Yesterday’s 10-mile excursion down the Delaware River made me reflect on daily life. The calm moments were those with no rapids and the time spent hanging out on the shore with no phones waiting for you to drop off the vans. The stressful moments consisted of rapids, physically leaving the water, and turning on my phone again. However the moments not paddling and drifting slowly down the river were able to put a smile on my face because of the sheer beauty and unaltered landscape of the Lehigh Valley. I reflected on what the times before trains, automobiles, and factories could have been like, but also the appreciation for the hundreds of unaltered miles of river that we are still able to flow down due to the protection of wilderness and how important this land became to us only a century ago.

Our trip yesterday also reminded me of a movie I saw about a year ago called Deliverance. This is a  film from the early 70’s about four ‘cultured’ businessmen taking time off to canoe down a pristine river in rural Georgia before it gets dammed. In a beginning scene, called the “Dueling Banjos” (please youtube it, great scene), the businessmen stop for gas at a very local place (actually a house of a local family). The relationship between the businessmen and locals (called rednecks in the film) is eye opening and almost frightening. There are two types of people occupying the land in two very different ways, and this conflict leads the group straight into local savages.

The connection between the movie and our rafting trip was the span of time we were within earshot of the rafting gentlemen who weren’t afraid to hoot and holler and have a good time out on the river. Their use of the river was completely different from ours. While we observed the birds and fish, they were drinking and telling ridiculous stories. We’re not all meant to do one or the other, but seeing the difference in motives for going down the Delaware caught my attention.