Opening up rivers really floats his boat.

• Author: Brown, Kathy

Mark Singleton is the first to admit that he's become "an office stiff." Shuffling papers and sitting at a desk might draw no such self-deprecation from many other 49-year-olds. But then Singleton probably has spent more of his life outdoors than they have, so maybe he misses it more. During his boyhood in Pittsburgh, his mom pushed him to play outside, and he kept it up even after college. He grew especially fond of whitewater rafting.

Now Singleton does the pushing from his 10-by-20 "closet suite" packed with boxes of documents. As executive director of nonprofit American Whitewater since 2004, he lobbies to protect public river access and improve education for paddlers. He also urges the government to let cooped-up water come out and play more often. In February 2005, for example, American Whitewater helped persuade the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to temporarily open part of the Cheoah River in Graham County for recreational use. It was dammed 70 years ago to power an Alcoa aluminum-smelting plant. On 19 days for each of the next five years, water will spill from the dam into the riverbed.

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The first release came in September. About 600 people paddled the temporary torrent, and a few hundred more came to watch. "That's a new tourism product that's being put on the ground in economically depressed counties like Graham," Singleton says. "And that's part of our mission--to make sure these resources are available for the public to enjoy."

Singleton took his boyhood love of the outdoors to Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., and got a bachelor's in outdoor education, a...