July 2001
Adventures With Uncle Wally (
Ever notice how, come mid-summer, traffic on your average canoe stream starts lookin’ like amateur night at the improv? The resulting theater can be pretty amusing to the casual observer. But it can also be pretty bruising to the principle players’ egos, not to mention sundry parts of their anatomies.
Why is it that otherwise sensible folks seem to think that canoeing is an innate function of mankind, like walkin’ upright on two legs, forgettin’ entirely that they once had to learn how to walk, too? That there might be an element of acquired skill involved is an idea that never seems to occur to them, no matter how many times they bounce offa the shore or tip over the boat. These are the unwitting players in our riverside summer stock theater. And when everybody’s lucky, we get a comedy.
I once got a ringside seat to one of these floating circuses courtesy of an acquaintance of mine. Fred and I had been casually exchanging tales of canoeing adventure for years when he suggested I join him and his buddies on their annual canoe adventure one July. They do the same river every year, the Namekagon. Usually it’s even the same stretch of river. So I figured they oughta have perfected their approach by now.
Since most folks were rentin’ canoes for this venture, we all rendezvoused at the canoe livery place at about 10 am, give or take some. It was a large, diverse, and convivial group. And from the chatter around me as we gradually convened, I gathered that not everyone was a veteran of former runs. In fact, some folks had never before set foot in canoe. And the veterans were all encouraging the new recruits with tales of raging rapids downstream as well as some I-almost-died memoirs of previous trips. I’m sure it made ‘em all feel welcome and anxious to get started. Or at least anxious.
The rental place was attached to a tavern. Or maybe the tavern rented canoes as a sideline. It was hard to tell which was their main business. But most of our party was perfectly happy to let any distinction between the two blur. I may have a hard time crackin’ a brew before noon. But some of these folks seemed to view beer for breakfast as a perfectly right and natural thing. In fact, the corn-flakes-in-a-can crew was happily getting snockered before we even got on the bus to the river.
At the put-in, it took us another hour or so to get ourselves sorted out and on our way. People selected their paddles from the communal pile of bright and battered plastic with the casual indifference of folks who were countin’ on the current to take ‘em downriver without any further intervention. Life jackets were chosen with an equally fastidious eye for fit, form, and function by folks who planned on usin’ them, at most, as seat padding. But considerable care was taken in getting the beer coolers stowed safely away in the boats. Priorities, after all, are priorities.
Folks slowly drifted down to the waterside and began contemplatin’ the subtle differences between bow and stern of a canoe. "Hey, how do you tell the front from the back on these things anyway?" was a common query. Here the veterans distinguished themselves by bein’ able to tell: the back was where they wanted to sit. Occasionally, bow and stern partners got into the boat facin’ each other, but eventually they worked it out. I was beginnin’ to suspect that sorta thing wasn’t gonna have much of an impact on anyone’s performance anyway.
It was pretty clear by now that most folks were more interested in workin’ on their tans than on their J strokes, even though it was only the latter that coulda used the extra effort. There was even one young woman, name of Ginger, who had a decided disdain for paddling. She was ridin’ in that three’s-a-crowd position amidships, soakin’ up the rays while delicately balanced on a folding lawn chair, imperiously and perilously high, kinda like Cleopatra goin’ down the Nile on the royal barge.
Ginger didn’t know the first thing about paddling and was blissful in her ignorance. She was only in attendance that day through the strange machinations of peer pressure. Her best friend, Heather, and Heather’s boyfriend, Jason, were both out throwin’ themselves on the tender mercies of the Namekagon with the rest of their gang. So she was willing to come along for the ride. But she wasn’t about to paddle.
Eventually, everyone ended up with a boat and a partner and we shoved off. Turned out the front/back debate was fully irrelevant as most folks opted to move downriver in a more or less sideways fashion anyway. Of the veterans in the stern, only a handful actually knew a coupla strokes to steer with. The rest relied entirely on the basics of paddle like crazy on the right to go left (or vice versa) and rudder real hard right before you hit something. But nobody cared. They were perfectly happy. It was just like goin’ tubing, except that you got to keep your bum dry!
