Kari Ostrem, HoS at Riverdale Country School, and I, before we “swam” in the river.

By the time I found myself in a double Kayak with another Head of School, I thought I had mastered the art of “staying in the boat” through the rapids. I had shared my lessons learned with a few others, and we had been largely successful in navigating whatever came at us. Until we weren’t. One more time, we were almost at the end of the paddling session for the morning and had gotten through the roughest water, and we relaxed, without realizing there was one more wave ahead of us. We each bounced out of the kayak, and I easily drank a gallon of river water. We popped up, got over to the side of the river, and laughed so hard that we choked as we made our way to our stopping point. The two of us howled with laughter for quite some time after, and the endorphins released were almost medicinal. We thought we had. We did not. Thankfully, there were no injuries. And it was a surefire highlight of the trip for me…