Water Words: Book Reports
Exploring Virginia’s Waterways
A Paddler’s Guide to Waters of the Old Dominion State
By Edward Gertler
Seneca Press, 2022
411 pages
Report by Bob Brueckner
In the opening chapter of his new guidebook of Virginia’s rivers, author and paddler Edward Gertler expresses his desire to be a “river match-maker” because “these waters beg to be enjoyed.”
To that end, Gertler provides the paddler with descriptions of more than 6,000 miles of rivers, bays and wetlands.
The book shares a resemblance to H. Roger Corbett’s Virginia Whitewater, and Gertler notes that Corbett served as his mentor for guidebook writing.
In addition to this new guidebook, Gertler has written Maryland and Delaware Canoe Trails, Keystone Canoeing: A Guide to Canoeable Water of Eastern Pennsylvania and Garden State Canoeing: A Paddler’s Guide to New Jersey.
Sometimes it’s just fun to read Gertler’s descriptions, which provides a glimpse at the inner workings of the author’s mind. He’s not exactly a cheerleader for every river and creek in the book and at times laments the changes wrought by urban development along the shores. But here are some gems:
Broad Run: “…When I first ran this in the early 1990s, much of the path was through unspoiled farmland. Now it is suburbia. It is a stream of extremes, one part extremely exciting, the other part extremely dull.”
Cedar Run: “… Cedar Run is a quiet country stream within easy reach of many. Too small and complicated for a beginner and too quiet for a whitewater paddler, that pretty much assures that if you go there, you will have the stream to yourself.”
Little River (Yes, Virginia has one, too.): “Indeed it is little, and probably not your idea of a “river.” But such tiny paths are irresistible to a portion of the paddling community, and if you can overlook the hardships, this one is a lovely tour.”
Jerrys Run: “You will probably want to carry three waterfalls, the bigger of which is about an eighth of a mile below the tunnel. Tunnel? Yes, the creek passes through a long dark tunnel under the railroad grade, and you will be running rapids in the dark.”
But there’s more. While flipping through the guidebook’s 411 pages, the names of some rivers and creeks captured my attention:
Short streams with long names: For example, the Laurel Fork of North Fork of South Branch Potomac River. Despite being “one of Virginia’s most beautiful,” hazards listed on this Class II-IV stretch are listed as “Definitely expect wood. Isolation.”
Long streams with short names: The Pigg River fits the bill. Gertler writes that he was “happy to explore this creek just for its name.”
I actually raced against CCC member Cleo Smith and hundreds of competitors on a rather lean Pigg many years ago. Contestants included one paddler in a jon boat and two more in a pedal boat. The pedal boat did remarkably well considering the fact there was almost no water in the river.
Names that cut to the chase: Consider Difficult Run. Do you need to read any further? Gertler classifies this tributary of the Potomac as one of the “urbanized creeks of Northern Virginia.”
However, Difficult Run is at first deceptive, “… mostly flatwater and ripples.” But things change quickly, Gertler writes. “… for most of us, it is time to switch from boats to boots. The creek plunges into a glen, and I mean plunges.”
Run, run, run: The observant paddler will find descriptions of several runs in the book, including Broad Run, Kettle Run, Bull Run, Cub Run and Gooney Run.
Cripple Creek: “Its alliterative name is reason alone for you to be curious about this obscure Wythe County stream.”
Crooked Creek: “Indeed it is crooked. What creek in Virginia is not?”
South River: “There are just so many South Rivers in Virginia. So confusing.”
Creeks at odds with their names: “You would think that with a name like Swift Creek and with it being positioned between the fall lines of the James and Appomattox this would be another prime whitewater run,” Gertler writes. “But it is not.”
And what about Four Mile Run? It’s actually 5.3 miles long.
Ed “Boulderbuster” Gertler has been paddling a canoe since 1962. His curiosity has lured him down rivers in 37 countries, 47 states and every county in Virginia
Ed Gertler’s website: https://paddlersguides.wordpress.com/
Comparing Rapids Ratings
By Bob Brueckner
How close together are guidebooks when it comes to rating a rapid or a section of a river?
I compared the ratings for the Balcony Falls section of the James River in Virginia in five guidebooks and American Whitewater’s internet guidebook. (I chose the Balcony Falls section because I happened to have access to six guidebooks.)
