Lessons from the river

By Liam Kirkham

Liam Kirkham

Lessons from the river

I’ve spent an ill-advised amount of time, money and energy on kayaking. It’s taken me all over the world, and despite never being a great kayaker, I’ve racked up a fair bit of experience. I’m not kayaking as much as I used to, but looking back, I realise some of my biggest life lessons have been handed out by the river — though that may say more about my lack of education than anything else.

Before I begin, I want to set the stage for the kind of lessons you’ll encounter. I’d like to share some of these lessons with you in a series of ten true stories. Expect tangents, pseudo-philosophy, solid advice, and utter nonsense. I’ll leave it to you to decipher which is which as we transition between stories.

Let’s start with an early one
At 16, I went to college to study outdoor sports. I thought climbing might be for me, but I got frustrated that if you aren’t great, you don’t reach the top. Discovering that I could go down the whole river, even as the worst kayaker in the group, sealed my choice.

I certainly wasn’t a natural. I swam. I swam a lot. On one occasion, I swam three times in ten metres.I flipped on an eddy line as I came in and swam. I emptied my Necky Switch on the banks of the Lune and carefully got back on the water. Then, trying to exit the same eddy, I flipped again and had to empty my boat in the exact same spot before gingerly getting back on the water. This time, I managed to cross the eddy line, but as soon as I was in the flow, I flipped and swam again. At least this time, I was making progress downstream.

Some days were better than others. There’s a paradoxical trickery to kayaking: to be good, you have to relax – but you can’t relax until you’re good.

We spent a lot of time in the minibus driving to rivers, and I later realised I was mentally fried by the time we reached the put-in. It wasn’t that I was scared, but I certainly wasn’t calm, relaxed, or zen. My brow was furrowed, my stomach in knots, anxious about how I would paddle that day. There was a direct correlation between how bad I felt at the put-in and how badly I paddled.

The problem began in the minibus
The better kayakers would talk about water levels, what happened last time, swims, perfect lines, magnetic rocks, and near misses. It may have helped them prepare for the day, but it had the opposite effect on me. It overloaded my brain, spiked my adrenaline, and sent me down a rabbit hole of thoughts. An hour later, when we arrived at the river, I was already psychologically spent.

I can’t remember whether I consciously decided to take control of the situation or whether it was a happy accident, but I started bringing a book for the journey. While our lecturers drove and the bus filled with the usual kayak chat, I’d get stuck into Harry Potter.

I arrived at the river in a much better frame of mind
It wasn’t that I was avoiding key information. Our instructor would give us a proper brief before we got our gear on – the levels, the plan, what we were aiming to learn that day. That was what I needed to hear, and when I needed to hear it.

I began to realise that the head game was a huge part of kayaking. That brings me back to Harry Potter and one of my favourite quotes, “Tell me one last thing,” said Harry. “Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?”

Dumbledore beamed at him, and his voice sounded loud and strong in Harry’s ears even though the bright mist was descending again, obscuring his figure.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

I’ve learned a lot about the ‘head game’ since then, but that was my first real insight.

Reflecting on those minibus trips – and how the conversation, crowd, and company affected my day (or more precisely, how I let them affect my day) – leads me to the first clear lesson from the river: