“It’s the rule.”

That’s what she said. Samantha Ruppelt, Class V kayaker pro for Jackson Kayak, twenty-seven – confidence and competence, personified.

“Dude. It’s January. It’s, like, 30 degrees out there.”

“It’s the rule.”

“What if I miss it? My confidence will be blown for the entire run. I don’t need that in my head.”

“It’s the rule.”

Samantha had been working with me on fine-tuning my pool roll at Tennessee Scenic Rivers Association’s roll school. It needed work. I had expected to pick up rolling easily – I’m good at athletic stuff – but it didn’t happen that way. I ended up going through four roll schools and having eleven different instructors, switching back and forth between attempts at the C-to-C and sweep, getting more and more frustrated, before I got to work with David Cole. He’s closer to my size than most of the guys I’d worked with, and he’s a veteran teacher in real life. Yes, I’m proud to say, I got taught to roll by a Vanderbilt University professor of psychology. (They say it’s a head thing, right?)

So when David wasn’t available one night, Samantha offered to work with me…and I refused. At that point, I was used to every new potential instructor starting out with, “Now, forget everything you’ve been taught about rolling.” Ugh! But when I told David about Sam’s offer, he asked me if I had lost my mind and ordered me to take her up on it. It turned out that she, also a veteran teacher, didn’t ask me to change much at all about what I was doing but just gave me a few good suggestions that helped it be more effective.

I was feeling pretty happy about my progress when Sam sprung the rule on me. It was simple: when you get on the river, you do a practice roll, right up front (or as close as possible). There are good reasons to make this a habit. It gets you acclimated to the water temperature. It trains your head and your body that rolling on a river is a lot like rolling in the pool, give or take a few variables. It gets you loosened up and ready for action if the river decides it’s your day for a humbling.

The rule doesn’t sound very onerous, really. Unless you’re like me. I was the group scaredy-cat who still sometimes got the butterflies on Class II. If I were an adrenaline junky, I’d be a cheap date. Other than two shaky but successful rolls I’d done in the creek above Devil’s Shoals on the Hiwassee, I had never rolled on a river. (I had learned to stick my hands up out of the water in setup position as if I were trying before pulling my skirt when I swam. This caused people to tell me how proud they were of me for my effort, which is always nice, if you have to be a swimming loser.)

Also, it was January. I loathe, detest, and abhor cold weather (as in, below 76 degrees) with every fiber of my being. It was unbelievable that this sport had so affected my sanity that I’d bought a drysuit and was paddling rivers with icicles decorating the sides – but to voluntarily dunk myself into the freezing water at the BEGINNING of a paddle seemed like a whole new level of whack.

I had no intention of keeping the roll rule. I’d keep working on my roll in the pool and the warm, and someday, eventually, I would get flipped and try to make it happen in a rapid on a river, and maybe the gods would smile. The rule sounded great for other people, folks who are fearless and aggressive and generally superior in every relevant way to me.

The only thing was, Sam had planted a seed, and it was getting me thinking. What if.

What if I could be.

What if I could be that badass chick? The one who would jump on a river in the middle of winter and up and roll. Just because, you know, I can.

It made me laugh.

In the week between our conversation and my next paddle, I started toying with the idea. What if I found a really big, calm eddy and had people all around to spot me? What if I didn’t think about it too much and just…flopped over, hell-bent for leather, and gave it a try? What if I had to drag my boat back out and drain it at the put-in, freezing to death, holding up the group on an already short winter day? How bad could it be? Probably pretty bad.

Or pretty dang cool. What if I pulled it off?

I obsessed over these scenarios all week. The night before the paddle, my decision was that I was not, at this time, going to pursue using the rule. As I told one of my friends, “I didn’t say I would. I don’t even know this person, and she paddles stuff where I would die of a heart attack before I could even get the chance to break my neck. I’m not accountable to her.” All of which seemed entirely reasonable.

And then we were at the river – Clear Creek, Jett Bridge. We got geared up, and I kept getting more and more stressed out, in spite of my decision. Because if I was going to be “reasonable,” why was I even there? This whole whitewater thing had me so far outside of my comfort zone already – why do it at all, unless I wanted to end up different in some important way? I did not want to roll in the river. But even more, I didn’t want to stay afraid. Maybe the risk of being cold and embarrassed would be worth it, just because I went for it?

I was hanging out in the big eddy across from the put-in with my friend ET Rottman, a very solid paddler and one of those wonderful freaks who are upside-down as much as they are upright on the river, by choice. I told him about the rule and asked if he thought it was a good idea. He said he thought it would be great for me and offered to spot me. I changed the subject. And then, in mid-conversation about something else, I started giggling like a loon, took a breath, and flipped over. One…and carp. Two…and carp. Three…and I was up, yelling and laughing, heart pounding, shaking but not the slightest bit cold. ET was grinning hugely and shaking his head. My other friends were looking at me, pretty much stunned, and then they were all yelling with me. Who needs the gnar? I caught the world’s biggest buzz doing a bad practice roll in a swimming pool-sized eddy.

I swam later that day, got sideways on the Grunch and face-planted. But I made four real attempts to roll before I smacked my head on a rock and pulled my skirt. And it wasn’t long, after a few more rule rolls, on that same stretch of river, that I had the experience that to every whitewater paddler is as sacred and memorable as losing one’s virginity – my first combat roll.

So this is a long story about an event that is, in the grand scheme, not very noteworthy. It has started me down a whole new path of “what ifs,” though. I look at people whose skills and courage I so admire, and I feel like they’re a different species than me, sometimes, but then…what if? What if, inside of many badasses, there’s a scaredy-cat who made a decision and took some simple action that seemed overwhelming at the time? And then another one, and so on. If that’s true, those of us on this end of the skills and experience spectrum might have a good shot at doing some pretty heady stuff we never thought we’d be capable of.

I’ve kept on keeping the rule. It became my thing. And then some of my friends, who were about as nervous as I had been, started joining me, and it became our thing. We were like a break dancing circle in little bright boats, gathered up around whoever was going next, ready to spot, giddy and a little (but not too) cold, bonding in our crazy. And we’ve all gotten a lot better at it. My roll is still a good ways from “bombproof, ” but I’ve now lost count of how many combat rolls I’ve gotten since the first one – more all over Clear Creek, and playing on the Hiwassee, and on White’s Creek of Morgan County, on Nantahala Falls (too many times), and the Little, and the Tellico, and the Pigeon, and the upper Nanty at 450 cfs, and the Ocoee.

Which means it’s probably time to work on my brace.

The photo above was taken by Michael Gary II Loftis.

Here’s a video of my very first combat roll. The best part is how excited my friend Jerry Martelli was that he had caught it on camera for me: