When I was about 30, I had a friend who got me into a canoe and took me down a set of rapids. Even though I swam through a good part of it, the two of us having swamped the thing about halfway down, I was hooked on running whitewater. I eventually got a kayak, and within a couple of years was running some pretty serious water.

A section of the Jacques Cartier River in northern Quebec, the Taureau section, is a good example. The run is 15 miles long, with the middle 10 miles dropping 3,000 feet in elevation, or 300 feet per mile, the equivalent of twelve 25-foot waterfalls every mile for 10 miles. In the middle of this, another tributary feeds into the main stream, doubling the flow. It’s extreme and very remote. Had anyone gotten hurt it would have been a difficult rescue.

In 1993, a fellow I worked with planned a trip to Haiti right around the time the military dictator General Cedras was being threatened with occupation by U.N. forces. We had a Haitian business associate in Texas whose family lived in Port-au-Prince, so we had reliable lodging when we arrived. From there, we bicycled up the west coast taking photographs and experiencing the country up close. In the scrubby desert along the main highway north of Port-au-Prince we crossed a small bridge over a dry stream bed. In the dry bed below lay three human skeletons, evidence of the political violence of the time. Our host had warned us to be careful. The Tauton Macute, or groups of paramilitary thugs, were not to be trifled with. My friend carried a Derringer in a holster on his ankle.

These are a couple of my experiences living dangerously. Certainly not Iraq or Afghanistan, but I was always glad to get off a steep river in one piece, and equally glad to return from the poverty and violence of Haiti.

Do teenagers that first take up smoking do so out of a sense of living dangerously, knowing cigarettes kill? Do they see it as fashionable, yielding to peer pressure, or rebellious and independent, a good buzz? Whatever the enticement to start smoking, here’s just a few of the nasty chemicals being sucked into those youthful lungs (from a list compiled by the American cigarette companies in a letter to the federal Department of Health and Human Services):

Benzene, a colorless hydrocarbon obtained from coal and petroleum, used as a solvent in fuel and chemical manufacture, and a known carcinogen (cancer causing). Formaldehyde, a colorless liquid used to preserve dead tissue, embalming fluid. Acetone, a solvent used in nail polish remover. Hydrogen cyanide, a highly poisonous gas. Arsenic, an effective rat poison. Nicotine, deliberately added to make cigarettes addictive, also a potent insecticide.

My point is, with dangerous pastimes one takes extraordinary care to control the risks. There is no such control with cigarettes. Smoking them is not just living dangerously, but living foolishly.

Steve Demetriou lives in Windham.