We swirl and weave down the Chute and enter a ninety-degree curve to the right that might be too tight for our long lake kayak. We get swept beneath some snags and sweepers—low overhanging tree branches—and when I dig in my paddle near the stern, so we can pivot to the right, the upper blade tangles in the branches.
Our kayak stops but the water keeps pushing and suddenly the boat swings sideways to the current.
We’re going over!
At the last second I wrestle the paddle free from the overhanging branches and straighten the boat out. We duck beneath the limbs and break loose. The current takes us away.
But the bank is rushing up fast. A back eddy tries to pull the nose of our kayak around but we battle our way through it.
Now we see the bow of the busted canoe poking straight up between two boulders.
We’re headed right for it.
Water gushes over it and up the sides of the boulders. The bow of the canoe trembles in the turmoil, but it’s stuck there.
And we could get stuck too.
Twenty feet. Ten.
It rushes up at us like an angry gravestone, but I dig my paddle in, hard, and at the last second we slide around it.
Then we’re at the inside elbow of the bend—waves pounding our hull and forcing it down, under water. We almost stall.
“Paddle, Dad!” I yell. “Paddle harder!”
He does what I ask. Maybe I’m the captain now.
And straining our arms, shoulders, backs, legs, we drive our blades through the churning waves . . .
. . . then burst out and rocket down the other side of the Chute.
A broken canoe paddle sticks out of a pile of rocks near the cut bank, like an amputated arm waving good-bye.
And then as quickly as we entered the Chute, we’re all the way through it.
We glide for a moment in easy water and I’m about to let out a shout of victory, when we’re snatched by the “Roller Coaster,” as Dad called it.
I’d forgotten about the Roller Coaster!
Once again, the current grabs us and sweeps us away.
Immediately, I see how it got its name. It’s fast and furious, with barf-inducing drops.
But also like a roller coaster, it’s fun!
But we’re not on rails and once again our fate is in our own hands, not some machine’s.
And I’m in the back, guiding the two of us.
And we don’t want our kayak to end up like the broken-in-half canoe.
The good news is that there are no more boulders and no more bends, just huge standing waves. So I drop the rudder in and we hold a straight course down the center of all the crazy turbulence . . .
. . . until, at last, we glide out into smooth water at the far end.
Can I breathe now?
We drift.
About a quarter mile later, Dad shouts and points. A warning sign.
I slow down and then back-paddle, trying to keep our kayak in place as I read the sign aloud: “Stop! Pull out! Cascades! Unpassable. Portage here!”
Cascades? Those are small waterfalls! Dad didn’t say anything about waterfalls.
I can hear them, like a continuous boom of thunder, and see the mist rising above the first drop a few hundred yards down the Isaac River.
Now my dad does the craziest thing ever. He turns his head and yells over his shoulder: “We’re NOT pulling out, Aaron! We’re gonna run it! We’re gonna challenge our fate! CHALLENGE THE RIVER GODS!”
My heart drops, like it did plunging down the Roller Coaster. I can’t believe my ears! I’m excited and furious and scared, all at the same time.
This is so unlike him! Cassidy might have wanted to shoot down cascades in a kayak—maybe even his dad, Wild Man Willie.
But not Dad!
“HERE WE GO, KIDDO!” he shouts. A grin spreads across my face.
And he starts paddling toward certain doom.
And I paddle with him.
