Read the entire issue here.