I wrote this post 8 years ago, for the French Open. The Federer/Nadal rivalry was already one of the all-time great ones, though Nadal had not yet “run away” with the head to head. That took a little lustre off it as a rivalry in terms of their direct contests (Rafa dominates the H2H 23-11; but in terms of career accomplishments, Roger is far in front). Still, here we are, 6 years from their LAST Grand Slam final (a 2011 French Open win for Rafa), and the two are ready for a kind of tennis Valhalla battle. So, before we do, please take a look at some thoughts from a long time ago, a Nietzschean analysis about what makes this rivalry so enthralling, despite the lopsided H2H in Rafa’s favour: 

On the eve of the French Open, the rivalry which has animated the sport for the last four years has flickered back into life where it had seemed to be extinguished. Nadal and Federer have, for years, faced offin the Grand Slam finals as two titans in a battle to repeated through eternity. Titans or… gods?

What exactly has made this rivalry so special? As with no other pair in the history of the game, Nadal and Federer faced each other on the biggest stages, to the exclusion of every other player of their time. That alone explains why so much attention has been paid to their rivalry, but it is not the only reason. There has always been something more: with Borg/MacEnroe and Sampras/Agassi there was a similar dynamic of major rivals characterized by polar opposite personalities and on-court styles. This is a clue to the importance of the current duo.

It has become trendy of late to engage in revisionist tennis commentary: after Nadal had been characterized as a brute force for so many years, commentators now point out the thought which has gone into creating his game, the ongoing improvements, the tactical adjustments. Nadal is now called a thinker. All this may be true upon in-depth analysis. But let’s look again at their games, superficially, and we easily see why they were categorized, typecast even, so quickly: Federer as God, Nadal as Beast.

Federer’s game has been called the most beautiful, most perfect of all. His shots are immaculate. Aesthetically, he has no rival. At his best, he is like a painter, each shot adding colour and shape to the portrait which he alone sees all of. It is a game of perfect control, perfect balance. In short, it is an object to behold. Nadal’s game, despite the process which lies underneath creating it, appears as brute power. Primordial power unleashed. Watching Nadal is cathartic. He seems to pour ALL into each shot, as if he is channeling a greater power. It is an unshackling of the human body, each shot a release and explosion. It is orgiastic.

In Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, the philosopher attempts to unlock the secrets of the ancient Greek dramas of Sophocles and Aeschylus. The key to his thesis is the recognition of the integration of opposing artistic forces: the gods Apollo and Dionysus.

Apollo is the “shining light”, the symbol of the “plastic” arts, such as sculpting and painting. The Apollinian represents the World as Appearances (i.e. the Grand Illusion, or the Veil of Maya). The gorgeous Olympic gods are manifestations of Appolinian culture. From Apollo, the beauty of order and appearances, and especially of individuation (the illusion that the world is made of discrete, separate objects and individual).

Dionysus is the god of ecstasy. The Dionysian arts, the drumming, dance, and music of the Greek Dionysian festivals, are those which strip away the illusion of the world and reveal the unity between men, and between man and nature. If Apollo is the god of appearance, Dionysus is the god of That Power Which Lies Beneath. The archetypal Dionysian art is music, that which seems to communicate deeper meaning, to touch That Power Which Lies Beneath without our “Real World” as intermediary (as in the plastic arts).

Nietzsche saw, in Greek Tragedy, the union of these two arts: at once individuated and beautiful, in the characters we see on stage, at the same time touching the Truth and underlying unity of the world we live in through the mythic archetypes portrayed, the grand mysteries touched on through the story and the hero’s ultimate realization of That Which Lies Beneath, all of which was aided by the very Dionysian music and chorus. To Nietzsche, this was the most powerful possible art, using Apollo to reveal Dionysus and vice versa.

And this is why Federer-Nadal touches us like no other! There, live and on court, we see the two great archetypes engaged in their own dance: with Federer we marvel at beauty and grace, with Nadal we are released through primal force. Their rivalry touches us at a mythic level; they represent basic categories of existence.

So, for the French.

