Whitewater Rafting the Ocoee River: A Travelogue About Life, Laughter & Letting Go

See, I can’t tell you how it feels to ride waves on a river. But I will try my best.

And if you’ve never done whitewater rafting, I highly recommend you do. This is where you get on a raft with a couple of paddles and try to navigate a river’s rapids from an upstream spot. The river will do most of the work, I promise.

I love small town Georgia like nothing else in the world. This past weekend, I went to Ocoee, Tennessee, to go whitewater rafting through 10 miles of Class III and IV rapids. The rapids have classes based on their speed and the size of the waves. The river is controlled by a dam, so the rapids are strong and measured.

On our way to the Ocoee, we passed by cute little towns like Chatsworth. They usually all look alike. There’s one highway, bales of hay in the fields on both sides, local family run restaurants, and a modest town hall.

Ocoee is a tiny town and probably makes all of its money thanks to the Ocoee River. It first became famous when it was the stage for the 1996 Olympics canoe racing events. The Ocoee River is named after an American Indigenous Cherokee settlement located in the area.

You can book rafting trips for three hours starting at the “middle” river, or for the entire day starting at the “upper” river.

The river flows through the Appalachian Mountains and is a sight to behold. You raft through a scenic gorge surrounded by the mountains and forests of Southeast Tennessee. There is something about the mountain scenery, the river, and the shared adventure that makes the whole experience feel bigger than it really is.

Our guide was a 24 year old mother of two, ages 3 and 21 months, going through a contentious divorce. We will call her Faith. And what Faith did was make sure we had the trip of a lifetime.

Our family was accompanied by another couple visiting Ocoee for their anniversary. The woman had many tattoos, and on one of our breaks on the side of the river, Faith asked her if the tattoo on her lower leg was for her dead baby.

I turned to meet her eye and she immediately brushed it off saying, “I’ve become very direct with my words.” I told her its understandable, but she should not use her directness too often unless to defend herself.

She seemed to agree.

Faith gave us all the autonomy to decide on one patch of the river where we could get off our raft and swim around nearby. My boys got off, and as the couple watched, she told us to sit on one side of the raft.

Before we could realize what was happening, she yanked the raft hard enough for us to all fall into the river.

“So much fun, but such a naughty girl!” I yelled out to her.

And we were all soaking and floating and laughing.

My kids accused me of lily-dipping, saying that I was not paddling hard enough. That was a word Faith put into their mouths.

As we surfed the waves, she asked what we did for a living. “Y’all Indian?” And I told her we work with computers.

She didn’t have any follow up questions to that.

Four hours later, we came back to the present moment.

Because when you’re on the river, time and space expand into eternity, and your world collapses into the immediate two feet in front of you.

Best part, you can’t think of your leaking kitchen sink, your unanswered emails, or even the wellbeing of your aging parents.

And like someone once said, I will never stand in the same river twice.

Life has to move on, but you will take those relentless rapids home with you in your heart.

Again, I promise, the river will do most of the work.

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