Lessons from River Rats on Building Community

While I am incredibly fortunate to love my work—helping communities to enhance the characteristics that make them great places to live—it is no secret that I am always plotting my next escape to a river.

My adventures have taken me to six states and three countries. On every trip I’m struck by how at home I feel on the river compared to any other place. So how is it that somewhere new and frequently with a bunch of strangers can I feel such a profound sense of belonging?

A river trip can be defined by the quality of the river itself: its length, the rapids, the water quality, and topography. The Grand Canyon, the Rogue, the Selway and Middle Fork of the Salmon are highly sought after for these very characteristics. However, great river trips are defined by something much less tangible—the social interactions of the group itself. Communities, whether it’s a group of river runners, a neighborhood, or a town, require careful cultivation.

Based on my experiences, I offer you the following lessons from the river on building a healthy community:

1. Have good leadership. Good trip leaders (aka TL’s) are experienced and knowledgeable. The best TL’s are so good you don’t even know they are leading. The trip just flows and somehow it all gets done, generally because the TL has carefully chosen a team who works well together for the benefit of the trip.
2. Always have a plan. Discussions around the fire at night are frequently about what is down river the next day, the character of a rapid and the safest line through, where the best camps are, how many miles need to be covered, etc. While nature and human error can provide some unexpected turns in a trip, a good plan will usually help the team navigate through without a major event.
3. Be prepared to flip. Unfortunately, even with a good plan, sometimes things just go wrong. Good boatmen always rig for a worst case scenario.
4. Keep an eye on your neighbors. Nothing makes you feel more comfortable on the water than the person in front of you looking back to make sure you are safe.
5. Help out when someone is in trouble. When someone wraps a boat around a rock or a kayaker swims, you help, even if it is not your party. It could be you one day who needs help and river karma can deliver swift justice.
   
6. Be hospitable. Keep something cold in the cooler in case someone stops by for a visit. Encourage newbies. Say hello to other parties as they are frequently a source of good information, a shared fire and some laughs, or they may even donate some of their most precious river commodity—ice. Simple stuff, but it’s the small things that create new friends wherever you go.
7. Share responsibility. River trips are a lot of work. The surest way to never be invited on a river trip again is to not help with loading/unloading/packing/unpacking/cleaning/cooking or the dozen or so other daily communal chores.
8. Celebrate success. On the Grand Canyon, it’s a tradition to celebrate the completion of all the Colorado River’s rapids by stopping at Tequila Beach, just after the final and most difficult rapid, Lava Falls. You can probably guess the nature of the tradition by the beach’s name, but the point is that completing something big together is a pretty good reason to celebrate.
9. Learn from mistakes. Our society tends to be very unforgiving of mistakes. Boaters, on the other hand, love to talk about wraps, pins, flips and swims. None of these are particularly good things, but the stories provide entertainment, are an opportunity to reflect on what went wrong, assess how the situation was handled, and identify what could be done differently next time. These lessons may just save your life.

For river rats, our love of the river binds us together regardless of our ages, nationalities, incomes, or other –isms. However, the river alone is not enough to guarantee we work well together. As in all communities, we benefit from people willing to share their experience, resources and enthusiasm with each other and to take responsibility for the group as a whole. These social norms ensure that great rivers are also great trips.

So I hope the next time you see a muddy truck with a chipped windshield, stuffed with colorful plastic containers, and towing a raft, you wave. You might just get invited into a unique and vibrant community.