Well, you’ve gotta allow that it is pretty hard to paddle and not spill your beer. And these folks had their priorities. I personally have always held that beer and water make a pretty unpalatable mix, one way and another, and save the libations for after everyone’s safely offa the river. But I was definitely in the minority here. Stern paddlers were inventin’ some unique, one-handed moves to keep under a semblance of control and still save the suds. Bow partners generally renounced paddling altogether in order to devote themselves entirely to the quaff.
The upshot was that by midafternoon most of our party couldn’t even walk a straight line, much less paddle one. This, of course, was when we got to the big rapids everybody’d been warnin’ everybody else about all day. The one ol’ Bob always goes down backwards. Where Mike lost a whole cooler full of beer a coupla years back. The one that nearly caused Bill and Peggy to sever all romantic and diplomatic ties between one another just a year ago. It was famous. But try as I might, I couldn’t recall a thing about it, despite havin’ been down this stretch of river a few times myself.
Turns out this raging rapids was a long stretch of fast water where the river narrowed enough to organize the riffle into a vague facsimile of a wave train. There was a big, ol’ tree down along the left bank. But to rate this a Class I woulda required a significant downward extension of the international rating scale. Nonetheless, it was enough to be the nemesis of any number of our boating Bacchae.
Maybe it was self-fulfilling prophesy. Maybe it was the tree. But in any case, the first two boats, drivin’ hard to river right, did 180s in the river and went down the riff backwards. The next boat bounced offa the tree and by some wonder of divine intervention managed to stay upright to float safely past. The next three boats, in a confusion of efforts to control their fate, banged into each other midstream and continued driftin’ downriver as a consolidated clot.
But the best scene in this little vignette came from Ginger’s boat. Heather and Jason, seeing the drama unfolding downstream, paddled like crazy on the left. Just before they crashed into the right bank, they decided they were far enough over and switched sides. In the process, Heather planted a powerful stroke into an overhanging alder, getting her paddle inextricably caught in the tangle of branches. Tenaciously, if unwisely, she hung onto the paddle. Stretched like a bungee cord between boat and branch as the canoe drifted on downstream, she was soon past the point of no return.
Jason didn’t have even a flirting acquaintance with a low brace. But it wouldn’ta saved ‘em anyway, what with Ginger ridin’ in pharaonic and rather top-heavy splendor in her lawn chair with her feet up on the gunwales. They went over so fast, she didn’t even have time to contemplate the gravity of her situation before all three of ‘em went flyin’ outta the boat. But gravity generally goes about its business without benefit of independent philosophical thought. They hit the water in a fusillade of splashes and finished that particular run without benefit of boat.
Heather and Jason came up laughing, knowing that they had just been inducted into the Namekagon Hall of Fame and figurin’ it’d make a great story for next year. Leavin’ the salvage operations on their boat, paddles, and assorted flotsam to those downstream, they contentedly started draggin’ the river for their lost beer.
But Ginger was madder’n a wet hen and fumin’ like a ditched diva. Not only had she gotten thoroughly soaked (with all the attendant negative consequences to hair and mascara), but her touching, if transient, liaison with both boat and lawn chair on the way over had left her with some impressive bruises darkening on her extremities. She was now confirmed in her belief that the canoe was the most contrary and dangerous craft on the planet. And she swore up and down that she’d never set foot in one again. I think she woulda even walked the rest of the way to the take out, if it’d been at all a practical option. But I’ve no doubt she and canoes have since parted company for good.
Well, I guess if you’ve been typecast in a role you don’t like, you might as well go back to your day job. But if you sign yourself on to the cast of a comedy of errors, don’t be surprised if it’s rife with physical humor. And don’t whine if your role requires a little slapstick now and then.
Well, ‘til next time, keep your paddle wet. And keep in touch. Drop me a line c/o Rich Furman and Morgan MacBain, 901 East Geranium Ave., St. Paul MN 55106 or editor@canoe-kayak.org. Let me know what kind of improvisational theater you’ve found yourself caught up in out on the waterways. Remember, Uncle Wally promises to 1) tell the truth so no one would ever believe it anyway and 2) never reveal your true identity to anyone, not even the director of the Betty Ford Clinic.
