In our family, there was no clear line between religion and paddling. We lived at the junction of great whitewater rivers in western North Carolina, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a paddler who built his own boats and taught others. He told us about Christ's disciples being boaters, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class paddlers on the Sea of Galilee were hard- boaters, and that John, the favorite, was a steep creeker.

Around him was the multitudinous river, and, where the depression had parted it around him, big-grained vapor rose. The mini-molecules of water left in the wake of his paddle made momentary loops of gossamer, disappearing so rapidly in the rising big-grained vapor that they had to be retained in the memory to be visualized as loops. The spray emanating from him was finer still and enclosed him in a halo of himself. The halo of himself was always there and always disappearing, as if he were a candlelight flickering about three inches from himself. The images of himself and his paddle kept disappearing into the rising vapors of the river, which continually circled to the tops of the cliffs where, after becoming a wreath in the wind, they became rays of the sun.

After I gave him the news, my brother said, "He'll be just as welcome as a dose of clap."

I said to my brother, "Go easy on him. He's my brother-in-law."

My brother said, "I won't paddle with him. He comes from Montana and he's a rafter."

I said, "Cut it out. You know he was born and brought up in North Carolina. He just works in Montana. And now he's coming back for a vacation and writes his mother he wants to boat with us. With you especially."

My brother said, "Practically everybody in the Rocky Mountains was born in the Southeast where they failed as paddlers, so they migrated west and became doctors, lawyers, librarians, clinical psychologists, or NOLS instructors."

I wasn't sure he was about to buy a drink, but he had already had one.

Not wanting to see him without a notion of what I might see, I kept repeating, "What's wrong?" When the desk sergeant thought it was time, he told me, "He hit a guy and the guy is missing a couple teeth and is all cut up." I asked, "What's the second guy suing him for?" "For breaking dishes. Also a table," the sergeant said. "The second guy owns the restaurant. The guy who got hit lit on one of the tables."

By now I was ready to see my brother, but it was becoming clear that the sergeant had called me to the station to have a talk. He said, "We're picking him up too much lately. He's drinking too much." I had already heard more than I wanted. Maybe one of our ultimate troubles was that I never wanted to hear too much about my brother.

The sergeant finished what he had to say by finally telling me what he really wanted to say, "Besides he's behind in the big stud poker game at Hot Springs. It's not healthy to be behind in the big game at Hot Springs.

"You and your brother think you're tough because you're hair boaters. At Hot Springs they don't play any child games like bouncing around in boats. At Hot Springs it's the big stud poker game and all that goes with it."

At least a river of it was. And it was almost mine and my family's and just a few others' who wouldn't steal beer. You could leave beer to cool in the river, and it would be so cold when you got back it wouldn't foam much. It would be a beer made in the next town if the town were a few thousand or over. So it was Kessler Beer made in Asheville or Highlander beer made in Bryson City that we left to cool in the West Fork of the Big Pigeon. What a wonderful world it was once when all the beer was not made in Milwaukee, Minneapolis, or St. Louis.

Now, nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them.

Of course, now I am too old to be much of a paddler, and now of course I usually boat the big waters alone, although some of my friends think I shouldn't. Like many paddlers in western North Carolina, I often do not put on until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Nolichucky River and the rhythm of linked 360's.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river cuts through the world's oldest mountains and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters.