Monday photos feature

Yes, it's "photos" plural this week because I've got a number of them to share.

The photo above, a screen-grab from WVLT-Knoxville footage, shows Interstate 40 where the eastbound lanes collapsed into the Pigeon River.  The North Carolina Department of Transportation is currently saying that this part of I-40 will be closed until September 2025.  I won't be surprised if that date gets pushed back as time goes on.

I understand that this destruction is located at about Mile 4 in North Carolina.  The putin for the main dam-controlled section of the Pigeon is right at the North Carolina-Tennessee state line.  So that means this damage is about four miles upstream of that putin.

Back in the mid-1990s several slalom races were held on the Pigeon right at the state line, including an installment of the old Champion International Whitewater Series in 1996.  I shot this photo of the C2 team of David Hepp and Barry Kennon in that race.  That's David in the stern and Barry in the bow:

I competed in that race too, and I've also run the section of the Pigeon from the state line to Hartford, Tennessee, a number of times.  In this photo, taken by Mike Davis in 1993, I'm on a camp trip paddling with a camper named Billy Treadway:

On another Pigeon run, I'm in my old Gyramax C1 practicing my roll:

Another river that flooded last week was the French Broad.  The French Broad has its headwaters in the vicinity of Rosman, North Carolina, and flows north through Asheville; it crosses the state line into Tennessee north of where the Pigeon does.  Communities along the French Broad that received significant damage include the towns of Hot Springs, Marshall, and Asheville, and the Biltmore Estate just outside Asheville.  Rion Smith took this photo of me during a 1992 trip on the French Broad where it flows by the Biltmore Estate.  I'm putting on the sort of stern expression that befits such an important man as the head of a summer camp canoeing program:

In the summer of 1994, Clay Barbee shot this photo of me as I tried to get enders in Frank Bell's Rapid.  This rapid is on the French Broad a couple of miles upstream of Hot Springs:

A couple of miles above Frank Bell's Rapid, Big Laurel Creek flows into the French Broad.  My friend Amelia drove by the putin for Big Laurel last week, and she told me it didn't look like it got quite the amount of flooding that the French Broad did.  Here's a shot of me running Stairsteps rapid on Big Laurel in the spring of 1994.  Alfred Thompson took the photo:

These photos represent just a small sample of all the paddling I've done in the mountains of western North Carolina in times when a hurricane seemed the least of the region's worries.  From what I hear, some of the rapids in these rivers have now been completely rearranged.  Whatever the case, I hope that in good time, once the rivers have settled into their altered courses and the region has had a chance to recover from this meteorological disaster, paddlers will once again enjoy carefree days on these playful streams.

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Mountain devastation makes my troubles seem small

I decided to go back to the doctor on Wednesday because of both the injury to my chest area and my continued coughing and chest congestion.  My regular doctor is out of the office on leave right now, so I've been seeing other doctors in the practice.  The one I saw Wednesday was upbeat about my coughing situation, saying he thought it should run its course in a few more days.  He ordered a chest X-ray to determine whether something's broken in my ribcage/sternum area.  My doctor's office has its own X-ray lab, so getting an X-ray is usually a quick and simple process there.  Unfortunately, the office's in-house X-ray technician had left for the day (even though it wasn't even noon yet), so the doctor had to send me up the street to the minor emergency diagnostic center that's owned by the same corporation that owns his practice.  When I got there I found myself in line behind a couple of people, so I ended up sitting in the waiting room for nearly an hour.  Finally they got me in and out of the lab, and so all that was left was for them to send the image back to the doctor I had seen, and for him to call me to discuss the results.

Thursday came and went with no call from the doctor.  So Friday morning I called his office, and when I got their voice mail I left a message asking them to remind him that he owed me a call.  By mid afternoon Friday I hadn't heard a word, so I called again and got a person on the phone this time.  The person told me that because it was after 3 PM, the doctor would most likely not call me until Monday.