The most difficult rapid on this section is Balcony Falls, and it has ratings that range from Class 2+ to 4. Edward Gertler did not rate the rapid alone, but his rating of the section topped out at 2+. Guidebook author Monte Smith gave it a 3-.
Randy Carter wrote in his 1974 guidebook that “Balcony Falls is a very mean rapid easily run in low water after scouting.”
Carter rated the rapid as a Class 4.
When comparing ratings remember that paddlers like Carter were entering the unknown. They didn’t have guidebooks or river gauges. They were creating the foundation that we now take for granted.
I wanted to check with one more source — Virginia paddler Raymond Williams –to see how he rated the rapid:
“I would rate the Balcony Falls rapid at a 2+ or 3- at most levels that most paddlers run it. I haven’t been on it over 5 feet. It washes out at 5 feet, but I’ve heard it does get harder at higher levels.”
Even though the guidebook writers used different methods to determine difficulty, here’s how close the ratings are:
* Canoeing White Water River Guide by Randy Carter, eighth revised edition, 1974. Overall: 3-4 Rapid: 4
* Classic Virginia Rivers by Ed Grove, 1995. Overall: 2-3 Rapid: 3
* Southeastern Whitewater by Monte Smith, 1995. Overall: 2(3). Rapid: 3-
* Virginia Whitewater by Roger Corbett, 2000. Overall: 2-3 Rapid: 3
* Exploring Virginia’s Waterways by Edward Gertler, 2022. Overall: A to 2+ Rapid: Assume 2+ rating is for rapid
* American Whitewater internet guidebook, last updated by CJ Waasdorp, 2022. Link: https://www.americanwhitewater.org/content/River/view/river-detail/1949/main . Overall: 2+(3). Rapid: 3
The Canoeist
A Memoir
by John Manuel
Jefferson Press, 2006
215 Pages
The Canoeist recounts the early and middle life of John Manuel from his early years spent in Ohio until his relocation to North Carolina in his twenties. Manuel gives a thread to the story in two ways. His relationship with his demanding father was not the best. It reads like many baby boomer histories, John growing up in a conventional household where his father tried to impress the value of hard work, defined roles, traditional jobs. John resisted, as did his siblings and the Manuel household was often a battleground in the changing cultural battles of the 1960’s and 70’s. Despite their contentious relationship, his father did instill one value in John, a love of rivers and canoeing.
The other device Manuel uses in his narrative is the naming of chapters after rivers he is paddling at particular points in his life. The Chagrin defines early rebellion and lasting resentment. The Lost meanders through his rudderless early twenties. The use of river names works especially well in the middle chapters: Cuyahoga, Upper Haw, Lower Haw. The Cuyahoga is the Ohio river so famously polluted with waste, effluent, and spilled oil, that it burst into flames several times, on the worst occasion spreading to envelope nearby shipyards. Fireboats were called out to spray water on the burning river and tugboats. This disaster helped to spur the passage of the Clean Water Act. Manuel worked for the Ohio Conservation Foundation and was proud of his contributions to improving the Upper Cuyahoga but he realized it was time for a change of jobs and most of all a change of location, putting some distance from his home waters and heading south.
Manuel landed in North Carolina and quickly adapted to the cultural differences and the prolific rivers. He made friends, purchased his first canoe and became a fixture in the local paddling scene. This was a time when if a paddler wanted to know if a river was runnable, he or she would drop by Haw River Canoe or River Runners Emporium and get the scoop on river levels and paddling opportunities. A chance encounter on the Chapel Hill campus led John to notice Cathy and soon they were dating. The critical juncture in their romance occurred on their first paddling trip, a tandem canoe on the Upper Haw. Despite some bumps the trip went well and they continued to flourish, tackling harder rapids on the Lower Haw and harder challenges such as living together. They are still married and still paddling together so they made it work.
The chapter on the Pigeon could be of particular interest to people who remember when paddling first started on the river. In the early 70’s Manuel dreamed of finding an undiscovered, pristine, rapid filled stream flowing through a beautiful, hidden gorge. The Pigeon wasn’t pristine or remote but it satisfied most of his quest. His crew was one of the first to take canoes on the river, guided by perhaps the first person to start a paddle company on the Pigeon, Jerry Taylor. Taylor died soon thereafter in a car accident and a plaque memorializing him graces the Big Rock/BFR just past Powerhouse rapid on the Pigeon.
