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ThatвЂ™s one reason heвЂ™s able to careen through uncharted waters with a reasonable expectation of survival: He sees things in the river others canвЂ™t. He spends so much time with water that heвЂ™s learned to trust its familiar melodies and rhythms. Whitewater kayakers know rivers better than perhaps anyone, and Darin is one of the only people alive who has seen some of the upper sections of the endangered river - a part that, to my surprise, remains remarkably wild and deadly. We took the вЂњRiver Trail,вЂќ and set off around 3:30 p.m.Дarin is one of the only people brave enough to kayak the upper San Joaquin River. Our destination was about 9 miles up, to elevation 9,833 feet.

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Mile 0Дarin McQuoid - a professional kayaker who talks in surfer-speak throws himself, willingly, off 80-foot waterfalls (tip: go nose first) and carries a polka-dot, Hello Kitty wallet, you know, just to be incongruous - joined me on a hike to the mountain headwaters of the San Joaquin, high in the Sierra Nevada, the shark-tooth range along CaliforniaвЂ™s eastern border. Stuck in the quicksand out in the middle of the Central Valley, still about 150 miles from the Pacific Ocean, it wasnвЂ™t hard to see why no one travels the San Joaquin.ДЄnd certainly not one I expected to love. My shoulders are less granite, more Play-Doh. When I rented a kayak in Oakland a polite, granite-shouldered woman asked me about my вЂњkayaking regimen.вЂќ IвЂ™m not exactly a candidate for that kind of river-blazing adventure: IвЂ™m sorta-medium athletic and thankfully can swim, but it was my first time to try to kayak on a river, and I had pretty much no idea what I was doing. IвЂ™d been told I was the first person to try to kayak-walk it from source to sea. I just didnвЂ™t realize quite what that would mean. IвЂ™m as guilty of this modern river blindness as anyone.Д«ut I wanted to change. But we donвЂ™t spend time with them - donвЂ™t know where they start or where they go.

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We see them when we zip by on highways, maybe. I think this notion of being disconnected from the natural world is especially pronounced when it comes to rivers. вЂњMost people are on the world, not in it,вЂќ wrote John Muir, the famous naturalist who traveled the Central Valley and the Sierra Nevada and whose journals I would carry with me down the San Joaquin. I had a personal reason for wanting to kayak the river, too. Depending on what happens soon, it could become a river reborn, or a drainage ditch. The advocacy group American Rivers, however, chose the San Joaquin as the вЂњmost endangeredвЂќ river in 2014 because itвЂ™s at a turning point. And the Mighty Mississippi is so polluted by farms that it feeds a Connecticut-sized вЂњdead zoneвЂќ in the Gulf. The Rio Grande, which forms the U.S.-Mexico border, often doesnвЂ™t make it to the ocean, either. Earlier this year, the Colorado River flowed to the sea for the first time in decades - and that took an international agreement. Last year, CNN readers voted for me to do a story on the вЂњmost endangeredвЂќ river in the country as part of my Change the List project. Now weвЂ™re in the era of dead rivers - a time when theyвЂ™ve been so dammed, diverted and overused that many of them simply cease to flow. The San Joaquin is a river that would flip my boat, steal my camera, throw me into trees, take my food, tweak my muscles, acquaint me with heat exhaustion, scare the s- out of me, trap me in the mud and leave me hiking for three days across a desert. The quicksand was just one of several semi-apocalyptic challenges IвЂ™d face on my trip down the San Joaquin, from its headwaters in the Sierras, near Yosemite, to my hoped-for destination, beneath the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

ThatвЂ™s why IвЂ™d started walking in the first place, dragging my boat by a rope. So no one needs to worry about me getting swept away by current today. Now thereвЂ™s not enough water for a kayak and me. This is what the San Joaquin USED to look like. The San Joaquin, the second-longest river in California, used to support ferry traffic. I looked to the left to see this Frankenriver flowing backward - toward the Sierra Nevada, where IвЂ™d started this вЂњMad MaxвЂќ journey 12 days before. I was alone on the San Joaquin River in CaliforniaвЂ™s remote Central Valley - the forgotten part of the Golden State, where no one thinks of taking a vacation. As anyone whoвЂ™s seen вЂњIndiana JonesвЂќ or вЂњPrincess BrideвЂќ can attest, you need a sidekick to get unstuck from quicksand.

Fighting fantasy books mud flat skeletons