Selling Wilderness: Whitewater Rafting Advertising on the Nantahala River
The 1972 release of the film Deliverance, starring Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, and Ron Cox, and based on the James Dickey novel of the same name, introduced the American public to the wonders of whitewater rafting, particularly on the rivers of the Southern Appalachians. The ensuing 45 years have seen whitewater rafting become an incredibly popular form of so called “nature tourism.”
North Carolina benefitted greatly from this whitewater rafting boom, particularly on the Nantahala River in the far western corner of the state. Numerous commercial outfitters have popped up along its banks and offer everything from whitewater rafting trips to forest zip lining adventures. These rafting operations are an economic boon to the communities in which they operate. The companies that run these trips advertise the Nantahala and the natural environment that surrounds it in a specific way. This advertising provides insight into persistent American ideas about nature and wilderness.
The companies that operate on the Nantahala have several main selling points. Among these are scenic views, experiences in the forest, and proximity to the Appalachian Trail and Nantahala National Forest, landmarks of preserved wilderness in the East. They offer to package all of this into a neat nature experience for the whole family.
For example, the Nantahala Outdoor Center, which is located along the AT and in the midst of Nantahala National Forest, offers “Classic Family Rafting in Western North Carolina,” with “mountain scenery” and “crystal clear” waters all within a well-ordered daylong experience. The advertising strategies, used by companies like Nantahala Outdoor Center, try to sell a certain image of the place where they operate. With the use of phrases like “crystal clear” waters, they promote a vision of a recreational adventure in the pristine wilderness.
Other companies operating on the Nantahala use similar advertising strategies. The Rolling Thunder River Company offers a rafting experience on an “ancient river flowing through natural rainforests surrounded by Native-American history.” Within this one sentence they combine the novelty of the wilderness, as embodied by the “natural rainforests,” with a deep geologic history, as characterized by the “ancient river”, and human histories, as characterized by “Native-American history.” And, to top it all off, they provide customers with this experience in a couple of hours for around $40 per person. Carolina Outfitters, yet another rafting company operating on the Nantahala, employs similar rhetoric. They offer patrons the enjoyment of “the scenic splendor of Nantahala National Forest and the Great Smoky Mountains as you paddle the clean cold waters of the Nantahala River.” The language that they employ suggests a visually stunning and refreshing experience in nature for their customers.
These three companies use practically interchangeable language about the experience they provide to their customers. A “return to nature” experience and escape from the rigors of modern life, embodied by a quick rafting trip, underlies the remarkably similar rhetoric of these companies.
While these companies use the language of pristine nature, they simultaneously talk about the Nantahala as what Rolling Thunder Rafting Company calls a “fantastic outdoor playground on the water.” The use of “playground,” connotes a safe, fun, and family friendly place. The playground metaphor undermines the language of unpredictable natural, pristine, and wild splendor that they also use to describe the rafting experience on the river.
Perhaps what is most ironic about the language these companies use to paint a picture of a natural rafting experience, is that the amazingly consistent rapids of the Nantahala are only possible because of human made dams. The history of human intervention on the Nantahala complicates the language rafting companies use to describe the river.
Christopher Manganiello, in his book, Southern Water, Southern Power, details how many of these dams, like the one on the Nantahala, were built “in every cardinal direction and every southern Appalachian watershed” by private energy companies and the federal government to power the South. In fact, energy companies dammed the Nantahala ninety years ago. It turns out the natural and pristine whitewater experience is not so natural after all. Consistent rafting on the Nantahala is only possible in its current form because of humanity’s attempt to meet energy needs through damming projects.
Without the release of water from Nantahala Lake the Nantahala would be a much calmer stream and not a consistent torrent of Class II-IV rapids. These remarkably consistent raging rapids of the Nantahala are a happy mistake. Human interference on the river, not the river’s pristineness or wildness, makes human recreational exploitation (and profit) of the Nantahala possible.
The way whitewater rafting companies advertise the Nantahala make it easy to ignore the complicated ideas behind how humanity has created an idea of what nature is and how it can be best put to use for humanity. Can the Nantahala be the epitome of pristine wilderness and a human playground? These rafting companies would have people believe, yes, the Nantahala can be both. After all, this serves their business interests.
The cultural history of how Americans have understood wilderness further problematizes this advertising. In his essay “The Trouble with Wilderness,” William Cronon, a highly respected environmental historian, traces the ideas that have come to form the basis of how Americans think about wilderness.
At its most basic, Cronon argues that ideas about the sublime and frontier have created a vision of wilderness that fundamentally separates humanity from wilderness. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries wilderness began to be seen as a place apart from human civilization. This separation has led Americans to reject the less glamorous and more obviously human influenced wilderness in our backyards in favor of places like the raging rapids of the Nantahala, which, just like our backyards, are the result of human intervention. The historical conceptions that underpin ideas about the separateness of wilderness allow the promotion of advertising predicated on a return into the wilderness.
Cronon argues these ideas are unproductive. Nonetheless, they continue to loom large in the American consciousness. Despite the reality that a Nantahala river wilderness has not existed for nearly a century and probably has not existed since humanity moved into the area, the cultural concepts Cronon discusses make the advertising campaigns of these rafting companies appealing and effective. The ads play into a deep cultural history that conceives of wilderness as a regenerative and separate place that can be returned to and enjoyed.
With all of this in mind, thinking about the rafting industry on the Nantahala raises complicated questions about how Americans use and think about nature and how Americans should use and think about nature. I think finding a semblance of an answer begins by confronting the arbitrary human ideas behind our conceptions of nature and wilderness and recognizing the cultural threads that underpin American thoughts about wilderness. Perhaps most importantly, recognizing the disconnect between the history of the Nantahala and the marketing strategies used to promote its whitewater rafting industry show that everything has a history and nothing is as pristine as it is made out to be.
