It was January 27, Sunday, and the New England Patriots were completing their upset of the Pittsburgh Steelers in the playoffs. The Eagles and Rams were up next, and I was mighty comfy on the sofa, but outside a clear sky and mild temperature told me I'd be sorry if I wasted the rest of the afternoon watching another football game. I got up, went outside, shoved my boat into my van, and headed for the river.

The Mississippi, after hovering around zero on the Memphis gauge for several weeks, was coming up fast. On this day it was in the midst of a six-foot rise, from seven feet to just over 13 feet--perfect for a surf session at Holmes's Ledge.

I drove up to the parking lot at the north end of Mud Island and suited up. Though the weather was ideal, I felt that the Mississippi was not the best place for me to be: heavy rains had brought river levels up all over the South, and a group from Memphis had gone to Alabama, or the Plateau… someplace wonderful. I, meanwhile, was stuck in Memphis taking care of Ajax and Dash, the golden retrievers belonging to Gayle Moore and Lanier Fogg, who were out of town. ("It's bad enough that Gayle and Lanier have given up paddling," I had grumbled to myself, "but now they're screwing up my paddling life, too!")

Oh well. My spirits weren't going to sink too far on this sunny, 60-degree January day. I carried my Atom C-1 down the boat ramp and launched myself upon the muddy prairie that oozes from the Minnesota woods to the salty Gulf. Some 20 minutes later I was at Holmes's Ledge, which is formed by a manmade dike that spans the channel between the Loosahatchie Bar and the Arkansas shore. The fast-rising river was on the verge of washing out my wave, but I managed to find a decent spot to surf. I carved back and forth, worked the edges of my boat, hopped off the wave into the big eddy and back onto the wave. Occasionally I glanced over at the house on the Arkansas bank, whose owner, I am told, hates paddlers who trespass on "his" river; but it appeared that my only companions were the ducks, the blue herons, the beaver, and the fish.

After about an hour, I had had enough, and I fell off the wave and drifted toward the southern tip of the Loosahatchie Bar, from which I would make the long climb upriver to a point where I could ferry back over to the boat ramp. But as I rounded the point and began paddling up along the east side of the Loosahatchie Bar, I heard the sound of rushing water.

In these parts, water does not "rush" very often, and when it does, as at Holmes's Ledge, the sound is usually the dull roar of water proceeding at a leisurely stroll through some such manmade rubble as a Corps of Engineers dike. But this sound I heard now was that of a high-mountain creek. I paddled toward the sound, which emanated from a logjam along the Loosahatchie Bar's shore. As I got closer, I realized that water was flowing out of the Mississippi River and onto the Loosahatchie Bar. I got out of my boat and walked onto the Bar, and found myself looking at a creek rushing along with sure-enough Class III whitewater.

I had long known that the Loosahatchie Bar contains bottomland in its interior. In the past, while paddling out on the Mississippi, I had at times gotten out of my boat and taken short hikes on the Bar, and discovered small ponds in these lowland areas. But for some reason it had never occurred to me that there must be a moment, as the water level rises, at which the Mississippi begins to spill over the natural levees along the edges of the Bar and fill in these interior bottomlands. For the first time, I had caught the river at precisely this moment.

What to do next was a no-brainer. I grabbed my boat and positioned it on the bank of this little creek, just below the logjam. I got in the boat and fastened the skirt, and slid down the bank into the rushing water, throwing down a brace to stay upright. In all probability, the first descent of this little creek was underway.

I caught an eddy on river left, and ferried back and forth several times across the standing waves. The creek took a hard bend to the left, and a boiling eddy whirled round and round where it had eroded into the right bank. I stopped to play for a moment, then continued on over swift water as the creek turned back right, relishing the pure speed that is so hard to find in the flat Mid South. About a hundred yards later the run was over, ending with a long wave train where the creek hit the slack waters of the interior pond. I surfed a couple of these waves, then let myself drift down into the pond, giddy as a goose.

No, this little creek wasn't the Ocoee. It wasn't even the Hiwassee. But that's not the point. Discoveries of this kind are difficult to come by on the Mississippi. That I found Holmes's Ledge a few years ago was dumb luck. The incredible size of the river and the broad fluctuation of water levels make it imperative to be in the right place at precisely the right time to discover such gems as Holmes's Ledge and this little creek. My excitement was sort of like what an astronomer who spends his entire life staring at the same sky must feel when he spots something new or unusual like a comet or a supernova. A couple days later, when I would next paddle my boat, the river would be up over 20 feet, and my little creek would be gone, buried beneath the Mississippi's dark roiling waters.

I put my boat on my shoulder and bushwhacked through hardwood undergrowth back to the main river--the little creek was steep enough that paddling back up it was not an option. I continued my journey upriver, toward the boat ramp, my car, and dry clothes. To my left the sun was sinking low on the horizon, while to my right a full moon was already high above Harbor Town. I have been through phases in which I was obsessed with becoming a great whitewater paddler--phases in which I longed to be as good as Davey Hearn and Jon Lugbill and considered moving to a more whitewater-rich part of the country to pursue this goal. But for now, I was content. I love being a paddler, and I especially love being a paddler in Memphis.