GENTLE THRILLS

By Ina Hughes, News-Sentinel Staff Writer*

Cruising down the Sequatchie River on a sunny afternoon, fingers trailing in the water, paddling only when the spirit moves - or the river doesn’t – it becomes evident how very good the Indians were at names.

Sequatchie means opossum. Opossums are good at playing dead.  When they are a mind to, opossums can lie so still that all signs of life seem to have flowed out of them.  Even when not playing dead, opossums are lazy. So is the Sequatchie.

Bob Schlinger and Bob Lantz, authors of  “A Canoeing Guide to the Streams of Tennessee” call the Sequatchie a Tennessee sleeper, running sweet, slow and beautiful:  “The scenery from the river level is the most spectacular you’ll find on a Class I float in the state.”  

Tiny snails look like buttons sewn to the chestnut-colored bottom. Minnows play along the banks, darting in and out of the shadows.  Columns of river birch, maples and sycamores hold up ceilings of arched, gothic greenery.  The only sounds are from nature’s hidden orchestra.  

A young Angus cow, dressed in symphony black, makes tuba sounds from behind a barbed-wire fence as her audience floats by.  

The Indians say the Sequatchie Valley itself is shaped like a canoe.  The drives south from Crossville on Highway 127 to Dunlap is a lesson in how a canoe is made.  The valley is dug out of the earth, narrow and well-proportioned.  In some places, the valley is only a couple of miles wide, and never are its mountain “sides” out of sight.  
The river itself is an upside down world.  Trees lean over to primp at their own mirror image.  Clouds float in the water. Paddlers look down to see a copycat motion picture of their every move, canoe-on-canoe.

There are cows and kingfishers, wood ducks and water lilies.  
It is a beautiful day. No sign of rain in a sapphire sky.  
But, it is not always a picture postcard world.

Up in the trees, high above the river, are patches of debris reminders that nature has a violent side.  Last winter, the “opossum” became a lion, roaring down the valley, flooding farmlands, washing out houses and exposing roots of trees and leaving them hanging on for dear life.  It was several feet above the 100-year flood mark, and folks will be talking about it for a long time.

Scott & Ernestine Pilkington (owners of Canoe the Sequatchie) know the river and all its moods about as well as anybody around, having lived on it and canoed its 113 miles so many times they’ve lost count. 

“You hear so much these days about white water,” says Ernestine Pilkington.  “That puts people off.  What we have here are ‘gentle thrills’.  It’s the kind of adventuring anybody can do: kids, adults, Grandmothers and Granddads.  There are no surprises, and the water is only waist deep in most places and less going through the shoals.”  

Scott Pilkington loads you, the canoes and all your gear up in his van and drops you off up the river at the point of choice: a nine-mile trip, a six-mile trip or a three-mile trip.  All canoes eventually end up at their rampat the U.S. Highway 127 bridge.  You can’t miss it.  And you are then back where your car is parked and your outing began  

It’s a solitary river, a great place to get away from it all.  The only eyes watching will be a few friendly cows – and don’t be surprised if you see one or two wading along the shore – especially if it is hot.
  *With editorial updates and corrections.