Of course the river was turbid but what action it held, with then unnamed rapids marking the entire run. The Dirty Bird, as it came to be known, was stained and stinking but with non-stop rapids and bedazzling scenery.
Manuel does a good job describing the paddling action in a precise, involving way. You feel the push of the water, the missed line, the sudden swim and the exhilaration of a run well made.
John Manuel lives in Durham and still writes and paddles. Carolina Paddler contacted him for this article and he was just finishing a six-day trip through Desolation Canyon on the Green River in Utah. He has three novels: Hope Valley, The Lower Canyons and Solitario: The Lonely One. He’s also written a guidebook, The Natural Traveler Along North Carolina’s Coast in addition to his memoir, The Canoeist.” He continues to write for publications like Our State and NC Wildlife.
John Manuel’s website: https://jsmanuel.com
Report by Alton Chewning
Riverman
An American Odyssey
By Ben McGrath
Alfred Knopf 2022
256 Pages
Ben McGrath, a writer for the New Yorker magazine, was with his son on the banks of the Hudson River, when a neighbor, Scott, appeared and pointed to a filthy vessel tethered to a nearby sea wall. “It was a plastic red canoe, packed as if for the apocalypse with army-surplus duffels and tarps and trash bags.” The owner, Dick Conant, had paddled up the previous day and now Scott and Conant were best friends. This chance encounter and the quickly deepening bond is a story often repeated with Dick Conant.
McGrath was charmed and the following day tracked Conant down and interviewed him for a possible article. Conant, with, “a complexion of a boiled lobster and the build of a manatee,” intrigued McGrath with his plans of continuing his current paddle from Canada to Florida. It wasn’t Conant’s first long distance solo trip; he had crisscrossed much of the American heartland by canoe. Months after the encounter, McGrath received a phone call from a wildlife ranger in North Carolina. An overturned canoe had been found on the northern shore of the Albemarle Sound, near Elizabeth City. No person, living or dead, accompanied it. McGrath’s contacts were found in a notebook in the boat as were others and the officer was pursuing leads in a missing person case.
Thus began a detective story for McGrath and a search for the meaning of a person who preferred to live his life without a permanent home and constantly moving, paddling a canoe. Wherever he stopped he touched people and they remembered him. Educated and well spoken but obviously weathered by his life and travels, people saw in him their own secret desire: the possibility of shucking it all and taking off with what possessions and ambitions a fourteen foot canoe could hold.
McGrath follows many leads in learning about Conant and they were numerous and colorful. People would meet Conant for a day or an hour and remember him clearly years later. He often took their addresses and would write a letter or two to them. His story has parallels to Into the Wild, the John Krakauer book about Chris McCandless’ quixotic travels but McCandless and Conant were very different people. There are also comparisons to the book and movie, Nomadland, about itinerant people who choose to live life on the move, not homeless but houseless. They are modern nomads who form communities on the road, dispersing and regrouping in tribal migrations. And of course, Huckleberry Finn, the great American novel about a white boy and a black boy leaving town and sliding down the great Mississippi on a raft, the river “offering freedom from an imperfect society.”
McGrath’s pursuit of Conant’s odd story leads to many other eccentrics and originals. “You ought to write a book about me,” is a common observation. One of these curiosities is a small town newspaper writer-editor named Roger Larson who interviews Conant and then never publishes an article, saying Conant’s story “didn’t add up.” Larsen slowly reveals his own originality and wanderlust and gives the Conant riparian lifestyle a structure and philosophy. Larsen recalls an article from a March, 1928 issue of Scribner’s magazine titled “Riverbank, USA” describing a “quasi-anarchistic commonwealth.” Larsen elaborates, “The State of Riverbank it was called. As in: the state of Delaware. The idea was there remained a cultural jurisdiction independent of any borders drawn on maps, populated by eccentrics and ne’er do wells, such as might have entertained Mark Twain’s readers many years before.” How many of us have ever contemplated moving to the State of Riverbank?
McGrath concludes, “ I have tried here to make Conant the hero of his own epic, while not giving anyone the illusion that it was an enviable life.” Perhaps it was not an enviable life or one many of us could sustain but Riverman is a life story both captivating and well told.
Report by Alton Chewning