![](https://www.5000miles.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Rebecca-Long-700x0-c-default.jpg)
Growing up my family spent many vacations along rivers on the east coast – not to mention the Potomac in our backyard. I found my love of rivers on the flat water of the Chesapeake Bay, but it wasn’t until a rafting trip along the Wild and Scenic Middle Fork Flathead River that I truly came to understand rivers and how they can suck you in, figuratively and literally. I now long to get back west and experience more of what wild rivers have to offer.