168,000 cubic feet per second

I've spent the last two weeks in flatwater gates. They are good for me. I am learning things. And I am already sick of them.

Okay, not really. I love my gates. I am just thirsty for current. To me, paddling is fundamentally an interaction of forces -- my body and the water both interact with my boat. That's where the fun is. That's when the magic happens. And on flat, glassy water it is only me. It feels like I'm paddling through peanut butter.

The Mississippi scares me. It's not that I think paddling out in the channel is inherently dangerous - it isn't - but that much water has a certain power. She surges and subsides; 4 foot waves will break out in the middle only to suddenly calm, as if holding her breath for a moment. The quarter-mile wide river undulates. And the current is deceptively strong.

So, of course I love it. Full of adrenaline, I put on this evening after work. One tugboat powered northward, its 5,600 horsepower engines pushing a load three barges wide by six barges long. Its wake lifted me and dropped my C1 several feet as I tried to attach my new skirt to the cockpit. I hurried out to play. The tug left a wavetrain behind it, with at least a dozen 8-foot high waves.

I've been frustrated lately. Just a little bit. Expectant; anxious. I haven't felt powerful. I haven't felt like my boat and I were on the same team. I've been faithfully waiting for this sensation to comeback to me.

Sunday nights, the barge traffic on the Mighty Miss slows down. Except for that first mammoth load, I was the only moving vessel on the river. I got right into the meat of the current and charged against it. It took 25 minutes, paddling literally as hard as I could, to reach a shipping channel buoy, 1500 feet upstream. The large waves would lift me and I would accelerate down their face. The first few times it happened I let out a whoop of surprise, stopped paddling, and my bow buried a couple of feet into the trough. Soon I had learned to carve down them and use that momentum to carry me up the next wave.

I felt powerful. When my arms started to fatigue, I began to really paddle with my torso. I locked my eyes on the buoy. I was not going to give up.

It was a good night. I needed time alone. I needed to immerse myself in something much bigger and more powerful than myself. I needed to be scared, and paddle through it.

It's a step in the right direction. One more step.

One step at a time.