Where does "whispering death" come into the picture? The next time you're on a river—or walking on the bank—keep your eyes open. When you spot a downed tree in the water, stop and listen. (CAUTION If you're paddling, approach strainers from downstream only! Never float down on a strainer from upstream. And if you're walking along the bank, be sure that it's not about to give way, tumbling you in.)

Listen! Hear the water's sibilant shush, shush, shushing through the branches? That's the siren song of whispering death.

Chances are good that you won't have to look very far to find a strainer. They're not rare. You can see them almost anywhere: big rivers, small streams, even along the margins of reservoirs with fast-moving deep currents. And while spring floodwaters are the most dangerous times, strainers can be killers at any season of the year. Farwell once rescued a woman who got into trouble in early summer, on a placid reach of a tiny trout stream. The current probably wasn't moving along at more than one-half-mile an hour, but that was enough. The water was still cold. The woman was weak. And she was stuck in the branches of a downed sycamore like a fly on a screen. Happily, she survived. She was lucky.

Not all downed trees are dangerous to paddlers, of course. On the margins of lakes they're part of the scenery, and good habitat into the bargain. Lunkers often lurk among the tangled branches of lakeside sweepers.

Still, any combination of fast (or even not-so-fast) water and downed trees can be deadly. This isn't a new discovery. The nineteenth-century English writer Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) was a keen kayaker. But a sweeper nearly put an end to his career before it had properly begun. Here's the story, just as he told it in his first book, An Inland Voyage:

I was aware of another fallen tree within a stonecast. I had my back-board down in a trice, and aimed for a place where the trunk seemed high enough above the water, and the branches not too thick to let me slip below…. The tree caught me about the chest, and while I was yet struggling to make less of myself and get through, the river took the matter out of my hands and bereaved me of my boat. The Arethusa swung round broadside on, leaned over, ejected so much of me as still remained on board, and, thus disencumbered, whipped under the tree, righted, and went merrily away down stream.

I do not know how long it was before I scrambled on to the tree to which I was left clinging, but it was longer than I cared about…. The stream ran away with my heels as fast as I could pull up my shoulders, and I seemed, by the weight, to have all the water of the [River] Oise in my trousers' pockets. You can never know, till you try it, what a dead pull a river makes against a man. Death himself had me by the heels…. And still I held to my paddle. At last I dragged myself onto my stomach on the trunk, and lay there a breathless sop, with a mingled sense of humor and injustice…. On my tomb, if ever I have one, I mean to get these words inscribed: He clung to his paddle.

Stevenson may have hung onto his paddle, but he did one Very Bad Thing: he tried to slip through the branches of a sweeper. He didn't make the same mistake again. Neither should you.

There's only one way to tackle strainers. Avoid them.

How? Any way you can. Sometimes you'll have to portage. Sometimes—particularly in spring—you'll even have to pick a different river. But most places, most of the time, your paddle will keep you out of trouble.

Here's the deal. Sweepers are most often found on the outside of bends. Unfortunately, that's right where the current wants to take you. But be of good cheer. If you're a strong, competent paddler, you can almost always take the ferry out of trouble.

"Take the ferry"? What does that mean? Back in the old days of wagon-roads and cart-horses, there weren't as many bridges as there are now. Many roads ended at the riverbank. If you wanted to cross, you had to take the ferry.

But how did the ferry get across? Ferry operators, being clever folks, looked for a free ride. They gazed out at the river. It's too bad all that energy couldn't be harnessed, they thought. And then they realized that it could. Just string a pair of cables across the river at the ferry-crossing. Tie the ferry to the cables at bow and stern, with loops in the lines. Kick the stern (upstream end) of the ferry out into the current. Cast off. What happens next? Magic. The rushing water pushes hard on the angled boat, but the cables keep it from slipping downstream. So it slides sideways, from one bank of the river to the other. The bow points where you've been. The stern points where you're going. It's fast. It's cheap. It's easy. It's a piece of cake. A lot of ferry-operators got rich.

Of course you're not tied to a cable when you're in your boat, are you? But you have a paddle. All you have to do to hold yourself stationary is to back-paddle. The force of the current will do the rest. Strainer coming up? No problem! Just point your bow at it—yes point the bow at the strainer—kick the stern toward the inside of the bend, and back-paddle. You'll glide away from danger as easily as if you'd taken the ferry.

Well, maybe it's not always that simple. You have to get the angle right, for one thing. You need to remember that the current doesn't run parallel to the banks in bends: it heads for the outside. And you have to set your angle relative to the current. When you're headed downstream, you aim your bow toward the thing you want to avoid and then kick the stern away from it, making an angle across the line of the current. If you're still heading where you don't want to go, open the angle: push the stern over even more.

Of course, the faster the water, the harder you'll have to paddle to hold your own against the current. And you'll have to close the angle to keep from being swept downstream, too. In slow water, you can afford to be almost broadside to the current. As the river speeds up, however, you have to tighten the angle. Then, when the river runs faster than you can paddle even when you're paddling as hard as you can, it's time to open up the angle again. But now you can't help slipping downstream. Fast. So be sure that you've given yourself plenty of room to maneuver.

Confused? I'm not surprised. You can't learn to do this in your living room. Supervised practice is essential.