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Whitewater paddlers are, by definition, thrill-seekers.
That's why they seek out the northeast corner of Wisconsin, "the cradle of rivers.'' The big Wisconsin River starts there, as do the Wolf, Peshtigo and Menominee, three of the Upper Midwest's best-known whitewater rivers.
On the Wolf River, Bear Paw Outdoor Adventure Resort has been a whitewater hub since 1994, selling gear to expert wranglers and teaching novices how to handle the rapids, which froth and churn over knots of boulders dropped by the last glacier.
More than any other river in Wisconsin, the Bois Brule has a pedigree.
They call it River of Presidents, but it also attracts senators and millionaires. Named for pines charred by lightning strikes
— “burnt wood’’ in Ojibwe, then French — it rises from conifer bogs near Solon Springs and flows
toward Lake Superior. Its cold, spring-fed currents harbor trout, and well-heeled fishermen discovered the river long before
loggers moved in.
They built the first lodges in the 1870s, when Ulysses S. Grant came to visit, followed by Grover Cleveland in the 1880s. In the 1890s, St. Louis oil and rail tycoon Henry Clay Pierce amassed 4,160 acres along the river and built a fishing retreat.
At the top of Lake Superior, there's a dramatic coast lined with rugged cliffs, cobblestone beaches and islands.
It's the home of Parks Canada's new Lake Superior National Marine Conservation Area, created last October to protect the waters
between the Sibley Peninsula, east of Thunder Bay, and the Slate Islands, off Terrace Bay.
The many islands are big, much like the Apostles in Wisconsin except closer together. That makes them ideal for kayaking. The
Slate archipelago, where caribou live, attracts serious kayakers. But the Rossport Islands are perfect for any paddler.
The sky was clear, the wind was still and Lake Superior was as placid as a lily pond.
It was a miracle that wouldn't last. That's why it was torture for the dozen of us to sit through a long kayak safety course on the sandy beach of Bayfield, Wis., forming a ''human knot'' to foster cooperation in case of disaster and listening to trip leader Hovas Schall's horror stories about the big, mercurial lake.
''Kayakers play a game with the weather, and the weather always wins,'' she said darkly. "Sea kayaking is a dangerous sport.''
When some men reach a certain age, they get the urge to buy a zippy little sports car. But when women reach a certain age, they covet a sporty little kayak.
I must be at that age, because in the last year, nearly every woman I know either has bought a kayak or decided she wants one. And since I'm in the "wants one" category, I have a serious case of kayak envy.
It got even worse when I went to Madison one March for Canoecopia, the world's largest paddle-sports exposition. Over breakfast
at my inn, I listened to Barbara Shuman of Chicago describe her 17-foot Valley Pintail, the "original ocean play boat."
On Wisconsin's Kinnickinnic River, paddling is a lot like playing pinball — except your boat is the ball.
Quickened by springs and creeks as it flows toward the St. Croix, the Kinni is no lazy river. Cold and insistent, it scoops up a boat and gives it a ride, slapping it between boulders, bumping it over rubble and shooting it over rapids. All the person in the boat has to do is sit tight and steer.
On a warm summer day, it's the coolest possible place to play. So one August, my husband and I drove to River Falls, a college town that calls itself "The City on the Kinni."