When John Lane was a young poet, a magazine editor asked him to leave the comfortable eddy of verse and contemplate in paragraphs why he was a kayaker. The resulting essay began what would become a thirty-five-year stream of published poetry and prose about rivers and river people. Gathered here are essays and poems about paddling and floating rivers all over the Southeast and beyond. Settings range from the Nantahala in North Carolina to the Tiburon in Mexico.