And so I'm pretty angry with my doctor's office right now.  The nicest thing I can say about this doctor is that he's not the first I've met for whom customer service is not a high priority.  The upshot is that I'm refraining from paddling this weekend because I still don't know if something is broken in my chest area.  It's frustrating, but maybe it's not the worst thing for me at this moment.  Seeing as how I'm still not entirely recovered from that illness I had, maybe I just need to chill out for a few more days and give my body a chance to get right again.

My friend Amelia, with whom I paddled up at the Gauley last month, paid me a visit Thursday because she was in this area as part of a job.  The main reason I bring this up is that she lives in east Tennessee and works for one of the rafting companies on the Pigeon River, one of the rivers that flooded catastrophically a week ago, and she shared some first-hand information on what's happening over there.  Her raft company is located on the bank of the Pigeon in the town of Hartford, pretty much all of which was badly flooded.  Flood-driven debris knocked a hole in a wall of her company's building, and a lot of the gear was washed away.  The whole place was filled with mud, and the building was destabilized and will need structural repair.  The good news, said Amelia, is that the entire community--neighbors, church groups, raft guides, everybody--came out and started helping one another as soon as the floodwaters had receded.  She said it took just a few hours to get all the mud scraped out of the building, and the company even recovered some of its rafts from a little ways downstream.

Hartford is just one of the towns that experienced major flooding.  A few towns were all but washed off the map.  If I'm interpreting what I've seen in photos correctly, the entire business district of Chimney Rock collapsed into the Rocky Broad River, and many buildings in the town of Marshall were completely destroyed by the flooding French Broad.  The common thread in every town that got flooded appears to be mud: a thick layer of mud contaminated with a whole cocktail of pollutants including petroleum products and raw sewage.  Every street must be scraped of that stuff to be passable for cars like my little Toyota Corolla.

Water and electricity are out all over the region, and it's going to take a long time to get them up and running again because the roads must be rebuilt/repaired before the utility trucks can get in to replace damaged lines.

So it's a mess over there.  I'm grateful for all the organizations, from FEMA to local governments to nonprofits to individuals with skills and equipment, who are over there helping with the cleanup.  If you can't offer help in person, I hope you'll consider donating some money as long as you're smart about it.  So far I've donated to several people or entities who are known to me first- or second-hand.

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Catastrophe in the mountains to the east, and not much paddling here at home

Times are tough for a part of the world that's near and dear to me.  The mountains of western North Carolina are where I fell in love with paddlesports at summer camp some 43 years ago, and were also home to a crafts school (no longer in operation since the retirement of its director) that was the foundation of my development as a woodworker.  That region was positively walloped late last week by Hurricane Helene, which had already perpetrated significant damage as it moved north through Florida and Georgia.

Central characters in the story were rivers I have spent untold hours paddling and exploring: the French Broad, the Green, the Pigeon, the Tuckasegee, the Chattooga, and the Nolichucky, along with various tributary creeks.  Floodwaters did horrific damage to familiar towns like Asheville, Marshall, Hot Springs, Erwin, Chimney Rock, Bryson City, Hartford, Boone, and Greeneville.

The storm exposed just how tenuous the access to many of those communities can be.  If a street is closed here in my grid-patterned city, all you have to do is go around the block to get to a house on that street.  That's not how it works in the narrow valleys and hollers of the Appalachians, where there's typically just one road in.  In some cases bridges or culverts were washed out, leaving entire communities utterly isolated.  Right now even the big city of Asheville is all but impossible to drive to because all of the major interstates and U.S. highways suffered damage.  I learned just this morning that a friend of mine managed to drive from Asheville to her home near Gatlinburg via a convoluted network of state roads in Madison County (NC) and Greene County (TN), probably taking hours longer than normal.

I expect my camp will have limited choices on where it can take canoe trips next summer.  As of now I know that at least two of its bread-and-butter rivers, the Green and the Pigeon, have suffered major damage to their access roads that will probably take many months to repair.  I'm just glad this catastrophe took place early in the camp's offseason; if it had happened in, say, April or May, the camp might have had to cancel its summer sessions because the region's infrastructure, on which it relies for everything from transporting campers to bringing in food and other goods and services, was in ruins.

