Ollie

It was my first time in a canoe.

It was a green Discovery 16 by Old Town. He traded a motorcycle for it in 91. It had seen thousands of river miles, from the mountains of the north to the coastal plains of the south. He even took it to the open ocean a time or two at the end of some week long adventures by himself.

There was webbing that he had done by hand, stretched across the middle gunwales. Beneath the nylon was where he'd put an inflatable air bladder for whitewater.

"If you do well with me this weekend, we'll hit the Natahala before the end of the summer," he promised. "We're going to see a couple of little Class II's on our trip, believe it or not. I'll let you know what to watch out for and how to move."

"I'll take point," he continued. "You do the steering. I'll give commands, let's practice real quick."

I sat in the back of the boat, getting a feel for it. He sat up in the front, boonie hat in place, sunglasses lashed on like he'd done this a hundred times.

He had.

"Hard left!"

I put my back into it, and the nose turned nearly 90 degrees in an instant.

"Holy shit!" he exclaimed, laughing.

"What, did I do something wrong?"

"Hell no, kid. Dang! I'm not used to having someone who can move the whole damned boat like that. That's great! Let's try a few more."

He gave more commands, and the boat responded instantly.

"We're going to be fine, man. Just relax and enjoy the trip. We'll do some fishing in a little while."

I settled in, and he found a station that came in clearly. The whole boat acted like an amplifier for the little $20 waterproof radio he had lashed to the gear webbing. Tracy Chapman, whom I had never heard before, created the soundtrack of our adventure.

He occupied a strange space in my life. He was a former teacher, but a current friend. He was a former coach, but a current mentor. World History was his subject, and I was his star pupil. Defensive line was his specialty when he met me, and he tried to recruit me for a position on his team. In the end, I was more valuable as an offensive lineman, being larger than most men and all of my peers. He first noticed me when we were traveling to an away game on an old schoolbus, and I was reading The Prince while the rest of the team was playing grabass or shooting spitballs.

He took me under his wing. He taught me how to navigate the waters of a river I had known all my life, but never really knew until I'd paddled its length from one end to the other. He helped me navigate the more turbulent waters of adolescent women and social ladders. He hosted me at his house, had me over for dinner, welcomed me into his home and into his family.

He taught me to box.

He occupied a place in my life somewhere between father and older brother. At barely thirty years old, he had already seen the world in the Peace Corps. Originally, he was a journalist; the woman he ended up marrying anchored him in my little part of the world. He was one of the youngest teachers on staff, so that put him at having more in common with the students than it did his peers.

When he saw me, he saw himself.

Several times in the summer months, we took a trip along that river. Camping on sandbars and eating what was caught (but always prepared with PopTarts and canned chili in case things went sideways) we explored tea-colored waters and alligator slides. There was never much speaking on those paddles, because we didn't need to do a lot of talking. The silence was comfortable, when it wasn't being broken by Tracy Chapman or Alanis.

He never gave career advice, but he did tell me something that stuck.

"You have your life ahead of you. You're young. You need to leave before you decide that this is home. You need to go, before you stay, because you can always come back."

I did.

I haven't floated in that river since, and I did the Nantahala on my own.