I grew up in Enid, but I didn’t start kayaking until I was a grad student at UC-Berkeley in the late 1960s.
In those days, you built your own boat in your garage from a mold with fiberglass and resin.
If you hit a rock, you’d probably break your boat. So it was important to carry duct tape.
I learned how to roll a boat and how to right it in a swimming pool in Oakland. Then it was on to rivers. Northern California is full of rivers that are a lot of fun.
You can’t overpower the river. The key is to let the water do what it wants to do. Go with the flow.
In competition, I rowed mixed pairs. Wild water.
We were one of four pairs chosen to represent the U.S. at the 1974 international confederation competition in Yugoslavia. We didn’t win, but it was a real adventure.
The East Germans were in a class all by themselves.
In 1976, we won the U.S. national championships.
Shortly after, I took a job in New York. So that was the end of competitive boating for me.
I was the second woman to kayak the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.
It would be fun to do again. But you have to take your time to see the wonders of geology and the layers of geological history in the canyon walls.
What we considered extreme wouldn’t be called extreme today. We weren’t trying to run rivers where a mistake was likely to be fatal. That’s common now.
Being out on the river is a wonderful, head-clearing thing.
When you get it working right, it’s like you’re a porpoise or a seal. Nothing I’ve ever done was more fun than that.
