Chasing Rivers: A Whitewater Life

Review By Leigh Potvin

August 22, 2024

BC Studies no. 222 Summer 2024  | p. 170-171

I talked about this book a lot while reading it. I thought about it even more. In one such conversation with my friend and colleague Dr. Gail Kuhl – a powerful, kind human and experienced guide-turned-academic – we talked about how within the field and industry, outdoor recreationists continue to centre their narratives and relationships with the outdoors through the notion of challenge. More specifically, we discussed how overcoming challenge in the outdoors is not necessarily the path to better leadership, personal fulfillment, self-actualization that we make it out to be. For many folks who experience marginalization, daily life includes enough interpersonal and systemic challenges that some outdoor endeavours come across as curated activities for privileged people. I feel this so deeply in my own relationship to the outdoors, and I saw it in Glouberman’s accounts of her career – from the families and people she guided, to her own community and self.

Glouberman’s book, Chasing Rivers, is in many ways a love letter to the rivers she lived, worked, loved, and partied on for years. She hits curvy, raucous rivers with enthusiasm and grit. Beyond the stories that one might expect in such a work, she also gives readers a front row seat to the toll of working in the guiding industry, especially for women. Glouberman levels a perhaps unintended, but nevertheless scathing critique of conditions and expectations of people in her line of work. As a university professor often mentoring young women (and a mother to two children) there were many instances in this book where I wanted to reach in and hug Glouberman, to tell her that she could trust herself.  In fact, she did voice her concerns many times, concerns that were brushed off by (male) colleagues. The author herself may take issue with this depiction of her experiences and, if so, I apologize. Or I invite her in to talk more about this. I just can’t shake how I felt as I read this volume. As a queer, feminist woman, who also worked “in the bush” in spaces dominated by straight, cis, white men I felt the vulnerability of being a woman in the current social reality, one that makes you question the streets you walk down, the tone of your voice, how you asked for it, and maybe worst of all, how you somehow deserved the violence that men too often dole out. I felt it in her experience of sexual assault, the less extreme all-too-common dismissal of her concerns about safety and her own well-being, the misogynistic verbal abuse she encountered from strangers, and the performative nature of trying to muscle through it and be “hard core” that so many women and gender diverse people feel they need to exude to make it in industries that are unregulated and out of the gaze of mainstream society.

Perhaps this is showing my age or my inability to do small talk, wanting to get down to the meaty humanity of a person: I was left wanting to know more about how Glouberman healed from the traumatic experiences of guiding. I’m left wondering: how did she return to herself? How did she rebuild her life? She says in the closing sections that she thinks about what Ray – an especially fraught, but charismatic and impactful member of a guiding trip – would say to her. She repeats this like a mantra a few times in the closing section of the book: “Shit happens. How we deal with it will define us. You need to allow yourself to let it go. Ray was a cool, no-nonsense man and would tell you to let it go”.  This sounds good, but pokes at a fundamental tension within human existence – how do we let go of experiences and grief that pull us apart, fray our self image, and lead to cycles of abuse and harm? It’s easy to sit on the sidelines and say let it go, but maybe we should hold these things close so we can understand them, metabolize them, and take them with us. Not letting it go, per se, because perhaps that isn’t actually possible, but stowing it somewhere safely so that it can help guide us on the next leg of the journey.