We bounced through two easy rapids, and gathered in the pool below the second. Even now, 15 years later, the day is vivid. Allison, who was 12, remembers that Scott, already a hockey player at age 8, wore a cap with the Dallas Stars logo. Why the Dallas Stars? Who knows? He dipped it in the river and splashed water over his head.

Scott Grant kayaks the Saco River near Conway, N. H.

We had been on the water perhaps a half hour in what would be an 8-mile run along a section of the Saco that is sprightly in places, placid in others, but always cold, clear, and moving. This is a river on its way out of the White Mountains.

Let’s go swimming, the kids said.

We stopped a short distance downriver at a beach, of which there are many on the upper Saco. These are natural beaches; the sand is the product of centuries of water crashing its way down rocky mountainsides. It comes to rest in places where the river takes a rest. We would take a rest. In we went.

The river bottom was sand and small smooth stones, the ones that don’t hurt your feet. In four feet of water, every pebble was visible, as if they were part of some museum diorama. Earlier, an otter streaked downriver just off the bottom. The water had to have been eight feet deep, but the otter seemed an arm’s length away we saw it so well, right down to the wavy patterns the water made in its fur.

As we waded we found a spot where the current was just right; strong enough to carry us along, but not so strong that we couldn’t plant our feet and stop when we wanted. We pushed off the bottom with our toes, let the river take us where it would, and set our feet again. We were like astronauts in space, in a state that was Earth’s equivalent of gravity-free. Bounce off the bottom, slide downriver, set your feet. Swim back. Repeat. We jumped and splashed. We dove and swam under water with our eyes open. We were otters.

A big mistake, one we repeatedly chose to make, was to venture into deeper, swifter water. It was about five feet deep at the edge of the main channel, where the current was all business. Whoosh, there went our footing and under we went. We righted ourselves, stepped back a foot or two, and were back in equilibrium with the river, grinning.

It was summer, sand, sunshine, spruce, the Saco and us. Shrink a summer to a second and it was this one.

There were no lifeguards, no concession stand, of course. In fact, in a day of many dips, we saw comparatively few people. And isn’t that part of the romance of an outing in the outdoors, the pleasing sense of remoteness, an intimacy with a healthy river, a reassurance, however illusory, that our world – our nest – is not fouled?

I don’t want to be Martha Stewart fussy about this – well, sure I do – but there are components to a great swim that are every bit as important as the right stenciling for the hallway or the perfect petit four. More important.

How you get to your swimming hole matters, for one thing.

You can whisk yourself in a motorboat to the beach at the other end of the lake. But you won’t earn your swim, and can’t really appreciate it even if, at some level, you enjoy it. There is humdrum wine and there is noble wine and you can’t know the one until you’ve tasted the other.

Allison Grant leaps from a rope swing into the Saco River, near Conway, N. H.

Arrive by canoe at a little pool on the Saco and it is high adventure. This is your river, your trip; you are explorers, not passengers. You counted every spotted sandpiper along the way, worked your way around every fallen birch, saw the cardinal flowers. That three miles paddling was muscle warming exercise, not five noisy minutes. The state road may only be a half mile away, but now it feels like 10. With nothing more than a paddle, you realize, you transported your soul from one emotional time zone to another.

Where you swim matters, too. No water parks, please. No, no gimmicks, and no machines to pump and filter water time and again. The water that makes for a grand swim is filtered through a forest, where it emerges refreshing as the scent of just-cut birch, soft as the first emerging leaves of spring.

And who you swim with matters. A swim should be intimate, not a mob scene. I remember best the swims with just a few friends, or with family, or with the family and a few friends. Put Allison, Scott and I together and we can go on and on telling stories of swimming in remote lakes and rivers, places where we tossed the paddles in the boats and jumped in the water for the joy of it. A common denominator of all of these stories is the arrival by canoe or kayak – and the realization that a good swim is among life’s underappreciated joys.

Allison recalls that on the Saco I announced at mid-afternoon that if we stopped at one more sand bar, one more beach, one more rope hanging over a deep shady pool, we’d never get to the take out in time for supper.

