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FISH MAGIC

Although never a squirt boater, I’ve learned many things from observing this paddling genre; the most important of which is to choose your playspots carefully. One rather innocuous rapid on the lower Ocoee is named Cat’s Pajamas--perhaps someone’s cat went to sleep there; I don’t know. I do know that it possesses a delightful feature: a powerful column of water that races down the left side of the river then plunges deeply into a pool, creating a whirlpool that runs downstream along the eddyline. Also, as if to celebrate their return home following a long journey, a trail of bubbles one hundred feet in length fizzes on the surface of the pool while spirals of remnant currents draw ephemeral lines among them.

It’s during the sun-filled days of July and August when I enjoy Cat’s Pajamas most, for it’s then that the masses of swirling bubbles are spotlighted and the dynamic vortices that spin off the confines of the rock are visually well defined.

It was a hot August afternoon when Todd and I sat perched like two water turkeys on the jump rock at the bottom of Cat’s Pajamas. As we peered down into the river, I explained, "Okay, watch the whirlpool as it comes by . . . there it goes, see it? Like the second hand on some cosmic clock it’ll reform and come spinning by again. Make your body like a pencil--real pointy-like--then jump directly into the eye of the whirlpool. You might even want to take a few downstrokes with your arms once you’re under--that’ll send you even deeper. Oh, I almost forgot  . . . make sure you take a deep breath . . . and hold it!" Then, like a small spiral galaxy it came wheeling by again and I looked down into its very heart and . . .



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The swirling currents and my downstrokes took me deeply into the dark green shades of the river where the swirl phantoms gave me the required turns as if this were some strange Appalachian folk dance. My bare feet even felt the sensual smoothness of the metasiltstone bottom as I scurried across it like some moonwalker. Perhaps thirty seconds passed before my lungs began their expected protest and I looked toward the lighter shades of the river. I swam upward, breaking the surface a good seventy-five feet from my point of entry. I swam back upstream along the shoreline to the jump rock where I climbed out, then said to Todd, "Okay, it’s your turn." Undaunted, he waited for his ride to come twisting by then knifed his body feet first into the spinning orifice. Ten . . . fifteen . . . twenty seconds--this was a good one--WHOOSH! he breached not ten feet from where he jumped in!

"JEZZ! I got caught in a swirl and kept going ‘round ‘n ‘round down there! Man, that was incredible! Let’s do it again!" he exclaimed, obviously enjoying his newfound affinity with the river.

We spent most of that afternoon riding those mercurial forces doled out by gravity, but several times retreated into the shadows of the rock wall as hordes of raftoids overran the rock and noisily made their own repeated jumps into the river.

"Looks like they’re having fun," Todd said.

"I’m sure they are," I agreed. "But they have no idea of what it’s like to go deep and take a twirl or two with the swirl phantoms."

Later as we rested on the large flat rock that tilts upward from the riverbed, Todd looked skyward and watched as a vulture rode the eccentric thermals of the river gorge. "You know," he observed, " Man has always looked to the sky--to the birds--and coveted their special gift of flight, but I think that we as paddlers should look elsewhere for a deeper understanding of our chosen medium. I think we should look . . . to the Fishes!." Sometimes he surprises me with his insight, so it was with reluctance that I replied, "You know, long ago a strange race of paddlers did exactly that, looked to the fishes and tried to understand the magic they enjoyed.

"A strange race of paddlers?" Todd questioned. "Who were they? What were they called?"



"West Virginians."





Ken Strickland

A tip of the helmet to the Snyder brothers. May your mysteries run deep.

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