9 August 2026
A piano teacher told me “you don’t learn to play Rachmaninoff by playing Rachmaninoff”, meaning that perfecting a skill required practice and effort at a reasonable level of difficulty. Endless scales in the piano trade, easy creeks like the Violettes Lock loop in paddling. While it is a wonderful stretch of water, the Violettes Loop is typically not a paddler’s end goal. But it can get you there. Rather than just floating down the run and catching an eddy or two, you can paddle more aggressively, try harder ferries, catch close set eddies on opposite sides of the stream, attain simple rapids, and work on perfecting boat angle and your offside moves. All these efforts will be repaid when you step up to more difficult whitewater as a stronger, more skilled paddler.
We worry about the objective risk of paddling. But we tend to focus on rescue and retrieval—fancy rope tricks and clever rescue gear. Those are important but in the case of the Violettes Loop, we can all be safer by noting the biggest risk of all beforehand, the coarse woody debris that accumulates in the channels. Focus on your situational awareness, look for potential strainers. Harkening back to another teacher, driver’s ed in this case, paddle defensively. Avoiding a strainer does not make for the dramatic story of a near-drowning or a rescue, but it keeps everyone safer.
And finally, our turtle count today on a primo basking day was four, including little tiny ones. This is a far cry from the days of old when Gus Anderson counted over a hundred (is 128 the record?), with the largest the size of a turkey platter. Why are we so bereft of turtles? Two theories were discussed. First, when the NPS removed the accumulated woody debris from the canal a few years ago, they removed the good haul-out logs and the turtles have no place to sit in the sun where we can see them. Theory B, when NPS drained the canal for the cleanup, the turtles left and went elsewhere. Research proposals are invited.
The paddle was very nice. After two days of hovering over the Remington Gauge, the Rappahannock dropped too low to justify the trip and we returned to the Violettes loop. It was hot but a slight breeze from the west kept us cool. We started with twelve paddlers but six of them wandered off. All paddled elegantly. The New York Ironweed has started flowering—the bright purple complements the dusty plum Joe Pye weed and contrasts well with orange trumpet vine. Other late-summer flowers are opening. Fall is coming.
John Snitzer