Hunter S. Thompson died this month at age 67. He shot himself with a handgun in the kitchen of his Colorado home. It was no secret he had a thing for guns.
Until the follow-up radio talk shows I didn’t know much about him. I’d heard his name and recognized the titles of his Fear and Loathing books, but that’s about all. I would have been more in touch if I’d been looking for free love and questioning the establishment in the early 1970s, but at the time I was still chewing on my fists, not shaking them in the air.
Journalists and hippies considered Hunter S. Thompson to be a brilliant political and social writer. The rest of the world considered him to be a complete whack job. He followed Nixon on the campaign trail, rode with the Hells Angels and once wrote, “I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone… but they’ve always worked for me.”
Another thing that worked for him was his unique writing style, something called “gonzo journalism”—a new way of reporting the story with a strong author’s voice and a focus on the mood of the event, even if that meant taking some liberties with facts and objectivity.
Almost every talk show host wrapped up by suggesting Thompson was one of the most important American writers of the 20th century.
Sad, I thought, that I’m a writer and journalist who lived in the 20th century and here’s this larger-than-life outlaw cult figure that I know nothing about.
A friend stopped by while I was reading up on Hunter S. He thought I’d want to know that Heinz Poenn had suffered a heart attack.
“That’s too bad, is he all right?” I asked before admitting that I didn’t know who we were talking about.
Heinz Poenn taught himself to paddle in a Klepper folding kayak and started slalom racing in 1958. In 1972, the same year Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas raced to cult status, Poenn raced for Canada at the Olympics in Munich, Germany. Later he became a driving force behind the building of the Minden Whitewater Preserve so he and others would have a place to train. Poenn went on to coach both the provincial and national slalom teams.
Sad, I thought that I’m a writer and paddler who lived in the 20th century and here’s this pioneer of the whitewater community that I know nothing about.
At a new adventure sports complex and whitewater course in Maryland they’ve proposed creating a Whitewater Hall of Fame and Adventure Sports Museum to “honor those individuals who have made significant accomplishments in and contributions to whitewater paddling sports.”
I like the idea of a Hall of Fame to clarify and remember significant accomplishments. But, I worry that a hall of fame would be too stuffy. I think that our whitewater history is better written with a shot of the late Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo style—because like politics, whitewater’s deepest truths are found on the eddylines between fact and fiction.
This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2005 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.
