A day on the river

Saturday was a hot day, but the Silverfish For the Rivers paddlers stayed cool on their journey down the river. As T Butler, secretary of the Dan River Basin Association, said, if you get too hot, you can always splash river water on yourself. And the water coming down from the dam is about 40 degrees, said Butler.

Paddlers eagerly waited to get their canoes and kayaks out on the river at the put-in point near the Spray canal. They looked forward to a peaceful, pleasant trip down the Dan River and didn’t seem concerned about the relatively fast current.

Laura Stephens of Richmond, Va., said the Dan River’s swift current on Saturday morning couldn’t compare to the turbulent current of a coastal bay.

“It’s harder going across a choppy bay than a meandering river,” said Stephens. “It [the river] is easy and calm. You can reach out and hold on to a branch and stop…It’s real relaxing, quiet, pretty.”

Stephens was one of many paddlers who took to the river to raise money for the Dan River Basin Association and its efforts to protect the rivers. She came to Eden to visit her brother Jeff Johnston, one of the owners of Three Rivers Outfitters.

“I try to visit him a couple times in the summer so we can come play on the river,” said Stephens.

Stephens certainly wasn’t the only person at Saturday’s outing who likes to “play on the river.” Another such person was Carole Balsley of Reidsville.

“This’ll be my fourth summer paddling with the Silverfish. We try to go out at least once a week and sometimes twice a week,” said Balsley. “We usually spend about two hours on the river. If we’re feeling brave, we go for four.”

Balsley said the Silverfish Paddlers are a diverse group of people, consisting of men and women ranging in age from teenagers to people in their 70s. She said the paddlers go out together and play it safe on the rivers, always wearing life jackets.

“We have a good group of people,” said Linda Purcell, trip coordinator for Silverfish. “It’s good exercise. It’s just a lot of fun.”

Purcell said paddling isn’t hard and some of the group members are non-swimmers. She said she has extra kayaks and paddles that she can lend folks who want to try venturing out on the rivers for the first time. Purcell said the Silverfish started out as a church prayer group and as it turned out, a lot of the group members enjoyed paddling the river. The group has grown ever since.

Purcell called the Silverfish Paddlers a “very loose federation.” Generally, someone in the group sends out an e-mail asking if anyone would like to go out on the rivers, say, on Tuesday at 9 in the morning and people “just show up,” according to Purcell. Saturday was the group’s first organized river paddle, but its members hope to make the paddle an annual event.

To spice up Saturday’s river trip with a little bit of competition, Silverfish members put out coins of different denominations at each of five stations. The paddlers with the coins of the highest value at the end of the race won prizes – everything from the grand prize of a camping trip to dry bags to carry in their canoes and hats from Remington.

Jeff Johnston of Three Rivers Outfitters said river navigation in Rockingham County is on the rise.

“I own a lot of land on the river. There was a time when I could get on the river and canoe 20 miles down the river from Madison to my place in Eden and not see a person,” he said. “Now I can sit there on my farm on a Saturday and see 100, 150 people go by.”

Johnston said he believes the general public is learning more about the rivers as a result of a group effort to promote the rivers by the city of Eden, the county, the Dan River Basin Association and the river outfitters.

“We’re trying to make it a tourist thing,” he said. “We [Three Rivers Outfitters] get people from Raleigh and Winston-Salem and Greensboro. I think we get more customers from out of county than in the county.”

The Dan River Basin Association has river floats open to the community the first Saturday morning of every month. The July 3 float starts on the Mayo River at the N.C. 135 bridge and goes to Jacobs Creek. For more information about river activities, visit www.danriver.org.