“Who cares?” They didn’t.

Perhaps better than I, they knew not to hurry a swim for the ages.

This essay first appeared in Canoe Journal.

Canoes, I learned long ago, go just the right speed.

Back in the 70s, before children, when it seemed we had all the time in the world, my wife and I paddled with friends on the Saco River in Maine. The image remains to this day. I remember vivid blues and dark greens splashed with light, a Winslow Homer-like scene that is soothing to summon and excuse enough to jump into a canoe again. We toasted the glory of the Saco with a six-pack that day, though, in all honesty, we toasted every river with a six-pack in those days.

We dawdled, paddling maybe two miles an hour, talking much of the while, taking in the scenery. We stopped and swam off a sand beach. But we were in a hurry in another way in those days, starting our careers, already working long hours. Little did we know. Suddenly, the river that was our lives quickened like that tongue of water dropping into a rapid. Into the maelstrom we went. Children came. The canoe sat idle for months at a time.

But each spring I’d get the itch and find a way to get out, if only for a half day now and then. I’d pore over my maps, pick a river not too far away, and set off. I returned wet, tired and grinning. My notes – I have to write everything down – bring back sights and random thoughts from those outings: Osprey dropped from sky and snatched trout smack in front of me; Hemlocks along Shepaug magnificent today; Wow, New Milford has changed – is sprawl containable?; Time for kids’ dental checkup?

One summer in the 90s, my son, Scott and I were canoeing the West Branch of the Penobscot River in northern Maine during the precious, too-brief interlude between his summer hockey, baseball and soccer camps and the start of his fall hockey, baseball and soccer games.

We camped on Thoreau's Island in the Penobscot River, Maine. Henry David Thoreau, the philosopher and naturalist author, camped there one night in the mid-19th Century.

The West Branch is a fairly wild river in the North Maine Woods, and you don’t see many people even in summer. We camped alone on an island one night, made breakfast of bacon and eggs when we awoke, and began paddling on a late-summer, nippy morning. We came upon a cow moose at the edge of the river, water dripping from her mouth, with a calf at her side. I reached for my camera, fumbled with its waterproof bag and watched as both of them lumbered away before I ever got the lens cap off. We paddled mostly in silence for another hour, taking in the quiet, the scenery and the stillness, while the exercise warmed us.

There is a pattern when two people paddle a canoe alone for long distances. The day begins with conversation, the continuation of all the talk that goes into loading the canoe and departing – “Watch that rock.” “Did you douse the fire?” Then, after an hour or so on the water, conversation trails off, minds wander.

This is the Zen of canoeing, when all the preparation is behind you, when all the cares and stresses – that would include the drive up on Interstate 95 – recede with the tail water. Now it is the boat, the scenery and your mind. It can take hours to reach this Jello-like state, or it can take days. When it happens, you realize that part of the appeal of a canoe, in addition to its consummately graceful-but-utilitarian form, is that it is a reasonably comfortable platform from which to let the mind’s eye roam. You can get a little spacey in a canoe and it’s OK.

We had been quiet some time when Scott, age 10 at the time, asked, “How do rivers begin?” I explained, best I could. That led to a discussion of oceans, where the rivers end up, which led to a conversation about the sky and the clouds and the universe. Scott was sure space was not infinite. “It has to stop. It can’t go on forever,” he said. We kicked that around for a mile or two, which is how you measure time in a canoe. Scott occasionally flipped a lure from the bow in search of trout. Eventually, the conversation veered to a discussion about God, heaven and, finally, should we pull over for lunch?

Would we ever have spent the morning pondering those questions if we weren’t paddling 12 miles over the course of a day on a river in Maine, often in silence, under an expansive blue sky, not having seen anyone else since the night before? It wouldn’t happen driving to soccer practice, I don’t think.

