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 After a fair bit of paddling on rivers near and far, I’ve come to the conclusion that the most dangerous hazard on the water is posed by other vessels. Rivers can get very busy with barges, tugs, tankers, ferries and, especially on a sunny summer weekend, speedy pleasure boats. Keep your eyes and ears open, just as you would in a busy coastal port.There is an unusual phenomenon created by large boats on rivers that you don’t find on larger bodies of water. Two months into my trip on the Missouri, I rounded a bend and a long tow of barges—silent, and all but hidden in dusk’s grainy light—loomed over me like a five-story building, moving fast. I’d been warned that water gets sucked into the “vacuum” created by barges pushing upstream. The river ahead of the barges quickly recedes from the bank—stranding you if you’re too close to shore—to be followed by the wash of the wake. I had no choice but to paddle furiously toward the bank. I reached shore, but before I could get out, my boat was pulled back by the falling water. I threw my paddle down, clung to a large rock on the bank, and narrowly escaped being sucked toward the lead barge. This sounds terrifying, and it was, but it could have easily been avoided if I’d paid more attention to my position on the river and anticipated upstream traffic. Because of the narrow confines of rivers, it’s especially important to avoid paddling after dark, especially on a river with heavy commercial traffic. Low--lying fog is also very dangerous, since tugs will operate if they can see over the mist. If visibility is poor, your best way to avoid a collision is to get off the river. Even when visibility is good, you should remain outside the shipping lanes. On navigable rivers, the channel is marked by red buoys or signs along the left descending bank and green on the right descending bank. Paddle inside those markers, and you’re barge bait. Remain outside the channel, and the biggest hazard is getting hooked by a fisherman. If you assume you’re invisible to boat traffic, you’re likely to have far fewer scares. On some large rivers, you can monitor the locations of barge traffic on a VHF radio—the bends of the river are often named. Here’s the good news about paddling around big working boats. When I set out on the Missouri, I was told that the barges I’d encounter downriver could kick up a wave as much as 10 feet high. The implication was that I didn’t stand a chance in my little boat. But while a fully loaded barge kicks up a plush wave, these large gentle rollers are little more than exciting diversions. If the thought of a big barge wake leaves you in a panic, try this: Wait until the wave is near and turn into it so that you take it bow on. Eventually, you’ll get so comfortable, you’ll be chasing the bumps to catch a cushy ride. Note, however, if you are quite near shore, the waves will get steeper and break as they hit the shallows. OLD MAN RIVER  When we paddle coastal waters, we see the water and the land locked in what seems to be a timeless standoff. The landscape is often little changed from what explorers saw hundreds of years ago. Rivers, especially those meandering across the lowlands, are not so constant. Being in a continuous state of flux, they serve as metaphors for the passage of time and for transformation.Many cultures around the world consider rivers magical, even holy. Artists, inventors, writers—from Leonardo da Vinci to Henry David Thoreau to Herman Hesse—have found inspiration in the moving water of rivers. As Mark Twain wrote in Life on the Mississippi, “The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book—a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.” Joe Glickman took up kayaking in 1993 while writing an article on Florida’s 10,000 islands for Men’s Journal. Since then he’s paddled and raced all over the United States, as well as in Thailand, Tahiti and South Africa. A freelance writer from Brooklyn, New York, he is the author of The Kayak Companion (Storey Publishing, 2003).
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