Risk – A Life Saved by the River
Risk by Susan Norman
A Carolina Paddler Book Report
By Alton Chewning
She Writes Press, 2025. 280 pp.
∞ Susan Norman faced a difficult choice. Her daily life was good. She lived at Lake Tahoe, surrounded by nature’s glory. She worked a dream job, respected and well compensated. Susan and her partner had an amiable shuttle-relationship, allowing each independence with companionship. While not always easy, life was sweet, as comfortable as old pajamas.
Susan was not lazy. Her drive would not allow a sedentary existence. After decades of competition in extreme sports, she was still fit and active. There was a hitch though. Her only sibling, brother David, was on a different course and his four-year-old son, Seth, was suffering. Seth needed more than David could offer. Susan was the only person able to meet those needs.
The memoir opens with Susan in a rescue situation, a position she experienced often on the water, times when urgent and decisive action were needed. This rescue was different, filled with more uncertainty and mixed emotions. Susan’s nephew was languishing at an inner-city group home. The caregivers were working with few resources and little time to spend with each child. Attention was scarce but bedbugs were plentiful.
Seth was the offspring of two troubled parents who could not manage their own problems, much less nurture a challenging four-year-old. The mother was in prison and David, the father, was barely able to maintain a residence. Seth landed in a group home.
Susan and David had come through difficult times in their own childhood. Their parents divorced while they were young. The children stayed with their mother until a debilitating disease forced her to send them back to their dad. Their mother would eventually move to her parents’ home and die there. The children were rudderless without their mom.
Their dad wasn’t a bad parent but he was always short on money and had few child-rearing skills. His job creating cartoons for magazines was sometimes fulfilling but it didn’t provide much financial stability. His meager cooking and housekeeping abilities were barely adequate for the family. They moved frequently, always to low-rent areas. Friendships were hard to sustain.
One bright spot was the outdoors. Their dad loved camping and paddling. It was a cheap pursuit and they flocked to the woods every weekend, partly to escape the glum of their home and neighborhoods. Dad bought a C-1 canoe and jumped into whitewater paddling. Despite spills and misadventures he persisted and soon bought a kayak for Susan and David to share. The battered racing boat had an illustrious history. At some point in the distant past, it belonged to a US World Champion kayaker.
Whitewater became the lifeline for Susan. Her dad understood the paddling community was fluid and accepting. Whenever they moved to a new area, her father would search out the closest paddle club. They would be welcomed into the tribal embrace of a new family of dirtbaggers and weekenders, beaters and gifted. Rivers are a great equalizer and paddling brought a communal acceptance the little family needed.
Susan found paddling as a way of channeling her energy and need for excitement. Possessed of a strong but slight build, Susan blossomed in this sport that didn’t require brawn. Fitness and technique were more important. Her dad insisted if she wanted to spend all her free time paddling, she had to keep up with school and chores. Susan willingly accepted the requirement and learned to balance life’s scales of fun and responsibility.
David never found a similar focus. Fast, frothy water didn’t interest him much. He enjoyed it for a while and then drifted away from the river. David would enter adulthood without the personal anchor but it was not from a want of looking. His spiritual search went in many directions: drugs, religion, relationships and alcohol each seemed the Way for a time and then he was adrift again. A romance with another seeker flared brightly and Seth was born. Both parents had personal challenges and the child suffered from their inability to love and provide. After the mother was incarcerated, David admitted he couldn’t care for the young boy and Seth headed to a group home.
Susan was faced with a difficult decision. Surrender her comfortable life and take on the full time responsibility of raising a non-communicative child, one scarred by early trauma. Consider the decision in your own life. How many of us could accept this challenge? How many of us have the resources, the supportive circle of friends and family, the perseverance to be meet this challenge? No one would fault Susan for deciding to leave Seth as a ward of the state.
In telling her story, Susan bounces from the difficult circumstances of Seth’s childhood to her own experiences finding her way. She describes the choices she made and the opportunities that opened to her.
After high school, Susan decided her best path into adulthood was the military. She had no money and the armed services could provide room and board. The structured life would be a change and if all went well she would have further education subsidized.
Life in the military was vastly different from life with David and Dad. She chafed at the inherent male orientation of the military but she managed. While deployed in Europe, she seized on the extraordinary opportunity to become a whitewater kayaking instructor. Her pupils would be special forces troops required to be adept at various survival skills. Almost all her students were male as were the fellow instructors, most of whom knew far less about paddling and rescue than she did.
Once again, the physical democracy of whitewater paddling asserted itself. Many times Susan would have to tactfully quiet the nerves of combat-ready troops, guys who could brave live-fire conditions stoically but were terrified by jumbled rapids and rushing water. Susan’s petite build was tested by rescuing much larger troops from icy waters. Some of her students opted out of the training. Susan stayed and her confidence soared.
Life back in the States progressed at a heady pace – college, competitive racing, Class V paddling, international competition, the dream job, relationships started and lost, relationships lasting and strong.
Age brought a slipping in kayak skills and abilities so Susan switched to other disciplines: rafting, outrigger canoes and other red-meat sports. She still needed the adrenaline and challenge extreme sports provided.
Susan and David meandered away from each other. She would still receive phone calls from him, almost always asking for money to get pass a difficult period. Susan sent money until her patience and budget reached a tipping point. She determined she would have to cut her brother, her only living relative, out of her life. Then Seth appeared.
Four years later Seth was a small boy who didn’t talk much, who had undiagnosed personality disorders, who passed his days in a downtrodden group home, bitten by bugs and withering from inattention. The parents offer no salvation. Susan was the only hope for Seth to have a better chance. In middle age, Susan had to become a mother.
Susan alternates telling of this dive into motherhood with other times she’s “stepped off the edge.” Her stories of international raft racing in Russia and Chile are thrilling and exotic. Her need for excitement and the jolt provided by competition puts her in challenging positions.
A competitive kayaker must be strong, independent, assertive and decisive. What happens when four or five alpha-females launch in a raft, where teamwork is essential? The temperament for solo racing is so different than the attitude needed for group competition and invariably conflicts develop. The goal remains to win and this can only be done by embracing the big C’s: cooperation, consideration, courage, compassion.
Many of these newly won traits benefited Susan when she brought Seth home. There was no way to power through child-rearing. There was no victory to be claimed over a sullen, stubborn boy. The mindset of mothering was foreign ground to Susan – land she struggled to explore.
Competition played a primal role in Susan’s life. She thrived in conditions where the desire to be the best contributed to her development and confidence. Competing in international events at the highest level revealed another truth. No matter how driven a Cathy Hearn or a Linda Hamilton or other top athletes were, only one person, one team claims the top trophy. Does this mean the others failed? Have they gained less by not standing on the highest podium? Does winning carry all? Is life afterwards much sweeter and rewarding for the winner but not the loser?
You’ll have to read the book to find out more about Susan and Seth. Yes, progress was made. Seth’s hidden world opens, light shining in through small cracks. Music was a language he spoke easily. And yes, water played its part but in unexpected ways.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Susan Norman began writing Risk after she retired from the US Forest Service. Susan had a long career in national and international whitewater kayak and rafting competition. She lives in Lake Tahoe, California with her son/nephew Seth and her partner Lisa.