When I was younger, I could not tolerate the cold one bit. I was a scrawny little boy who would shiver at the slightest breeze and swimming outside in the river was too cold an experience for me. I have many a memories of friends swimming and enjoying themselves while I sat on the side trying to warm my shivering self up. Shivering also gave me a minor headache (though this might be correlation and not causation), so in general, was not fun to me.

This relationship to cold flipped 180 degrees in 2017 when I started white water rafting in the Rio Grande near where I live. Me and ~13 other people trained for two weeks in mid-May, right when all the Northern Mountain snow is melting. We were on the river no later than 7am, six guides, one teacher per boat. Everyone wore a wetsuit, wool socks (wet wool warms you up), fleece (polyester in general warms you too), splash-jackets, and the occasional dish glove for hand protection. It was cold to say the least

We got lucky that year and had higher water, meaning we could lap the river more times than usual. Our average training day consisted of going down the 5-mile stretch of river four to six times (depending on how fast we paddled). One early morning, it was brutally cold — like so cold that one guide only had a slit for his eyes to see through — and it was my turn guiding the boat through one of the more gnarly rapids. My hands were so cold, I could barely let go of the paddle shaft and handle — yet I had to safely guide these six fellow trainees down the river. In that exact moment, I became intensely aware of the power of cold. I could either give into the cold and fail, or embrace the cold and power through it. Facing the large white tipped churning waves in front of me, I chose the latter and powered through it.

I felt an immense power come over me and the feeling of cold washed away. I successfully guided through the rapid and for the rest of training, the cold didn’t really bother me as much as it had before.

Last Updated on April 19, 2022 by Emmett Moulton