The speed of a canoe is pretty much whatever speed you want it to be at a given moment – up to full throttle of say, 4 or 5 miles an hour if you want to make something aerobic of it. Need to blow off steam? Well, go ahead. Want to chill? Sure. But paddle long enough and your speed will become the one that makes you one with the river. Rhythmic paddling, the melodious drip of water off blade. Now you are connected.

I don’t want to suggest that you have to spend days in the wilderness far from humanity to appreciate canoe travel, however. Unlike other means of transportation, most notably those high-speed power boats, in which your entire relationship to other boaters is a jerk of the wheel to avoid hitting them, a canoe practically guarantees a civil exchange with others.

In fact, I like to say that the canoe is the only civilized form of transportation. I’ve been saying that for so many years that my wife and friends now let it whistle by without comment. While allowing that some may find it a tad hyperbolic and uninclusive, I stand by it.

Spend a day on a river or a lake, and there’s a good chance you’ll come upon another party who will wave and exchange a greeting. To see a canoe in the distance does not bring a grimace, but the prospect of a conversation. “Are you on a trip?” “Catch anything?” “Did you see the otters playing?”

I can’t think of a better example of this than another day on the Penobscot a couple of days after our metaphysical flight, when Scott and I paddled away from a sandy campsite on Chesuncook Lake, also part of the West Branch river system. Almost immediately we happened upon a family of three, also from Connecticut. We talked as we paddled, side by side, as the sun rose higher and higher. By late morning, we reached Mauser Island, still together, and decided it was time for a swim. The five of us found a perfect spot in a cove on the back side of the island. Mount Katahdin loomed in the distance. A gently sloping, mossy ledge rose six feet above the water and ended many feet below the surface. Splashed with water it became a chute. We swam together for a half hour, the five of us, new friends.

I see it clearly today – vivid blues and dark greens, splashed with light.

This essay first appeared in Northeast Magazine.

It is to the point, universal, inspirational and succinct. It amounts to a mission statement for humanity. It could change the world.

“Would it not be well for us to consider if our deed will warrant the expense of nature?”

Not dramatic enough for a manifesto? Give it another look. It is a powerful and radical thought presented in disarmingly graceful, understated and non-confrontational prose. It ought to be plastered all over those posters the kids make for Earth Day. But it won’t be, I can almost guarantee. I’ve never seen it quoted anywhere.

Henry David Thoreau worked that sentence into the middle of his journal entry for Feb. 17, 1841, an entry that otherwise was not likely to stir the modern soul. The preceding sentence, a not atypical Thoreau commentary on society, if a rather ho-hum one, reads: “The mechanic works no longer than his labor will pay for lights — fuel — and shop rent.”

Still, Thoreau’s journal is widely read today and always in print, something that can be said of but a comparative handful of journals, like those of Lewis and Clark or Anne Frank. Yet somehow Thoreau’s sound bite for society has lain there on the page undiscovered or, at a minimum, unheralded and unused for generations.

That is a shame, because it says in one sentence what the environmental movement has been trying to say for more than four decades, implicitly or explicitly, not always successfully: In everything we do, consider carefully what its impact on the environment will be and act accordingly.

Imagine if people took Thoreau’s question into consideration as they went about their personal and professional lives. It would affect how big our houses are, how we heat and cool them and at what temperature. It would affect what kinds of vehicles we choose to drive, how often we drive, and how far we drive. It would affect our choices in clothing, food, career, family size and leisure activities. There would be far less consumption, and far less waste. Do I need four pairs of hiking boots?

Pay the question heed and it will bite the ankles of corporate America every moment of every day.

Actually, were business to pay it heed, were Thoreau’s words ever truly to become part of corporate decision-making, we’d have a revolution. Would GE have dumped PCBs in the Housatonic and Hudson rivers 40 years ago if its workplace ethic was permeated by Thoreauvian philosophy? No.

True, GE is getting green these days, and so are many other companies, but we are a long, long way from considering whether “our deed will warrant the expense of nature.”

I showed this quote to a trusted friend of impeccable environmental sensibility, a person who treads very lightly on the Earth. His one reservation was that people might need to read it twice before the meaning washed over their consciousness.