JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
If you're out on the Connecticut River, you might see Joannah Whitney rowing a single scull. She uses just her torso and arms to power the boat. On shore, she gets around in a wheelchair. Reporter Nancy Eve Cohen joined her for a recent row in Holyoke, Massachusetts.
(SOUNDBITE OF OARS BANGING)
NANCY EVE COHEN, BYLINE: Whitney rows upstream against a choppy current.
JOANNAH WHITNEY: If you stop for a minute...
(SOUNDBITE OF WATER SPLASHING)
WHITNEY: ...You can hear the waves.
(SOUNDBITE OF WATER SPLASHING)
WHITNEY: Hearing the water, hearing the birds are things that I don't get a whole lot of exposure to.
(SOUNDBITE OF WATER SPLASHING)
COHEN: She points to a favorite spot on a river bank with a muddy water line showing how high the river has been.
WHITNEY: Amazing to be able to be on a body of water that has so much dynamism to it and power - to be able to be in that and not just, like, looking at it from pictures that somebody else took.
COHEN: Whitney can't access a lot of the outdoors. She has multiple sclerosis and gets around in a manual wheelchair. She started rowing about a dozen years ago, at a time when she had stopped doing a lot of things as her illness progressed.
WHITNEY: It can feel like just a march of loss. Losing this. Losing that. Now you can't do this, and now you can't do that. And so rowing, for me, was an antidote to that.
COHEN: She even lost her career as a field archaeologist, but she says learning to navigate this river and all it dishes out is transformative. One day, she got stuck in a log jam, but she found her way out.
WHITNEY: When I'm out here on the river, there's a long experience of my body meeting challenges. And that skill of figuring out really opens up a space of believing a different story.
COHEN: When she first became disabled, nobody knew what her story would be. She had to relearn how to sit up, how to put on her socks and shoes. Now she rows about six kilometers twice a week, sometimes as far as 13.
WHITNEY: When I'm leaning into a stroke and then pulling against it, I love that. I can move this boat through anything.
COHEN: She leans forward, pulling the oars, feeling her strength against the force of the water.
WHITNEY: So it's this right here.
(SOUNDBITE OF OARS BANGING)
WHITNEY: That is what I love.
COHEN: The river teaches her she can meet challenges under her own power.
WHITNEY: It's not mediated by somebody else helping me or altering the world in a way that they think is going to make it more accessible. There's no smoothing out of whatever nature is going to bring.
COHEN: And on shore, that stays with her.
WHITNEY: Whatever's going on, whatever the challenges, I'm going to be able to get through it. And I take that with me all the time. All the time.
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COHEN: Back on the dock, with a bit of help, she gets into her wheelchair.
WHITNEY: OK. Good to go.
COHEN: Time on the water changes her story.
For NPR News, I'm Nancy Eve Cohen.
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