Ally Porter walked ahead of me as we sidestepped down a steep, loamy embankment. Our path lit only by headlamps, a waning sliver of moon, and what seemed to be thousands of stars, we made our way to a mucky riverbank about twenty feet below. At one point, I lost my footing and ended up wedged against a tree trunk. Porter, who had two tight braids that landed just below her shoulders, kept going. She moved with ease through several inches of sludge, toward a yellow glow stick tied to a tree at the water’s edge.

On the other side of the river, some two hundred feet away, was another glow stick. Porter, who was wearing forest-green DaddyGoFish waders, glided into the waist-deep rapids and walked a line between them, periodically dipping small plastic bottles into the water and then depositin

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