Kayaking on the St. Louis

by Aaron Archer
 ceramic (1998)



Yes, that is yours truly, flailing around in a river flowing through the footbed of a Teva.  
But where is the kayak?  Ay, there's the rub.
                                                     -- Aaron Archer
Teva sculpture
Teva sculpture
Teva sculpture
Teva sculpture
 

Read on for the artist's commentary on the sculpture:

You will note that there is a kayak paddle pictured in the sculpture, but no kayak anywhere in sight.  There is a good reason for this.  What you are about to read is a tale of valiance and daliance, hubris combined with well-deserved self-confidence and a stiff dose of stupidity, treacherous ambushes and daring escapes, bad luck assuaged by good fortune, and Moulton.  However, as Moulton prefers not to be called Moulton, we will refer to him henceforth as Pete.

In 1997, the summer I was a student at Joe Gallian's math REU at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, we did a rafting trip while Pete was visiting. The standard thing to do was hop in a 5-person raft, but of course Pete can't do anything the standard way. He commented to me that he had always wanted to try one of the 2-man inflatable kayaks, or "rubber ducky's," as they call them in the biz. These craft were advertised as more maneuverable, but much less stable. Pete told me he had been trying for years to convince a program participant to ride in the rubber ducky with him, but nobody had ever had the guts to do it.  Being the adventuresome soul that I am, I amicably agreed to do it.

We hopped in, and did quite well with it, actually.  We ran the first four rapids without difficulty.  Then came the fifth rapid, which included a sudden four-foot drop that the guide called the "electric ledge."  She informed the group that about half the rafts capsize on this part, as do more than 75% of the rubber duckies.  Sure enough, exactly three of the six rafts capsized. Pete and I went last.  Against all odds, we navigated the electric ledge perfectly, and then paddled to safety at the next rallying point.  The guide congratulated us all on having made it through the toughest part of the trip, then told us there one one last set of rapids to run, but that these were easy and the most fun. "That last set of rapids was your final exam; consider these next ones your graduation party," she said.

The guide went out in her hard-shell kayak towards the rapids, then turned around to check on the progress of the group.  Pete and I were following close behind, in the correct line.  However, most of the rafts behind us were circling around too far to the right.  To our dismay, the guide decided to stop on a dime, paddling backwards against the current, on order to bark instructions at the rafters.

Our inflatable kayak lent Pete and me much less maneuverability than the guide's ordinary plastic kayak did, and it was all we could do to stop the thing so we didn't pass her up or run her over. Unfortunately, we were already at the beginning of the rapids, and the absolute worst thing you can do in rapids is to stop, because then you have no momentum to carry you through the torrents attacking your vessel from all sides. Consequently, one of the walls of water that hit us lifted one side of the kayak, and the next one turned us over.

The guide had instructed us to do two things in the event that we found ourselves floating down the river without a vessel:

1) Keep our feet up, lest they get caught on something underwater while the current forced our heads under water.

2) Hold onto the paddle at all costs, because if you let it go, there is no getting it back.

So, as I floated fifty yards down the river, gulping water and being battered against the rocks, I did manage to hold onto my paddle, but found the feet problematic.  I was wearing Tevas, and learned the hard way that the velcro doesn't work very well when it is wet.  One of them got ripped off of my foot almost immediately, and the other one came off a short bit later.  With no protection, my feet got pretty well battered, and fluids oozed out of the hole in the bottom of my right foot for several days.  Yuck.

I figured I would never see my Tevas again.  But just minutes later, the guide miraculously found not just one but both of them floating downstream.  She had a pretty good guess who they belonged to, so she scooped them out and gave them back to me at the end.  The following spring, I captured the story in ceramic as part of a class project for a course at Pomona College.  Now, more than four years later, I am wearing them as I write this.

                                        -- Aaron Archer
                                            September, 2001

P.S.  I would like to thank Professor Janet Neuwalder for offering an excellent ceramics course at Pomona, which afforded me a much-needed break from my studies in mathematics, and an opportunity to explore my right brain.