Nadal vs Fed in the finals.

You come around a bend and see the white froth on the horizon line of the river. Maybe this was a bad idea. You stand in the back of the canoe for a better view, discuss with your partner a route through the long, rocky, droppy, turbulent mess – hidden boulders to avoid, eddies to shelter in, chutes to aim for.

Afterwards, in the first calm water downstream, you’re a bit shaken, a bit wet. One or two more dings on the heavy ABS plastic canoe. The fear drains out and you’re filled with adrenaline and euphoria. This is whitewater canoeing.

Camp at Red Pine Rapids, Dumoine River

The Unabomber wrote about surrogate activities, distractions we concoct for ourselves to take the place of our primal and once-dangerous hunt for food and shelter; to fill that psychological void. I wonder about this: is there a hierarchy of legitimacy to recreational activity? Are some more indicative of a balanced psyche? Is there something unhealthy about using dangerous situations for fun, just to find a way out (alone and remote, in the case of whitewater canoeing)?

It’s hard to imagine feeling as alive as riding a wild river by canoe, or as healthy and whole as sleeping by it. Maybe it’s just a mistake to use the Unabomber as my standard for mental health. 

My wife and I spent 5 days on the Dumoine. It was our first time on the Dumoine. The river flows more or less north-south from the Canadian Shield highlands to the Ottawa River, dropping 500 feet along the way. The altitude drops make it a whitewater river. The Dumoine has two sister rivers, the Noire and Coulonge, which run over roughly the same terrain. We’d run those two before, but the Dumoine is supposed to be the classic, one of the superstar rivers of Quebec.

We drove to our take out point, where a shuttle took us up river. That way, our car would be waiting at the bottom. Getting to the Dumoine, we got up at 5, drove to Da Swisha, then shuttled up the  old logging roads to put in around 60 km of river above the Ottawa by early afternoon. This is how trips start: the driver drops you and your canoe and your gear deep into the bush, somewhere near the river, and disappears down the dirt road. You look up, look around, and go, by fuck, we’re on our own now.

This is one of the special things about wilderness camping. Other vacations, you go to the beach, it takes a few days to wash “home” off you, the office, the home projects, the headaches and nerve-rattles. A weekend is a break, not a vacation, because you can’t forget that quickly. Except wilderness camping. The moment that shuttle is gone, shit is real and you are there, in that moment. It’s another world, and you’re another man in it. Remember that old Dungeons & Dragons cartoon where the kids take a roller coaster, and then it transports them to a fantasy world with unicorns and dragons? Like that.

Our bags and barrel and canoe are lying on this scruffy beach next to the Dumoine, and it’s always a strange feeling seeing that everything you depend on, food, shelter, clothes, camp gear, is going in that canoe. 

The Dumoine

We quickly packed the canoe, and slid off the beach and out into the current. The Dumoine welcomed us in with an immediate long series of rapids (“Bridge Rapids”), and we were gone as quick as the shuttle.

The river was relentless (how Megan put it). After that long day of road travel, we spent the afternoon running eleven high-class rapids. Eleven times hearing that noise, approaching for a first look, nerves and adrenaline firing, making the decision: do we run it straightaway? Scout more from shore? Skip it and portage?  Then, the active intensity of the run. Eleven times. Nine went well. Two were hairy, with significant boulder contact, having to get out a couple times to push off rocks to get unpinned. Always a nervy experience. Lulu Lemon says you should feel fear at least once a day. So we’re good with Lulu.

Each rapid is different; you learn to read the water to understand what’s happening underneath. With low water levels, the Dumoine rapids were predominantly long boulder gardens, with not much margin for error; and challenging river bends through the rapids making them difficult to scout.

The house specialty: a Dumoine boulder garden

We made camp at Little Steel rapids the first night. It was a beautiful, shaded site right in the midst of the rapids, swarming with mosquitoes.  There was no spot calm enough to swim or fish around the site, but the views were spectacular.

