Real Potomac primary: Kayaker versus the river

The Potomac, just below Great Falls. Photo by Mark Silva

by Mark Silva

They say a Potomac primary will play out here Tuesday. Well, you should have seen the Potomac today.

Up on the eastern end of the Billy Goat trail west of Washington, the section not too rocky for a dog, the wind was whipping the river into a fine, sunlit mist swirling up the rock cliffs on the Virginia side, and the wind was snapping great branches from the tops of leaflees trees atop the bluffs here on the Maryland side. The trees groaned and threw trunk-thick debris crashing to the ground.

A sole kayaker paddled up the rapids, and the leading engine of the Arctic Express blew frigid air down the rock canyon of the river that descends toward Washington through several rapids and falls, mainly the Great Falls upriver from us, at the start of the goat-grade stretch of the Billy Goat trail.

The river is high today, swamping the low rocks which afford the closest eye-level views of the rapids, and, as I sit on the sand of the path half-sunken my dog Bree has settled in behind me, guarded from the sharp wind and warming my back.

Barack 0bama was stirring up his own storm at a rally at an Alexandria high school, Hillary Clinton was whipping up some cheers at a rally out in Manassas and Mike Huckabee was stumping down in Lynchburg at the pulpit of the home church of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, the one whom John McCain once denounced as an agent of intolerance. They are all here now, bidding for the voters of the Potomac and Chesapeake watersheds, the Tidewater crowd and the southwest mountain folks.

And out here on the wind-swept Potomac, a lone kayaker struggled against the glare of the sun-splashed rapids.