Split Rock Blog

All of this gear has made it possible for us to outfit our friends. Each spring, for example, we do a Grand River Family Trip – all are welcome! We’ve brought 7 boats in the past, allowing our friends and their children to paddle one of Southern Ontario’s gems. Perhaps they too will catch the canoeing bug.

All of this gear eventually led to Tim and I joking about being outfitters. I would call our little group T&J Outdoors, but Tim got stickers printed that read J&T Outdoors, so he won that battle.

The more that we wanted to facilitate our friends being able to paddle, the more we realized that we needed to do more than just provide gear. We needed to teach them about whitewater.

The Perils of Whitewater

I regularly tell people that vocalize concerns about camping with bears, and the dangers that they pose, that one is more likely to die from a bee sting in the bush than a bear attack. And far more likely to perish in a motor vehicle accident on the way to the river than on the river.

Nevertheless, people do die while canoeing. I made the mistake of learning about a fatal bear attack on the Missinaibi in 2005 prior to embarking on the trip. I made the wise decision to not watch the film made about it until after the trip. That trip came to a pre-mature end – a story for another day – and I’ve still elected to no watch the film. 

We spend a great deal of time watching canoeing videos, and both Tim and I have read whitewater safety books. Year after year our safety gear and safety plans improve. As our skill increases – and our ability to tackle bigger and more challenging rapids with it – we’ve become more acutely aware of the lack of skill in those we bring to the river with us. We regularly reflect on our naivety from some of our earlier trips.

The river reminds us when we forget. I posted about one of my biggest rapids ever, the Lower Burnt Chute on the Mag . I was the only canoeist to successfully get down. Stefan ran it without a problem – but in a kayak. As a kayaker he runs the most incredible things. Like this past summer when he ran a huge part of the Grande Chute on the Dumoine River. A kayak can run things that our canoes cannot – or should not. 

Stefan knows whitewater. He’s a very skilled paddler overall. Especially in his kayak. His experience with canoeing, however, is more limited. 

Needless to say, the river offered us an important lesson that day.

It’s not that Stefan lacked skill or knowledge, he just lacked experience in a canoe and, given the volume and speed of the rapid, he was reminded of this immediately. 

J&T Outdoors evolved to Split Rock Outdoors to be inclusive of Stefan – a core member of our community despite his preference for what we call “little boats”. It evolved from a group that wanted to share gear to one that wanted to share knowledge and, hopefully, experiences.

Knowing is Half the Battle

As a kid, I used to love watching the G.I. Joe cartoon. Every episode would end with a moral lesson of sorts, and the refrain, “Knowing is half the battle.” That might be a generous ratio, on reflection; but it’s certainly a necessary part of the battle.

Knowing things is important. But knowing is not the same as doing. Stefan had considerable knowledge about whitewater, paddling, canoes, and even that specific rapid. He had already run it in his kayak and he had the benefit of watching both Tim and I run it in our canoes. He still dumped. The canoe and the gear ended up in a pool beneath the next rapid – and the canoe took a beating. She must have found a good demolishing rock, as she is no longer seaworthy.

From millions of sources all over the globe, through every possible channel and medium—light waves, airwaves, ticker tapes, computer banks, telephone wires, television cables, satellites, printing presses—information pours in. Behind it, in every imaginable form of storage—on paper, on video and audio tape, on discs, film, and silicon chips—is an ever greater volume of information waiting to be retrieved. Like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, we are awash in information. And all the sorcerer has left us is a broom. Information has become a form of garbage, not only incapable of answering the most fundamental human questions bug barely useful in providing coherent direction to the solution of even mundane problems. To say it still another way: The milieu in which Technopoly flourishes is one in which the tie between information and human purpose has been severed, i.e., information appears indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, in enormous volume and at high speeds, and disconnected from theory, meaning, or purpose. …. It is only now beginning to be understood that cultures may also suffer grievously from information glut, information without meaning, information without control mechanisms. (69-70)

This is not intended to be an exposition on Postman’s theory – but the man was prescient. He pointed out the dangers of believing that information, on its own, is meaningful. One of my favourite examples that he uses to point this out is how statistics have transformed things like sports:

Useless, meaningless statistics flood the attention of the viewer. …. For example: “Since 1984, the Buffalo Bills have won only two games in which they were four points ahead with less than six minutes to play.” Or this: “In only 17 percent of the times he has pitched at Shea Stadium has Dwight Gooden struck out the third and fourth hitters less than three times when they came to bat with more than one runner on base.” What is one to do with this or make of it? (137)

At the conclusion of his text, Postman recognizes that, like many, he is “armed less with solutions than with problems” (182). He encourages us to become resistance fighters:

A resistance fighter understands that technology must never be accepted as part of the natural order of things, that every technology—from an IQ test to an automobile to a television to a computer—is a product of a particular economic and political context and carries with it a program, an agenda, and a philosophy that may or may not be life-enhancing and that therefore require scrutiny, criticism, and control. (184-185)

The U.S. Surgeon General didn’t call for warning labels on social media platforms because they are life-enhancing. We live in an age where the Technopoly’s influence is pernicious. The mis- and dis-information campaigns that technology has enabled has – and continues – to cost people their lives. Technologies emerge in a particular political and economic context – and right now that is one that intends to see the barons of technologies rule the world, unaccountable and unthwarted.

