2000

Adventures With Uncle Wally (A Broader View of Reality)

by Uncle Wally (a67)

Sometimes, takin' a broader view of reality is good for your soul . . . and hard on your boat.

Way back, (way, way, WAY back) I went to school up in Bemidji. Let me tell you, winters are LONG up there in Bemidji! Now, I like winter as much as the next guy . . . more'n most, as a matter of fact. But 'round about March, I'm usually gettin' pretty tired of it. And by April, I'm definitely ready to move on, even if Winter isn't.

In that agitated, late winter state that's two parts cabin fever and one part spring fever, a fella's likely to take it into his head to try just about anything that doesn't involve parkas, snow shovels, or jumper cables. I guess that's why one year, my buddies and I dusted off the paddles a week or two in to spring quarter and went canoeing.

It was a lovely, warm Saturday when we ditched the books and hit the water. If we closed our eyes, we could almost forget about the foot and a half of snow still out in the woods. The lakes were still all frozen up, bound tight and silent under two feet or so of ice. But the rivers were all open. So we loaded up our boats and headed for the upper Mississippi.

Our boats back then were a brace of fiberglass Core Crafts. They weren't terribly nimble craft. With their flat bottoms and triple keels, they owed their design as much to the aluminum fishing boat as to the canoe. They tracked like a freight train and were as easy to turn as a headstrong mule headed happily home to the barn. But, not knowin' any better, we still liked 'em.

The stretch of river we were headed for that day wasn't gonna challenge our skills too deeply anyway. The Mississippi up here was still small enough to be a pleasure to paddle but was big enough to not require the paddler's undivided attention. You know: it was past the twist and wind, slither through the rocks, and then disappear into a cattail swamp stage of a river's infancy.

It did still run in and out of any number of small lakes and ponds, which was a little inconvenient on this late- winter day. 'Cause the lakes and ponds were still sealed under a double layer of ice and snow. Instead of flowing undeterred through these larger bodies of water, the river now plunged playfully out of sight under the ice, reappearing only across a broad expanse of snow. It was a riverine version of the game tag.

Bein' college educated boys, we naturally invoked the powers of higher learning to solve our little ice problem. Whenever we saw the river divin' under one of those impervious, ice ledges, we just cranked up our stroke rating and worked ourselves up to ramming speed. Leaning dramatically back as we hit the edge, we rode our own, personal tsunami of frigid water up on to the lake ice.

This generally got the bowman on solid ice where he could pull the boat up enough for the sternman to disembark. We then sprinted across the snow pack, sliding the empty canoe between us. Lucky for us the ice hadn't even started considering the spring melt. 'Cause we hadn't really thought about it either. We didn't even take the precaution of keeping one foot inside the boat, just in case.

Re-entry into the river was just a tad trickier. At a flat-out run, we raced the other canoe to the narrow river outlet. Then, just before we ran out of ice, bowman first and sternman following, we each had to grab hold of both gunwales and leap into the boat before it hit the water. Momentum, balance, and a lot of luck did the rest. We were just like Olympic racers hoppin' on their sleds at the beginnin' of a two-man bobsled heat. Leastwise, we thought we were. And there was no one there to tell us otherwise.

The last half of this re-entry process was always a bit of a rocky ride. Up in the bow, those two, short, side keels lent some stability to the affair. But the center keel ran the length of the boat. And the sternman couldn't always guess to which side the boat would list when he jumped in. Not knowin' which way to lean as the boat careened at full speed toward open water that still dreamt nights about its former life as icicles . . well, the suspense was exhilarating. It made the day exciting.

But after a while, even the novelty of this hybrid form of paddling began to wear off. We started lookin' for some new diversion. And that's when we found the hill.

It was a lovely, little hill. Its snowy slope ran steeply down into the snowpack of a small lake, uninterrupted by a single tree or bush. The sight of that pristine sweep of snow took all four of us back to boyhood winters full of Flexible Flyers and screaming downhill runs. What we had here was a perfect sledding hill. If only we had a sled.

Undeterred by the lack of proper equipment, we looked around for other options. And what should we see but these two, triple-keeled canoes that seemed to have "toboggan" written all over them.

There wasn't even any discussion. We just grabbed the painters and started haulin' the boats up the hill. It looked way steeper from the top, of course. But then, that's half the fun, isn't it? We settled ourselves onto the canoe seats, pushed off with the paddles, and went screamin' down the hill.

Gotta hand it to those old Core Crafts: they track even better on the snow than they do in the water. We went arrow straight down that hill. Matt and I went at least two-thirds of the way across that little lake before we slowed to a stop, beatin' Jeff and Craig's mark by a good two boat lengths.

I tell you, sleddin' that canoe was just like flyin' . . . with a little turbulence. We just had to do it again. Second time around was even faster. And bumpier. This was almost as good as tryin' to paddle whitewater. It was the most fun we'd had in a long time. We probably woulda stayed there the rest of the afternoon if only those canoes hadn't been so darned heavy to haul back uphill.

It probably wasn't the best thing we could do for the boats. But we've done way worse on river trips. Rubbin' a little fiberglass off the keels was the most damage we did. And those old Core Crafts had more than their share of keel to start with. Besides, any attrition on equipment was more than made up for by the good it did our winter-weary psyches.

Now, I can't with good conscience recommend that everybody go out playin' tag with rivers just before ice out. Or that folks should start usin' their canoes as bobsleds. But I still get the feeling that Conventional Wisdom about the proper parameters for the sport of canoeing may not always jive with every paddler's vision of reality. It doesn't always hurt (at least not much) to take a broader view. It might even be good for your soul.