Unpublished

Fear, Dread, Uncertainty, and Other Good Things.

The great thing about whitewater sport is the immediate, decisive, objective feedback it gives you. There is nothing quite like a swift rap on the head, or a thorough underwater thrashing in one of those recirculating water-formations that we so prosaically call “holes,” to point out the errors in your thinking. And you can count on the river to give you a straight answer, without regard to how beautiful or homely you are, how charming or disagreeable. Fast, reliable, unequivocal feedback -- what an ideal laboratory the river makes, to compare different approaches to the decision-making process. Reason versus instinct, for example.

There is little disagreement that instinct is sovereign on the water. “Look, see, do,” is the phrase that my racing partner, Lecky Haller, used to mutter just before the countdown, and that three-word injunction holds true on the open river, too. “Paralysis through analysis” sums up the accepted wisdom on over-thinking. Even Hamlet throws introspection aside once he clashes swords.

I believe that if you were fully aware, at all moments, of all aspects of the elusive now, that instinct would tell you when you would need to pull into shore. But in the real world there are lapses. And so a few decision-rules are necessary to interrupt instinct’s sometimes over-enthusiastic flow. (Otherwise, again, you might ‘go with the flow’ right over an enticing waterfall -- and right onto the rocks.) Never paddle over a blind horizon line, or around a blind corner, are a couple of handy decision-rules. Sometimes you have to break the flow, climb out of your canoe, and take a good hard look.

“Do I try it, or do I walk?” is one of the questions you have to ask yourself. You’re standing above it all, when you ask this, you’re not in your boat, you’re thinking ahead. And if the rapid is long and complex enough, you must imagine each step, and what could go wrong, and what you might do if this or that happened.

Sorry, guys, but this is what they call “analysis.” Sometimes you just have to do that damned analysis stuff. If you don’t, you risk paralysis through insufficient analysis.

All the while that you are standing there, analyzing, you can also, separately, feel a growing instinct about the run, a gut-feeling that in its various forms could be expressed “it’s fine, no problem, piece of cake”; “I’m nervous but I want to do it”; or, most simply, a feeling of fear or even dread too deep to be verbalized.

In my early years, I would simply follow my instinct; whatever I felt like running, I would run, and when I had the urge to portage, I portaged. But I couldn’t help noticing how unreliable my bank-side instinct really was. I’m still surprised at how often my instincts are entirely, 100% wrong. Recently I stood on the side of a rapid that my mind told me was dead easy: no particular complexity, and no “consequences,” as we call them. And yet I was unaccountably afraid. Why? I would be stupid to run the rapid without understanding this why, for there was a chance that my subconscious was noticing some hidden danger, or some weakness in my own physical apparatus that day, that my conscious mind had so far ignored. On this particular day, I finally decided that I just wasn’t used to the look of a big-volume river, and that my analysis was correct. And so it proved; the rapid was as easy as I’d thought.

Often, instinct is wrong in the other direction: beware the decision influenced by a camera, or by an attractive onlooker.

Having rejected instinct, for a time I relied purely on my most careful analysis. That didn’t last very long. Analysis quails at the complexity of powerful rapids; lots of room in your plans must be left for improvisation, leeway, fall backs, “Plan B’s,” “if everything goes wrong I’ll kick out of the boat and swim down and I’ll be fine.” If this last is not the case -- if analysis gives any credence to fear -- then the boat-on-the-shoulder route is a very fine one.

And so, it has finally been pounded into me that I have to use my whole brain, not just one part. Your instinct is one of the facts, it’s part of the situation -- it would be just as silly to ignore an instinct as to ignore one of the boulders over which the water flows. Nothing can be excluded.

Unfortunately, this means that there is no easy, preset decision-rule for decision-making, no handy formula. It’s not only true, that you can’t step in the same river twice -- you’re not even the same person twice. Every situation is unique; each time you must take all the available facts into account and then make today’s individual decision. You have to make friends with what is, what really is, both the reality that’s inside you and the very real rocks out there.

And then ... you decide.

 

More Fear

You hear a lot about what a negative thing fear is, but the kind of fear I have been speaking of -- real, immediate, physical fear -- is a very good thing indeed. Sometimes, yes, you want to overcome your irrational fears -- but don’t get too much in the habit of overcoming. Many fears are rational. Fear is a signal to pay very good attention, to open your eyes very wide. Fear is trying to tell you something; you may decide to overrule your fear, but first: Give fear a good hearing.