I have been lucky enough in my brief time on this Earth to travel to far away places to go kayaking. I have been to some pristine, remote rivers (though certainly not as remote as some). But the one that will always hold that special place in my heart is as dirty and urban as they come, the Potomac.

I grew up on the Potomac. I have been paddling in it since I was seven years old. I used to drink out of it before I understood what the word “pollution” meant. Now, at the age of twenty-three, I still look forward to going home and getting on the water.

The Potomac is an enormous river that spills out into the Chesapeake Bay after it meanders past downtown DC. Looking across the river to Virginia from the steps of the Lincoln memorial, one would never guess what lay upstream.

About twenty miles away from the Capital, the Potomac drops over the Piedmont Plateau. The gradient goes from virtually nothing to nearly 300 feet per mile, creating the whitewater playground called Great Falls. Since the river is so wide and channelized at the Falls, there is something to do at nearly any water level. You can huck a two-tiered twenty footer, right into a series of ledges, followed by another off-vert twenty footer, hike up an island, and do it all over again. There is endless variety, too many combinations to count.

Thought what really grabs me about Great Falls is not the quality of whitewater. It is the solitude I find there so close to a noisy city. It is my whitewater retreat. I can get out of work and thirty minutes later be putting on class V. I can sit on a rock and look out over the river, pretending I’m anywhere, the sound of rushing water drowning out everything else.