Is kayaking only a sport?

Doug Ammons

Kayaking may start out as a sport, but rapidly it becomes something much more. When the river first casts its spell, it is a deep and compelling power that reaches into our soul. It sparks dreams, intense friendships, and awakens a passion that leaves you aching to go back to the water again and again.

No mere sport can do this.

The physical side of kayaking is tremendously challenging. Flowing water is constantly changing, never repeats, and presents a hunt that is endless. It requires developing strength and conditioning, learning dozens of intricate techniques. Riding it and working with the features wild rivers create in their tumble down the continent, gives rewards so deep they penetrate our whole being.

This is a potent combination, but the separation from sport widens when we consider the serious side: the consequences. Even an easy river can trash us, and a difficult river can injure or kill us. We have to treat rivers with all the seriousness, care and depth possible. If you miss by just a fraction, it can mean the difference between an effortless smooth ride and an ugly, dangerous accident.

We learn to work with the power of the river, riding its flow and judging its consequences. It teaches awareness, respect, and mindfulness. The forces that surround us have no ill will and do not care about our existence, but we have to be aware of their every detail and mood. Kayaking rivers is the art of staying safe by merging with the force of nature. It is the art of styling down rapids with grace and smoothness – blending with energy that flows from the heart of the earth, transforming danger into safety and fun.

The rewards are unique and compelling; the punishments can be grim. The physical and mental skills you develop are what allow you to move into a different realm.

The idea of a “sport” doesn’t begin to describe all this, but another concept can.

To me the core of kayaking is very close to the spirit and ideals of the martial arts as they are practiced traditionally. On the surface, martial arts teach techniques for physical survival, fighting an opponent, judgment and skilled reflexes to ward off power that is aimed at hurting us. But the deeper art contains profound lessons about joining with forces and redirecting them in a controlled way. All the traditional martial arts do this, and arts like Aikido treat harmonizing with directed power as a spiritual ideal and a universal principle of life. They become paths for developing awareness, self-control, and even spiritual enlightenment.

In my 30 years of kayaking, I’ve found almost no public acknowledgement of the spiritual side of what we do. It’s avoided as something unmanly, that you joke about or only mention in confidence after the gnar is over and your guard is down. But almost every single kayaker I have ever met has said something that made it clear he or she felt a deep spirituality about rivers and a relationship to water. When we speak of kayaking as a sport, we focus on the wild surface action, first descents, challenge, fun with friends, surfing, waterfalls, competitions, but we know it is all of these – and much more right underneath. Yet, we have no language to describe this. We have been caught in a trap of our own making, stunting our vision and expression. It is time to change that.

In whitewater kayaking, we are dealing with the forces of a powerful river, and all the techniques we learn help us blend with and redirect these forces. Knowing them, we move smoothly and safely through the danger, and release the sheer fun of flowing water. It is an art of movement and awareness of the river. And while there is no fighting with an opponent like in the martial arts, there certainly are life and death decisions. In some ways, what we do is more profound and distinctive than the martial arts, because we are not dealing with an angry human directing his power at us, wielding a club or trying to punch us – but seeking to meld with the raw forces that created the world.

Fighting with the river would mean we are out of sync with the very forces we have to work with. If they can cut through rock, dig deep canyons, roll house-sized boulders, and snap giant trees into kindling, then a human twerp in a plastic tub is nothing to them. Long after we’re exhausted and out of breath or need rest and food, the river will still be roaring out there, ceaseless, unrelenting. We can’t fight it and we can’t defeat it because it doesn’t care about us, and nothing we do on it, no rapid or waterfall we paddle changes it in the least. The only gnar we ‘slay’ is in our own minds.

So let us redefine what kayaking is as a martial art - it is not an art of war or of killing, not even a form of self-defense. It is something much greater – it is the art of living in the midst of nature’s immense power, endless change, and potential death, while learning to blend in harmony with all of these.

That is a profound path which has the possibility of reaching so far inside us it will change who we are and how we see the world. If we let the river be this kind of path, we will experience a new birth over and over.

In the martial arts typically we practice in a dojo, a special training hall. In actuality the term dojo means “the place of enlightenment”. In the Zen Buddhist tradition which underlies nearly all the Asian martial arts, the dojo is not a single training room, it is wherever we are, right now, at this moment. The lesson is that if we are mindful about it, every instant and everywhere can become a place of enlightenment.

Rivers are the perfect embodiment of this; it shouldn’t be surprising that they are one of the ultimate dojos. They are places of training and physical challenge, demanding we be aware at every instant. Any lapse and they will find our weakness. But moreso, they are a place for discovering inner and outer balance as we ride the power of a living planet, aware of its beauty, blending with its flow, safely redirecting its dangers. Aware of every moment and completely immersed in the unique magic of flowing water. We join in the raw energy of the world as it flows from the mountains to the sea, giving life, shaping the landscape, and following an eternal path.

So we can talk about simple things like the fun and the gnar, but we can also go beyond them to embrace the fullness and depth of these experiences.

A martial artist is privileged when he’s able to learn the art from a human master. A kayaker is privileged to learn from a river. Rivers are the essence of truth, supreme masters of the art of flow. All human masters make mistakes, but a river never does. They can only move perfectly. Every current, every wave, every individual water droplet, is exactly where it should be and moving exactly how it must.

We can never reach that perfection, but all rivers are inspirations showing us what it looks like and beckoning us to join them.

It is an inspiring gift that this activity shows us the deepest truth about blending with the powers that made the world, confronts us with our own physical and mental limits, demands we be aware, shapes who we are, and leads us into a spiritual connection with nature almost despite ourselves.

It is why it is so damn much fun, why we love it, and why it is so much more than a sport.