Riversense is a documentary about the people and culture of the whitewater river kayaking community. All over North America are tribes of paddlers who are drawn to the whitewater lifestyle: running rivers, competing in whitewater rodeos, and pushing through fear to find themselves.

We follow the lives of Katie and BJ Johnson, T.R. Yon, Dunbar Hardy and the late William Nealy, and learn about their relationships to rivers and the kayaking lifestyle.

Mixed into the narrative of these stories we meet some of the whitewater community’s gurus, legends, and aspiring paddlers who share their thoughts on everything from hair-dye to the essence of riversense.

The word riversense, like street smarts, is an innate sensibility and understanding of one’s surroundings. At its most basic level a person who can look down a river, read where the water is going, pick a line and run it well, has riversense.

Riversense is also an etiquette, which is about caring for the environment of rivers, being respectful of the community that a river runs through, or encouraging a novice paddler. On another level riversense is about survival and knowing when to walk around a rapid that is beyond your ability.

At its deepest level riversense describes the passion that paddlers have for running rivers and the choices they make in life to pursue this passion. Spending every free weekend driving to a river to paddle or dropping out of college to paddle professionally are some of the products of embracing riversense.

The essence of riversense and the documentary is about leading a beautiful, challenging, fulfilling life.