I got a telephone call today from an old friend of mine, one I haven't talked to in years and years.  

Dave M was my paddling buddy back in 1984 and 1985 and is the one I credit for both introducing me and teaching me about the sport of whitewater kayaking.  He and I made descents of numerous Southern Appalachian Rivers, including the Chattahoochee, the Nantahala, the Etowah, the Amicalola, and, most memorably, one epic trip down the Chattooga, the river made famous by the film Deliverance, a trip that in all honesty we probably were more lucky than talented to have survived. The river gods were forgiving that day.  

Ambition and the lure of career advancement caused me to leave Atlanta in 1986 and move to Albany, New York for several years, where I moonlighted on weekends as a whitewater rafting guide on the Hudson River up in the Adirondack Mountains.  I wouldn't have taken on that role, though, if Dave's kind mentorship and patient teaching hadn't given me the confidence that I could do it.

Our paths crossed again when I left Albany in 1993 for a position in Pittsburgh.  I had no sooner landed in Pittsburgh than I took another weekend-warrior job as a raft guide on both West Virginia's Cheat River and western Pennsylvania's Youghiogheny River ("the Yough"), depending on the season.  By this time, Dave had also left Atlanta for his familial home of Pittsburgh, so naturally we struck out on the river again, and I invited him along for trips on the Cheat and the Yough, and he and his wife would occasionally have me over for home-cooked dinners.

Unfortunately, the business in Pittsburgh wasn't what my company or I had hoped, and I only lasted a little over a year there before I had to leave again, this time back to Atlanta and for keeps (at least so far).  Dave and I still saw each on rare occasions after I left Pittsburgh since we were both in the same line of work - we would occasionally cross paths at conferences and conventions.  But we never paddled again since those days on the Cheat and the Yough.

He called me this morning, 27 years after those last river trips.  At first I suspected the worst ("someone died"), but Dave said that he had been talking to some old mutual colleagues of ours and my name came up, so he thought he'd just check in and see how I was doing.  That's the kind of nice guy that he is.

Long story short: it doesn't seem that much has changed with Dave since I had left Pittsburgh in 1994.  Still married to the same woman, still in the same old business, kids now grown up and in college and the Navy.  As for me, I can talk for hours with someone I saw last week about what's been happening in my life, but when you ask what I've been up to for the past 27 years, I can get a little tongue tied.  Um, I got older and retired, but haven't died yet?  I hung up my whitewater paddle 25 years ago, and other than a few guided, tourist trips, haven't descended a river since?

Anyway, for whatever it's worth, I was truly touched that Dave had reached out after all those years, and I'm humbled at his generosity of spirit and friendliness.  He's a nice guy and a true gentleman, and they don't make them like that much more.