I am an old man now. And like most older people, I often reflect on the events in my life looking for pattern or meaning. My history with boating has been rich, and I think about it often. Raft, dory, canoe, kayak, IK, kick boat, float tube—all self-powered other than the occasional skiff or e-kayak. Boating revolved around fishing, yet at a certain point in my life it took on a much greater meaning.
As a teen on the NorCal coast, I would take an open canoe out of the lagoon in Bolinas to fish, bucking through waves with reckless abandon. But I was living in Portland, Oregon, working for a sporting goods company when I first discovered the river. Our general manager, also a fishing guide, took a group of employees to the east side of the Cascades for in-service training on the Deschutes River.
Where my world opened like a dimensional gate.
Whitewater, desert canyon, world-class fishery—the river ran like a scatback through the secondary; a mysterious, fecund, pearly green ribbon amongst brown and gold hills, bursting with aquatic insects and native trout. Come summer, steelhead returned to the river and fly fishermen took them at the surface in a violent boil! The air was saturated with the scent of minerals and sage brush. It felt as much like another world as I could have imagined.



The trip turned out to be “out-service training” for me; I quit two weeks later and took a job running bag boat for a fly fishing company on the river instead.
At that point, fishing subsumed into a bigger context of challenge and adventure. I spent the next two years on the river learning the ropes, becoming a savvy fly fisherman and rowing a beast of a boat, an 18’ Havasu. The raft was bomber. You had to hit the oars several times before it would bother to respond. I felt like a mahout atop a lazy elephant.
With the bump up to guide a couple of years later I would run a McKenzie-style dory instead. The boss gave me the hard boat in late fall to get enough reps so as not to sink a boatload of clients the following spring. The tradeoff was clear: maneuverability and style in exchange for capacity and insurance. I’d seen the shells of enough drift boats wrapped around “Oh Shit” Rock to become acutely aware of the danger.
Whitehorse is arguably the most difficult rapid of the two major canyon sections we ran expeditions on. It runs for a mile, but the only really technical bit is at the head. Yet, it was very nearly my nemesis.

My heart was in my mouth as the boat paused for a half second and the water piled up furiously against the gunnel before deciding to slip off instead of going under. After regaining control, I managed to spin around in time to ride the huge wave train just below.
I was beyond rattled, and spent days soul-searching, in doubt as to whether an adventurous life was in the cards for me. I figured it was the panic that had unmanned me and decided to give it another shot. This time I had a new trick up my sleeve. A week later, I was back on the river, making the long float down from Trout Creek to Whiskey Dick and Whitehorse.
At the lip of the drop, I held the oar handles in my left hand and slapped myself hard across the face. Anger trumped fear and with pique and energy I hit the standers… and the same thing happened!
I had hit the slot bow-first and still could not make the move in time. I slid right up on the nefarious rock and, unbelievably… slipped right back off!
More soul-searching ensued. Banishing fear was not enough. By all rights I should have screwed the pooch. Finally, it occurred to me how I was shooting myself in the foot. Dories had high gunnels for just this type of situation. I decided the third time pays for all. Soon, I was making the long drive back over Mount Hood to see if I could get it right.
This time (after another slap to the face) I canted the boat, hitting the waves nearly broadside and pulled like a mother! I’d taken only a single splash of water over the rail and not only did I miss “Oh Shit,” but shot well past it! I had to spin around on a dime to ride the mountainous wave train bow-on.




Several years went by and I grew into the fly-fishing culture, even writing for the genre. The company I worked for was a major player in the industry, with several retail shops in the Northwest and a lucrative mail-order business. They had a cabin in Maupin where they wined and dined their guests and ran day trips. I had zero interest in that. For me, it was all about the five-day fishing expeditions in the remote canyons.
We ran these trips like a quasi-military operation. Ruthless to secure the best runs and camps, we would wake in the darkness to put our troops into position before the jet boats had the requisite light to run. Yet, after a season or two, I began to feel equivocal. On one hand it suited my nature to play hardball. On the other, I yearned for solitude, to be free of a demanding agenda.
While the company’s catch and release ethos initially seemed like the moral high ground, I had begun to think of it as a license for the entitled sportsman who continued to traumatize and incidentally kill for his own pleasure. Even the linearity of the river itself felt oppressive on some level.
However, the roadless canyons we floated remained a blessing. To drift beside roadways with trucks and cars was anathema (still to this day). The feeling of relief when we would launch at Mack’s Canyon or Trout Creek and leave internal combustion behind bordered on euphoric. Zane Grey’s remark that “he won’t fish where a car can go” is sympatico with this author’s soul.


To find relief from the sweltering heat, I’d taken to sleeping in my boat. I lay back on my cot, propped between the seats of my drift boat, rocking gently in the shallows. It was late. I was exhausted and needed sleep, but espresso was still coursing through my veins.
It had been a tough day on the water. I had become increasingly disturbed by growing crowds of fishermen and boaters making the Deschutes their target destination (despite being complicit). New regulations and permits were restrictive, and we were all affected by extended time away from friends and family. It was typical for guides and staff to have second thoughts about their livelihood by the end of a long season, swearing they would never return in the spring. But it was only mid-summer—early for such seasonal disenchantment.
That night I had a dream, although vision might be more accurate. I saw myself on the outer coastline of British Columbia traveling alone by small boat. I fished for my supper each day and camped on empty sand beaches at night with only the gulls, ravens and bears for company.
The feeling associated with this was sublime. I would be upping the ante on the degree of challenge and caliber of adventure if I undertook this path, but my soul rejoiced at the opportunity. It seemed very much like the next step from the Deschutes. A figurative (and nearly literal) following of river to sea. It had a certain impalpable quality of homecoming, as if this had always been my intended destination.
I spent much of the next day as I worked sussing it out. The ocean, of course, is the underlying source for streams, creeks, rivers, lakes and ponds. As for my friend the steelhead, he would be returning home to the sea once he’d done his thing here in the canyon. And while I might not meet up with him in the salt, I would undoubtedly encounter his fellow salmonids.
One could make the case that I was returning home as well. After all, our distant ancestors crawled out of the sea 370 million years ago and the human blood serum profile mimics that of salt water. During the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940, medics successfully used sea water in lieu of blood plasma for transfusions when supplies ran out. Arguably, there was a biological link with my move from fresh water to salt… But was there something more?
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Will the Deschutes satisfy Rob’s hunger for adventure and connection? Or will he leave guiding behind to follow the steelhead to the sea? Stay tuned for Part Two of Paddling to Provenance.