Leading by example, flailing by nature, laughing all the way
My first trip down Little Falls
By: Steve Schultz
As all of you know, Jack loved a story. I know that he took a certain pride in telling this one. This event is a good one to start with as any, given the setting is in our back yard, Little Falls on the Potomac, and we get a fun moral out the telling.
Namely, trusting Jack was a bad idea.
Not really. More so, my little adventure is really more about how Jack pushed people to their limit in the most wonderful of ways, and how that translates in my life today.
When I first stepped to the feeder canal with my newly bought kayaking set up, I looked like the canoeing counselor from Meatballs. Yellow plastic helmet, huge red PFD, 1000 pound paddle, all 70’s vintage. My craft, one of the first production kayaks ever made. 11 feet of see-through plastic instability nicknamed, “The Walrus”. I had been practicing how to roll a kayak with Jack for about three weeks and the going was slow. While he showed me plenty, it wasn’t the easiest thing to explain to a slow learner like me. As goofy as Jack could be, the guy was a pretty good athlete, things came easier for him, but trying to explain how wasn’t the easiest for him. “Focus on form, Schultz!” wasn’t really cutting it, but time was up, Jack was getting antsy, and I really wanted to learn to paddle. So once again Jack assumed his roles as both big brother, teaching me to paddle, and little brother, urging me on an ill-advised run down Little Falls for the first time. Either way, we embarked on another adventure, and I had that typical feeling of, “Hey, I’m with Jack, I’ll be fine, that guy’s bullet proof”, and “Is this really a good idea?”
We paddled out to the main flow of the Potomac for my first time, seeing a huge wide open expanse after popping out of the little channel into the base of the dam is arresting for the first time in the sheer volume of water, vegetation and sunlight, its beautiful. As we picked our way down the starting rapids, my inner monologue was racing, but I was trying to will myself to be cool, thinking it would get me down that much faster. As we bumped down the river, I didn’t really have the stones to try practice rolls mid-rapid, as they would have been my first.
Once we could see the Chain Bridge on the horizon, the sinking feeling really hit.
I could make out what I thought was the rapid, but really, it was just the top set of islands, the rapid sounded much bigger. As we pulled into the top eddy to steel our nerves, Jack gave me the head nod, “everything’s going to be fine, just focus on form.” We pealed out and started down the Maryland side of the rapid, which has two hydraulics on the left and right and two good sized consecutive diagonal crashing waves, which for an experienced boater are pretty tame, but for a completely un-initiated 70’s clad flailer “focusing on form”, I had little to no shot of emerging unscathed.
After the first wave hit me, I immediately went over, after three attempts, form failed me, and I swam out of my boat. As I saw Jack paddling over to me to clean up my yard sale, I felt something wrap around my neck and face and start to squeeze. Realizing that it was fishing line and tightening, I started trying to wrap my hand around the lead to stop some idiot from setting a hook or having the business end dig in. Jack started peeling the line off my face and I got it off my neck as I slid into a dirty eddy at the end of the rapid. I found the hook, which had dug into my life jacket about an inch from my neck, worm, still intact. After catching my breath, yelling some kind words for the fishermen at Little Falls, I sat down to collect myself. As I looked at Jack, then down at the water, a dead carp stared back, belly up, floating in front of me. Jack and I just started laughing at the misery of it, and how badly this first combat paddling experience went. Walking back up from the river to our put in, we continued to laugh, another adventure in the books and thinking about the next time we could head out.
Now you may ask yourself, what’s the point? While we all love to think of Jack as bullet proof, he flailed, sometimes, massively. At the same time, without the willingness to get a little dirty, life isn’t much fun. Jack brought me outside of my comfort zone more times than I can count, almost all of them, successful or not, though finished like this one, with a good laugh and a plan to do it again. I hate to say it, but for me, if I really want to live like Jack for a bit, I’ll be doing it by having the courage to embrace adventure and damn the consequences. While it’s a little easier to do it with Jack at my side, his mark is indelible, and myself and those around me are better for it, with a laugh of course.