Kayak Journal
I ended up taking a swim. We were practicing crossing eddy lines and I messed up. An eddy line is formed when you have an object (like a rock) in the river and it creates a calm spot behind it. Where the current meets that calm, it forms a line that can be difficult to cross. So you have to make sure to cross in correctly. I didn't, and it flipped me over. I know how to roll, but I paniced. So I pulled my spray skirt and swam. It was somewhere around 45 degrees out when this happened. The guys helped me to the side. I sat a bit to catch my breath and tried to decide if I had enough courage to ferry across the river back to my car (yes, I had only gotten as far as the other side of the river). I'm not sure how I did it (have to give credit to God on this one), I got back in the boat. I did two rolls right there in the eddy to practice, and I did them ok. So we went on down the river. I did ok, not all of my eddy turns (what it's called when you cross an eddy line) were great, but no more swims. I was pretty nervous going down the river, I think mostly I was thinking of selling all my gear when I got home. We got to the take out and everything was ok.
This was a really big contrast to my trip 2 weeks ago. That one I was pretty relaxed and was able to focus a lot on the beauty of the river. I did enjoy the beauty today, but I think I spent more time worrying. This was scary. I asked myself why I was doing something that was so scary to me. I really wanted to give up, but I also knew that I would walk away feeling like a failure. I would also have to say goodbye to a lot of really great people. I also had to remember one of the reasons I decided to do this in the first place. I don't want fear to control my life. There's a lot of things that scare me, and I don't want them to. So I guess I'm going through this to build my confidence, to learn that I'm stronger and braver than I think I am. I've really needed to take on something hard, and stick with it even when it scares me. I think I've grown a lot in doing this.
I'll get a little break before I do this again. I'm going to spend this year just working on class II stuff to build my confidence. I need to get to a place where I'm fairly comfortable running something like this before making another step up.
I guess I've been humbled and encouraged. I think part of me thought that I was better than I am, a swim at the beginning ended that. I'm encouraged because, even though through the whole trip I thought about quitting, the boats weren't even loaded before I knew that I needed to keep going.
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