This isn’t an official statistic or anything, but I’m guessing that roughly 75 percent of couples who share a canoe on expeditions down a river consider divorce or separation at some point during the adventure.

I’m not saying it’s going to be you. I’m not saying it was me either, but there’s a reason, according to my recent canoe trip’s most experienced member, that tandem canoes are called “divorce boats.” Unfortunately for my spouse and I, our designated guide down the Cahaba River decided to share that information with us after we chose a two-seater and after the journey down fast-moving water was already underway.

This is not an advice column, and it’s certainly not a guide to canoeing either. I want to make those two things perfectly clear. This is a column about nature, and the nature of things. For example, when given a choice between your own canoe and a craft to be shared with someone you love, pretty much always choose the single option.

Because here’s the thing. Choose incorrectly and you might be single when it’s all over.

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It’s springtime in Alabama. It’s nice out. I got invited on a canoe trip over the weekend. Things happened. There were, let me just put it this way, events of notable distress. Did everyone survive? Yes. The marriage? We’ll see. My wedding band? No. Absolutely not. It’s gone. The river took it away along with every drop of my river cred.

“It was more than I expected,” my loving companion said days later. “I thought we were just going to float on down the river. We needed some survival skills.”

Which is to underscore, she pointed out, that “none of us had any business being out there.”

Would she do it again?

“Yes.”

And that’s how you know you’ve got a keeper.

Most people went to someone’s house after church on Easter Sunday to eat various forms of comfort food. That was probably the safe move depending on how many in-laws came over for the free meal. While y’all were chowing down on big plates of stuff like homemade cheesy beans and beef stroganoff, I was one of two people on a tandem canoe attempting to maneuver through a challenging section of the Cahaba River after three days of heavy rains.

I’m here to tell you that it was treacherous. If anything of value comes from this column, then let it be that people do not attempt to recreate the mistakes that were made by me, a river donkey.

There were six of us on the trip. Four of us went into the water unexpectedly. All of us experienced the river on the river’s terms. Whole boats sank. A kayak was pinned between a tree and the force of an entire river. Cigarettes were smoked to calm the nerves.

We offered ourselves over to the mercy of the water on Hwy 11 in Trussville next to the utilities board building. The takeout was a couple hours later before the bridge on Jefferson County Road 96. Most of what happened in between will stay on that stretch of river along with my wedding band. Let’s just say things got a little sporty.

My friend Spencer Randle was the trip’s leader, and the hero of the day. Without Spencer, who knows how things would have ended up. Spencer said it was OK if I wrote about our trip, which we no doubt will one day count as a great success. Maybe not anytime soon, though.

Spencer is a veteran of the Marine Corps, and let me just tell you that he can still get out of boats really fast. That skill set remains, thank you, God. Otherwise I might have been walking back to the car without a boat, proof of my marriage and, well, those things people use to turn on the engines of their automobiles. You know, car keys.

I didn’t listen to much of Spencer’s safety speech before the trip. One piece of crucial advice did make its way through my ears and into what’s left of my brain. Allow me to pass it forward, this tidbit of information. Don’t ever email me after a trip and say this river donkey didn’t warn you to clip your car keys to the canoe.

Adventure Rule No.1: Always secure the car keys.

Have I lost car keys while snowboarding? Yes, I have. Have I lost car keys at a sporting event? Yes, I have. Have I lost car keys on the beach? Yes, I have. Did I lose car keys while canoeing the Cahaba River on Easter Sunday 2023. No, I did not. Thank you, Spencer.

To emphasize the seriousness of canoeing on the Cahaba after it rains, I asked Spencer to jot down a few safety tips for readers. They are:

One: “Paddle on your knees through rough water. It’ll change your life.”

Two: “Avoid down trees in the water. We call them strainers and they take lives.”

Three: “Let the person in front of you clear an obstacle/rapid before you enter it.”

Four: “Try and keep your boat 90 degrees to the oncoming wave.”

Five: “Nose up, toes up if you’re swimming and hold onto your paddle. It’s harder to find than your boat.”

Did I remember to paddle on my knees through the first set of rapids? No. When I then inevitably went overboard, did I at least remember to hold onto my paddle? No. Did I drink a concerning amount of the Cahaba River? Yes.

When it rains, there are sections of the Cahaba River that quickly turn into Class 4 and maybe even Class 5 rapids. We went through several features that could be considered Class 2s and 3s. There was one piece, though, that was Class 4.

“See that,” Spencer said. “That’s the Ocoee.”

The Ocoee River is in the mountains of East Tennessee. It’s where they had the whitewater events for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Really sporty stuff, in other words. The Cahaba’s “Ocoee” was where the bounding current of the rain-filled river dropped hard into a rock wall while also turning into a bend that had collected a couple downed trees.

Wall on one side. Check. Downed trees on the other. Check. Whitewater in the middle of the turn. Check. That’s where Spencer made the executive decision to pull our boats onto the bank and skip it. It was our only portage and it took all of 10 minutes. We dragged the boats over some rocks, lowered them down a 10-foot step with ropes and were back on our way.

While I can’t stress enough the importance of knowing your limits, and knowing when not to test them, canoeing down the Cahaba River is a beautiful experience for those who go prepared. And when we say “go prepared,” we mean “go with someone like Spencer” and it will end up being a great adventure. The Cahaba is in the middle of a city, but large stretches of the waterway feel like they could be in a national forest. Our group spotted a bald eagle. Wild azaleas hung over cliffs and walls.

At times, it felt like Alabama’s Eden. At other times, unfortunately, it was pretty dirty. Groups like the Cahaba River Keepers are trying to clean it up. The Cahaba River is one of Alabama’s special places. Scientists say it’s one of the most biodiverse rivers in the United States. Fish like the Cahaba because there are no major hydroelectric dams blocking up the place. I know all this because I interviewed a couple while submerged underwater. It was during one rather lively stretch of the river I’m going to affectionately call “Satan’s washboard.”

Imagine a spoon sliding down a washboard in some folksy song about hillbilly divorce. That was me. I was the spoon.

The Cahaba Lily is a rare flower that blooms on the Cahaba River in mid-May. The Cahaba River represents more than that, though. A really good brewery, for instance. Am I some kind of biologist? Am I some kind of expert on rivers? No, I’m just a voice of reason who will tell anyone who might listen that when it rains hard in Birmingham, the Cahaba River can be a seductive, treacherous, snaking thief of love.

Let me just put it this way. The river pulled me into her powerful waters, and then she ripped my wedding band right off my hand. It’s gone, too. Lost forever, or until some lucky Alabama river hobbit finds it amid the rocks and rare snails, shining proof that an Alabama river donkey was once married, but chose the wrong canoe.

Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of “We Want Bama”, a book about togetherness, hope and rum. You can find him on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.