Here was the juxtaposition that makes whitewater canoeing a rare experience. The wet, splashing excitement, the fury of the river, the intensity of concentration as boulders whizz by. You’re thinking about a plan to work the rapid, at the same time as the paddle and balance technique needed to follow the plan. Your body is fully engaged, all while watching, hyper-alert, for surprises. Then, the serenity of camp, the infinity of the wild. No sign of human contact save a portage trail and fire pit.

These rivers have been run for thousands of years by native peoples before the plastic boats. They would have used the same portage trails, the same campsites, maybe even the same spot for a firepit. When you walk here, you are completely separate from humanity in the moment, yet connected with a thousand years of it.

There is a ying-yang here of human experience. I’d go so far as to bring out the ol’ Apollonian/ Dionysian. I use these terms following Nietzche’s use in Birth of Tragedy, who set them up as distinctive, opposing forces in experience and art.

[I’ve used this schtick before, within the context of the great tennis rivalry between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. But it’s one of my favourite concepts. So useful in describing so much of human experience.]

The Apollonian is man as a self-conscious individual. He is the man in a fragile craft, holding onto his sanity, ego and identity on a deep ocean of mystery. Paintings and sculpture are Apollonian, individuating arts. They celebrate differentiation and uniqueness of objects.

Dionysian is humanity as One. It is the connection of man to each other, and the universe, the often-ecstatic loss of self as experienced in Dionysian festivals (or drum circles, raves, shamanic ceremonies, religious experience, drug and alcohol use, etc). It is the man outside the craft, in the ocean. Music and dance are Dionysian arts.

Canoeing the rapids is a pretty literal interpretation of the man-in-the-fragile-craft metaphor.

Man alone, in a fairly sturdy craft

You are as individuated, as focused on your physical being in that moment, as can be. You are fighting to protect that individual. Then all at once, you find yourself in nature, and melt into it. Your individuality is gone, you are swallowed by the wild.

One night, on a quiet stretch of river, I watched the wakes of invisible bugs on the glasslike surface, disturbing for a moment the reflection of the trees, hundreds of yards away. Damn right, it was serene. Nietzsche claimed that it was the bringing together of Apollonian and Dionysian tendencies in Greek tragedy that made it a sublime, ultimate art. There’s no ultimate sport, or pastime, despite the Unabombers’ hierarchy. We all experience and profit from our recreation in different ways. But whitewater canoe camping has unique combination of feelings. The mosquitoes fit in somewhere, metaphorically. I’ll get back to you on that.

We travelled like this four more days. One of those was spent in camp, at Red Pine Rapids, as a play day. I love play day. No campsite tear-down and set-up. No need to go anywhere. Nothing but to enjoy the place, rerunning the same rapid different ways, practicing techniques, fishing, reading, writing. Reclining in the hot sun in a shallow rapid – a glass of white wine, still cold, in hand, the cool river flushing over your bottom half.

Play day on the Dumoine

Unlike the Coulonge and Noire rivers where paddlers generally take out somewhere along the river itself, the Dumoine has no road access near its mouth, and spills right out into the wide Ottawa. You finish the trip by paddling through the wind and waves of the big river. Your car is waiting on the other side.

You open the car, change into some clean clothes, pack your stuff up and take off. That’s it. No ceremony, no medal, no one waiting to shake your hand or cheer. No one knows or cares. Something magical happened. You’re bursting to talk about it, the experience is too big to keep inside. But you can never capture magic with words. You start the car, get in gear, and that world is shut behind a portal. You will have to find it again next year, that portal. For now, you are back to the mundane world, with a pile of dirty gear.

***

From Schopenhauer: Just as a sailor sits in a boat trusting to his frail barque in a stormy sea, unbounded in every direction, rising and falling with the howling mountainous waves; so in the midst of a world of sorrows the individual man sits quietly, supported by and trusting to the principium individuationis, or the way in which the individual knows things as phenomena. The boundless world, everywhere full of suffering in the infinite past, in the infinite future, is strange to him, indeed is to him but a fable; his ephemeral person, his extensionless present, his momentary satisfaction, this alone has reality for him; and he does all to maintain this, so long as his eyes are not opened by a better knowledge.