Outdoors thrills can heighten senses

The moment came upon us without warning, then seemed to slowly unfold.

I remember feeling a kind of curious, almost detached, disbelief: This is going to happen. We're going swimming.

Andrew Trivizas and I had struck a boulder broadside near Mitchell's Gut, an area of rapids in the James River. The water was high — about 7.2 feet at the Westham gauge — but it wasn't raging. We'd made it here from Huguenot Flatwater in my 16-foot canoe just fine. We were only a few hundred yards from our take out at Reedy Creek.

Then the boulder, the loss of balance, and the knowledge: Your trip, your day, just changed dramatically. Here we go!

First thought: Keep your arms tight to your chest (a history of shoulder dislocations makes this an involuntary response any time I fall out of or off anything).

Then pure sensation in slow motion. I remember being surprised at how cold the water was as I plunged in. The river was muddy; it had that smell that rivers do when they're carrying the sediment of thousands of upstream acres. And it occurred to me how loud it was out here in the middle of this chaotic cauldron of rushing water.

My head went under. Then the rest of me. Then total quiet.

What is it about outdoor endeavors that produces these purely visceral moments?

I'll never forget holding a rifle in my hand this past fall as a giant eight-point buck emerged from a hardwood line across a cornfield. I was hidden perfectly by a cedar thicket. I trained the scope of the muzzleloader on him. Would he come close enough for a shot?

I remember smelling the oiled metal of the breech plug as I eased my finger onto the trigger. I heard a bird behind me; it sounded close enough to perch on my shoulder. How strange to notice birdsong in the instant before I had to decide whether to squeeze the trigger.

Or who hasn't reveled in the moment of hookup with a fish? I often wonder the time it takes for the message to be relayed — fish to hook to line to rod to hands, arms, brain. It's probably shortest in the best fishermen among us, but we all get to experience it. Every cast for the rest of our lives is thrown with the anticipation of that feeling.

At the recent Dominion Riverrock festival, huge crowds watched rock climbers try to navigate a man-made cave full of structures with hand and foot holds. Without watching, you could feel the anticipation ripple through the crowd when a climber got to a point where it looked as if his grip wouldn't hold or she had to make a leap from one obstacle to the next. If they didn't make it, and fell to the crash pad below, you knew that too from the crowd.

I stood there watching, imagining what those moments felt like for the climbers themselves.

In a canoe or kayak, there's an added element: fear.

While extremely unlikely, every trip through the falls of the James carries the risk of death. Subconsciously, anyone who's paddled it knows that. The risk might be one in a million, but it's not zero.

Surely that knowledge informed my experience of the moment the canoe flipped and Trivizas and I went under.

How long could we have been in the froth? One second, maybe. Who knows. When we surfaced, we instinctively looked around and took stock. We were both above water, breathing and unhurt. We had the paddles, but we had to let a flip flop go to stay with the boat.

That was the key: hold on to the boat (canoes aren't cheap, you know) and try to steer it to a rock where we could turn it back over.

Anyone who's been in this situation knows how difficult a task this is in flat water. We still had rapids to swim through while holding the canoe. Rapids are created by rocks. Rocks hurt when you find them with a knee or an ankle.

So, we held on and happened to land on a rock. With much effort, we flipped the boat, got back in and paddled for home. The sense of relief that everything, minus the flip flop, had turned out all right was palpable. It was then that the sensory input stored up from the moment before flipping came flooding in. The smells, sounds, sights, everything.

And whether I realized it or not at the time, that, more than any number of uneventful trips, is why I can't wait to get back out on the water.