I could do the stroke all right, and sometimes it would bring my head up just enough so I could see sky and air, teeter there for a moment, then fall back to the void and failure. Ultimately, it's not in the paddle. It's in the head.

It's easy to forget this, because one first begins learning to roll without a paddle, by using a partner's hands. A partner stands alongside the kayaker in chest-deep water. The kayaker capsizes toward the partner, catches her hands, then braces against them to roll the boat back upright.

Later, the crutches of hands are removed from the picture, but the vision of one's partner is not. The kayaker attempts to come back from the deep using his power alone to reach his head toward the surface where there is air and a face he knows.

I heard my teacher say it a bunch of times, but still it never really sunk in: "The head comes out last." See, the trick is not to recoil instinctively from the void. The trick is to lean toward it. The paddle stroke begins, but then just as everything in you is saying pull your head up to air and light, you push it down toward what is deeper and blacker and colder — toward what you fear the most. I did this once and a second later I was sitting upright in my kayak, on the surface, smiling to the sky, drinking air, my paddle in both hands raised high over my head.

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