By KATE MORGAN | Special To The Washington Post | Published: January 22, 2021 There are moments, as you drift through the deep canyon walls of the New River Gorge, when it feels like you ve got the whole world to yourself. It s just you and the river, littered with massive, prehistoric boulders that were here when the coal mining camps were built, and the fur trading posts before them, and the Shawnee and Cherokee villages before those. In a river that geologists say could be one of the world s oldest, you can lose yourself in time. Then the current picks up, and you re back to paddling like mad, navigating the chutes and eddies of heart-pounding white water.