If there's a bright side to this whole episode, it's that it might have saved the lower Mississippi River from dropping to record-low levels for a third year in a row.  Just a week ago the river was more than ten feet below zero on the Memphis gauge; the record low of -12.04 feet was set just a year ago.  Since then the water has come up to three and a half feet above zero, and is predicted to keep rising to a little over six feet by late this week.  That's not really a high level at all, but it's high enough that the commercial shipping companies can operate comfortably, and that's the main reason those record-low levels have made the national news for the last couple of years.

And yes, much of that water is coming from western North Carolina.  The French Broad, Pigeon, and Nolichucky Rivers all flow into east Tennessee and eventually form the Tennessee River.  The Tuckasegee, meanwhile, is a tributary of the Little Tennessee, which also flows across the state line and feeds into the Tennessee.  The Tennessee, of course, flows past Knoxville and Chattanooga, dips down into northern Alabama and Mississippi, re-enters Tennessee and flows northward into Kentucky, and finally confluences with the Ohio, which joins the Mississippi a short while later at Cairo, Illinois.  So my river right here at Memphis includes water from some of those rivers I grew to love as a camper in North Carolina.

Speaking of that river here at Memphis... this morning I went down to the riverfront to paddle my surfski for the first time in almost a month.  If you've been following this blog lately, then you know that during that month I made a trip to the Gauley River, then came home and got sick for a while, then did my annual demonstration at the crafts fair here.  I definitely wasn't planning a serious training session today: as much as anything, I just wanted to check on my boat and make sure all was well down at the dock.  The truth is that my physical health is not entirely back to normal.  I don't really feel sick anymore, but I've got a lot of chest congestion and I'm having some fairly frequent coughing fits.  And there's still some swelling in that injured area of my chest (courtesy of my tablesaw).

Once I was in the boat this morning, I started out gingerly, and the session ended up being even briefer than I'd planned.  There was discomfort and stuff moving around in my chest--whether there are actual broken bones in there, or just soft tissue moving weirdly, I'm not sure.  I might have to make another trip to my doctor, especially if this coughing still hasn't run its course in another day or two.  I expect she'll want to take an X-ray, both to look for broken ribs/sternum and to gain some insight into what the deal is with all this coughing.

So I was in the boat for just 20 minutes today.  I ended up doing a litter pick-up, by way of keeping the paddling intensity low.  And there was plenty of litter out there in the harbor, both because of the rising water level and because Hurricane Helene sent a good bit of rain to this region, too.  There was much more trash than I could ever fit into my surfski's footwell, so I focused on aluminum cans, which seem to be the most viably recyclable items these days.  I collected a bucketful, and that didn't make even the slightest noticeable dent in the floating trash, but at least I can say I'm a part of the solution rather than a part of the problem.

Whether I get back in the boat anytime soon remains to be seen.  If in fact something is broken, I'll have to take some more weeks off to let it heal.  I hope to do some bike riding and other general-fitness activity to tide myself over in the meantime.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Monday photo feature

In this photo I'm using an axe to shape a chair part during the class I took at the Maine Coast Craft School near Bristol, Maine, in 2023.

I'll be doing more of this kind of work this week here in Memphis.  The Pink Palace Crafts Fair is scheduled to take place this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and I'll be doing a chairmaking demonstration.

I continue to have some pain in my chest area from Friday's tablesaw mishap.  And I still don't feel completely over that illness I had.  I'm feeling weak and lightheaded and not very energetic.  Whatever that illness was, it's really knocked me flat for a long while.  All I can do right now is keep trying to rest and hope I'll be ready to go by Friday.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

From one ailment to the next

My illness continued well into this past week.  By Sunday evening I was developing a bad cough, and by Tuesday I knew it was time to see a doctor about it.  The doctor who examined me thought I probably had a respiratory infection, and he prescribed a short course of antibiotics.

After a couple of days of medication I was feeling somewhat less sick, but still very weak and low on energy.  On Friday morning I knew I wasn't ready for any hard physical exertion, but with my annual crafts fair coming up a week later, I decided I could at least go down into the shop and start gathering some tools together for the chairmaking demonstration I'll be doing.

