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Went back to my old stomping grounds in West Virgnia for a vacation with my wife. I spent one season as a raft guide on the formidable Upper Gauley River after I got out of college in the early nineties.

On this last trip, we didn’t bring a camera, but we drew some pictures. I drew the one above. The scene is Pillow, one of the 5 class V rapids on the Upper Gauley. Few hours we hung out by the bank most rafts made it through unscathed, but we saw a few folks tossed out of their boats, and one boat flipped entirely. The same day, a young man died just downstream when his Kayak was pinned by the current in some rocks.

I am glad I got through my season of guiding this stretch of river without hurting anyone. So much is just luck.

I am glad I went back. It was my turn to plan a vacation, and I chose to take us to Fayette County, WV, because I remembered how beautiful it was. I forgot how intense my experience was living there back in the early nineties. I had graduated college with and English degree and didn’t have any idea what I was doing. I got a gig guiding rafts on a fairly easy stretch of river in Colorado, and then somehow got a job guiding rafts down the Upper Gauley, a legendarily hardcore stretch of whitewater tucked into a narrow valley in coal country. The most notorious rapid Sweet Falls, is so gnarly…I can’t describe it. You must watch to understand.

The area around the Gauley had changed a little bit. It looked a little less economically depressed. Hipsterization had begun. But the macho, river drenched, outdoorsy, backwoods, Appalachian flavor was the same as always.

It felt good to reconnect with this place. Back in my guiding days, I was going through a lot emotionally, and I guess I needed the kind of focus the river forced on me.

I don’t need to risk my life to find purpose these days, but I understand the appeal, and I still fancy a weekly adrenaline rush. That’s why I like performing live. When people ask me how I can handle live performance, I just think about Gauley and laugh inside.