rivers

On Wednesday we left Skull Shoals Bridge behind, three men and a child, off on a two-day adventure on the Pacolet and Broad Rivers. There would not be another bridge until we took out at Lockhart, 15 miles downstream.

I crave contact with the basic elements. I need mud on my boots, sun on my skin, rain on a jacket, or, better yet, water moving under a boat. Thermodynamics is fine, but gravity's the one natural law I can't seem to go too long without acknowledging.

I grew up in the 1960s, and back then the popular myths defining the American West were pretty clear-it was the land of opportunity, a region of dreams, the place those poor Southern mountaineers in "The Beverly Hillbillies" headed after they struck oil.

The heat and drought did in my epic summer paddle to the sea, and I decided to put it off until next May. In spite of low water and 100-degree days I was able to get in three river trips and an overnight before school started.

This week, drought and high August temperatures pushed my chance to paddle to the sea from the upcountry back into the planning stages. I’d planned to leave this week my borrowed boat from a put-in at Cliffside, N.C., and arrive 14 days later in the Santee delta.

Last Monday I drove with my friend Steve Patton 30 minutes up into North Carolina to the mill town of Cliffside. One of my eight great-grandparents, John Simeon Bradley, was born a couple of miles upstream near Henrietta, but what's more, it's where I've decided that I'll put in August 7th for my 200-mile mostly solo paddle to the sea.

On Memorial Day weekend we bypassed the motor boats and the barbeque and packed a picnic river lunch. We drove an hour and a half to Landsford Canal State Park on the Catawba River near Chester to finally see the famous Rocky-Shoals Spider Lilies in full bloom.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said you can't step in the same river twice. It's taken 2500 years, but the folks up at Charlotte's U.S. Whitewater Training Center are trying to prove him wrong.

When I was a kid growing up on the north side of Spartanburg one of the AM radio stations I listened to claimed to broadcast "from the banks of the mighty Chinquapin." It made Chinquapin Creek, the largest of Lawson's Fork's tributaries, sound like the Mississippi River.

Climb into a canoe or kayak in December and float. The weather's often mild this time of year. You can see the bones of the land passing. You can stare far into the dormant woods and see ridges and fields invisible in July. People always say what they love about the upcountry is the vast expanse of green, but this time of the year I like the deep, wooded reaches along rivers where you see the ghostly gray bark of hardwood trees visible after the leaves have all fallen.