The presentation I was planning included some small signs, and to make these signs I set up my tablesaw to cuts some small rectangles from some plywood scraps I had lying around.  A tablesaw is a machine that presents some dangers, and I do not take them lightly.  I think for the most part I have developed sound safety habits in terms of how and where I stand, keeping my center of gravity over my feet, and using accessory sticks to push the workpiece through the blade while keeping my hands and fingers out of danger.

But mistakes happen in the blink of an eye.  I think in this case I got a little distracted at the wrong instant.  I took the pressure off the push-stick before one of the plywood rectangles was entirely clear of the spinning blade, and the blade snagged it and sent it hurtling through the air like a frisbee, right into my chest.  It knocked the wind out of me and left a mark on my right pectoral muscle:

There may well be a cracked rib or two in there.  At the very least, I've got a deep bruise.  And the worst thing about it is that it's now very painful to cough, and I'm still coughing a lot.

If I do in fact have a fracture, then I'm done paddling for a good while.  I'll have a better idea in a week or so what the situation is.  But I didn't have much paddling planned for this week anyway because of the crafts fair.  I just hope my injury won't interfere too badly with my crafts fair duties.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Monday photo feature

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that the Gauley River in West Virginia is an annual destination for paddlers.  That's because every September the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers releases water into the Gauley to draw down the level of Summersville Reservoir.  Paddlers travel from all over to partake in the whitewater fun.

Not surprisingly, it's big business for the local tourism and hospitality industry, and especially raft companies.  And photographers have found their niche, too.  A company called West Virginia Sports Photography places people with cameras at notable rapids along the river to shoot everybody who comes by, hoping that some of those people will want to purchase mementos of their heroic moments.

They found a customer in me!  I shelled out some money for three of their photos.  That photo in last Thursday's post of me running Pillow Rock Rapid is one of them.  And the one above is another.  That's me running Koontz Flume on the lower Gauley back on Friday, September 6.  I was doing a lot of deep braces that day, trying my darnedest to keep the boat upright.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

🤢

I mentioned at the end of my last post that I was taking a few days off, and probably wouldn't paddle again until this weekend.  Well, my body has announced that it needs even more recovery than that.  I've come down with something--I felt it starting to come on Friday evening.  I don't really know what it is; so far there haven't been any cold or flu symptoms, just chills, body aches, and probably a mild fever.  My bladder has been very active, too: each of the last two nights I had to get up and use the bathroom four or five times.  And since last night I've been having trouble keeping food down.  All I felt like having for supper was some soup from a can, and I vomited some of that back up.  This morning I had some cereal and fruit for breakfast, and for a while I was unsure if I could keep that down, but ultimately I did.

I really don't get sick very often, and believe me, I'm grateful for that.  I certainly get plenty of exercise, I get a good sleep almost every night, and I think I do a reasonably good job of eating right.  It also doesn't hurt that I live and work alone, not breathing in other people's germs all the time.

I think this is just my body telling me to slow down.  I spent two of the last three weekends in the Appalachian Mountains re-starting my whitewater paddling career, and I've also had a lot going on in my non-athletic life.  I've had some things to deal with over at my rental property, I've had a lawyer helping me do some estate planning, I've got a woodworking project whose deadline is no time soon but I've been trying to knock it out anyway, and my annual crafts fair is coming up two weeks from now.  So I've had that feeling of being constantly on the go.

It's not the worst time to just hole up inside for a few days, as the weather has continued to be pretty gloomy.  By Friday morning the strong winds had abated, but it still rained for quite a bit of the day.  Rain has continued off and on yesterday and today, and we've seen no sunshine at all.  It sort of feels like what we sometimes have in December here in Memphis--not all that cold, really, but just wet and depressing.  It's sure not making these chills I'm having feel any better.

Anyway, I'm just trying to get a lot of rest and drink a lot of fluids, and I hope this will run its course soon.

EDITED TO ADD: I do not have covid.  I didn't think I did because I was able to taste my food without any trouble, but my mom thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to test for it, and she brought me a test kit this afternoon.  The test came back negative.  So that continues to be something I've avoided since the world was beset by a pandemic four years ago.

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