Resistance is needed.

A Return to the River

What does any of this have to do with Split Rock Outdoors or whitewater?

Well, for one, even though it had been forgotten since my last reading of Technopoly, Postman notes in his concluding chapter the importance of confronting our use of technology in nature: 

“… the history of technology, which as much as science and art provides part of the story of humanity’s confrontation with nature and indeed with our own limitations” (198).

The river reminds us of our own limitations. Just ask Stefan. And me. I’ve been humbled by the river a few times.

Technology is not all bad. Advances in technology have allowed us to push the limits of what we were once capable of – collectively, and specifically at Split Rock. We plan to use a drone to scout long rapids; every person carries a two-way radio so we can communicate at all times; our new boats have incorporated a new proprietary plastic to replace Royalex, T-Formex; our gear is lighter and more durable; we can use GPS to track our pace, check the weather, communicate, and if ever needed, effect a rescue; we carry battery packs to charge our phones, cameras, and lovely camp lights. 

Technology has also allowed us to communicate in new ways about paddling. The Split Rock Outdoors website was created precisely for this purpose – to offer our friends (and anyone that happens upon it) information about whitewater. We offer details about gear, safety, reading rapids, cooking, planning, among many other things.

But the information is not sufficient. While we aspire to avoid Postman’s critique of this information being garbage, we recognize that without proper instruction, the information will just result in the conceit of wisdom.

Put simply: even if you memorize this website, without proper instruction and experience, you’ll not have much success on Lower Burnt Chute ... or perhaps any rapid. Hell, you might dump the canoe getting in!

In similar ways, the relentless onslaught on information online isn’t helping to make us wiser. To be sure, we are not going to stop the relentless growth of technology – even Postman had no illusion about the work his thesis would accomplish. But we must be vigilant. “New technologies alter the structure of our interests: the things we think about. They alter the character of our symbols: the things we think with. And they alter the nature of community: the arena in which thoughts develop” (20).

And to be clear, technology is not limited to social media – although, it is arguably one of the most dangerous technologies presently circulating in society. Consider Postman’s reflection on the plight of every student: grades. 

Here, I should like to give only one example of how technology creates new conceptions of what is real and, in the process, undermines older conceptions. I refer to the seemingly harmless practice of assigning marks or grades to the answers students give on examinations. This procedure seems so natural to most of us that we are hardly aware of its significance. We may even find it difficult to imagine that the number or letter is a tool or, if you will, a technology: still less that, when we use such a technology to judge someone’s behavior, we have done something peculiar. In point of fact, the first instance of grading students’ papers occurred at Cambridge University in 1792 at the suggestion of a tutor named William Farish. No one knows much about William Farish; not more than a handful have ever heard of him. And yet his idea that a quantitative value should be assigned to human thoughts was a major step toward construction a mathematical concept of reality. (12-13)

Here Postman is not positing that grading is a stupid or dangerous behaviour, only that it is “peculiar.” However, I think I speak for many of us when I say that Farish can get bent! Nevertheless, Postman’s overarching point is important: “… embedded in every tool is an ideological basis, a predisposition to construct the world as one thing rather than another, to value one thing over another, to amplify one sense or skill or attitude more loudly than another” (13). 

In imparting our knowledge – and the knowledge gleaned from experience, others, readings, etc – to our friends on our website, we have no illusions about what we are imparting. It is not experience. It does not equip anyone to immediately tackle a tricky river or rapid. We still take the time to impart and review the knowledge with “noobs” on the river. We take extra caution, even, recognizing the danger that may come with the conceit of wisdom. After all, we think our little webpage is pretty useful. But we have no illusions about the need for proper instruction. At the start of the day, at the top of the rapid, while paddling, over dinner at night, we are continually revisiting the information, applying it to our experiences, and relying on it to make informed and, hopefully, wise decisions. We discuss what went right, wrong, lucky, and how we might adjust in the future.

Three others portaged their boats the day that Stefan dumped his canoe on Lower Burnt Chute. They knew enough to know their own limitations and Tim, Stefan, and I knew enough to support them in their decisions. Several of them had been on numerous previous whitewater trips and yet they recognized the limits of their knowledge. While we hope our friends – and perhaps you! – learn much from the information we have collected on our site, make no mistake: running a whitewater river still requires proper instruction.

As a group, we continue to pursue our own education. We continue to read and train, watch instructional videos, and learn from others. This Spring I will be taking a five-day Whitewater River Technician course to improve on my safety and rescue techniques, and there are plans in the works for some wilderness first aid and search and rescue training in the near future.

We continue to seek out proper instruction, to prevent the conceit of wisdom.

Because there is one thing we know for sure: the river can be a cruel, brutal, and unrelenting instructor that will not suffer fools.