Rapid escape: Rivers give Dregne a break from the courtroom

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Good whitewater paddling, like good lawyering, requires sound judgment.

In March, attorney Matt Dregne, who has been canoeing for close to two decades, showed he understands the similarities. He was paddling in northern Wisconsin when he came upon rapids nicknamed “Horserace” on the Peshtigo River.

Below the rapids, the river’s bottom is covered with sharp rocks that other paddlers call “the Dragon’s Teeth.”

Dregne, who is comfortable tackling Class II and III rapids, had run those rapids once before and knew he had it in him. Still, he reconsidered.

“I decided, ‘No, I don’t need to do this today.’ And I didn’t,” said the Madison-based Stafford Rosenbaum LLP attorney who concentrates on municipal and administrative law. “But at the end of the week, I came back and looked at it. I checked my internal body feeling and decided to do it. I was a little apprehensive. But I made it through.

“You look at what the river is presenting and make a decision.”

But it’s the differences between his hobby and profession that draw Dregne. Paddling is an escape, and he takes it as often as he can between March and October.

His passion for the sport ignited when he and fellow Madison attorney Tom McGregor took a canoe trip on the Brule River.

“We thought we were doing some serious whitewater,” Dregne said.

About five years later, the two took a course on whitewater paddling in Canada. Dregne was hooked.

“It probably took six or seven years of taking classes and trying different rivers,” he said, “before I really felt like I knew what I was doing.”

Dregne now has taken six paddling trips to Ontario, Canada. For shorter trips, he’s visited rivers in northern Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

“At first in Brule, it was just about going down the river,” he said. “What I learned after a while was how to play in the river, to find places that have interesting features, currents, eddies and drops, and you play in them.

“You might find a stretch of the river that’s only 50 to 100 feet long with a lot of interesting features, and you might spend the whole day there.”

Often, Dregne is playing with friends. Paddlers form a small, close community, to the point that it’s no surprise when he sees people he knows in whitewater canoeing magazines.

Every year, he participates in a slalom race that draws some of the best paddlers in the world.

“A few years ago, there were a few members of the U.S. Olympic and Junior Olympic teams, and there was me,” Dregne said. “How many sports could a guy like me compete against members of the U.S. national team?”

The camaraderie now extends to Dregne’s wife and two children, ages 12 and 14, who join him in the rapids. He and wife, attorney Claire Silverman, recently attended a tandem whitewater paddling class on the Madawaska and Ottawa Rivers in Canada.

“We ripped it up,” he said.