2000

"Howl Like The Wolf"

by The MONKEYBOY (a68)

I've got a story to tell that parents of paddlers may enjoy. This is a story that all who know how tranquillity of the world can whirl up around you in chaos, how you can exist in the so-called "eye of the storm" and wind up being the last to know your predicament. It's a story that those of you familiar with the Wolf River in eastern Wisconsin may also enjoy. This is part of history. We have to go way back in time...way back when the MONKEYBOY was just an innocent baby chimp...back when section IV of the Wolf was not on the list of rivers paddled. The summer of 1980.

I grew up seeking adventure in life with only a hint of conscious awareness of this. When being seated in roller coasters, I used to wedge myself in and sit up off the seat, leaving my safety harness loose until we were past the safety check. I was then able to fly up and out of the roller coaster seat a bit on the hills for an added thrill. I also played with mortality sitting at the lip of Half Dome with my legs dangling 4,800 ft. above Yosemite Valley while eating my lunch. When I was traveling in the mountains, I would walk to the edge of glaciers and cliffs and look down into the abyss below, drawn to the thrill of the edge. Over the years of growing up with a canoe in our family, I found I enjoyed adventures with moving water. We paddled on the lakes and the broad slow-moving rivers, like the lower St. Croix and other faster-flowing rivers and meandering creeks. It is these faster-moving rivers I enjoyed most and was drawn to repeat that type of experience. I remember an incident of sliding through a concrete set of rapids on Minnehaha Creek in Minneapolis in our canoe while it was tipped on its side, just after a spill. My father and brother were in the action seats and were getting mangled as they ground their way through the rapids while hanging onto the boat. Me...I sat in the canoe and rode it out thinking, "Hey, you should have leaned into the wave to avoid this...and you are best off staying in the boat and riding this out, guys...and you should have kept the canoe upright, and you'd have been fine...keep your cool guys, this isn't so bad." All these things are what a paddling visionary child might think. So, I liked the "action" early on.

I had taken to seeking these moving water adventures at summer camps and special school activities. I was running out of opportunities presented to me. I was graduating from high school in June of 1980 and felt the need to strike out on my own, while my interests and youthful abilities were honed sharp. So I proposed a canoe trip for myself and three buddies as a graduation celebration. But we didn't want to just paddle. We wanted "ACTION!!!" So whitewater it was to be.

I bought the Whitewater Quietwater Guidebook and began researching regional rivers that would be suitable for a group of beginners (amateurs) on their first true whitewater adventure. Without extensive whitewater experience among us, we wanted to do a river that would get progressively more difficult as we went further downstream...learning as we went. But we also wanted a river long enough so we could make an expedition, including camping, last numerous days. The river that fit this criteria...the Wolf River in eastern Wisconsin. After weeks of planning and test runs down local rivers and creeks to get in paddling sync with each other, we headed out of town the morning following graduation obligations. When we planned our driving route, we didn't know exactly where we should be running this river. The guidebook was vague about permissible parking for put-ins and takeouts. So, we just got close and decided we would work our way upstream to figure out the parking logistics. We hit Highway 55 low and stopped at the first "Authority" station we came to. I don't know if it was State Police, Park Rangers, City Police, or what...it was dark at the time and it's been a while since the incident. I spoke to a man in a uniform, and I felt obligated to address him as "Sir." This is where the foundation of our adventure began to crumble. This is where I first found out we do not live in one big world together. We all live in separate individual worlds. Sometimes they stay completely separate, sometimes they meet and sometimes they crash into each other. It all depends on the extent of our perception. Some people's perception doesn't extend beyond their own world, no matter who they are...and it affects others' worlds as a result. We informed the "Sir" of our plans to canoe on the river and asked him for a recommended takeout and parking location. He said "Highway M". There just happens to be two Highway M's that cross the Wolf River in different counties, about 10 miles apart. But how many of us are going to keep driving after we come to our recommended landmark...expecting a second one with the same name, and expect it to be the correct one rather than the first one encountered?! So, we dropped the car at Highway M and drove to the put-in to begin our adventure.

We put on the river with aluminum canoes from home. We saw our first bald eagles and their nests. Wow! To see that...we were really out in the wild. We kept watch of our position on the guidebook maps as we progressed downstream. We came to our first river landmark on the map. This was not even listed as a classified rapid...just a rock garden. We made it halfway through when one of our boats wound up broached on some rocks. It flipped upstream, taking on water like a deployed parachute fills with air. We tried to free the boat with our own strength. We tried using branches, logs, paddles and anything available for leverage. We couldn't get it loose. I looked towards shore in the high-water debris and miraculously saw a long 2 x 4 waiting to be called to active duty. Lucky us! We freed the boat and headed for camp. Most everything was wet, despite double-bagging our gear. We spent that evening spreading out everything from the canoe that got wet. Our gear took up the whole camp, spread out and appearing as if we were backwoods refugees. But this was all part of the adventure. We were safe, drying out by a fire...melting shoe rubber as always. We were in the beautiful woods of Wisconsin...alone, fending for ourselves as independent rugged teenagers. We were free from societal constraints and world worries. Just us against the river! We were rather humbled though. A rock garden had kicked our butt. We hadn't even come to the rapids with classification yet...and they definitely existed downstream. The following day we did not have any mentionable mishaps, except a paddle our big beefy linebacker broke blitzing through a rapid with excessive force...a little too much horsepower for the paddle, I guess.

After a good exciting day on the river, we came to what looked like a clearing up in the woods off of the river a ways. We thought this might make a good campsite for the night. When we scouted it out, we found it was a roughly contoured and cleared area next to a curve along some railroad tracks. The more time we spent at the site setting up camp, the more evidence we saw that this had been the site of a horrendous accident. There were dirt piles punched up into the hillside deeper than anyone would have done by hand. There were spare train parts strewn about, mangled and partially buried. The cleared trees and bushes were busted up and shoved back in the woods as if some angry maniacal beast had thrown a tantrum there. There was also a fresh carpet of wood chips covering the forest floor everywhere. This was probably to prevent erosion and...hopefully for our sake...to appease the gods, preventing lightning from striking the same place twice. We had brought a large tarp instead of a tent to simplify gear and to add a primal sense to our sleeping setup. We would be in contact with the ground. Breezy fresh air would be blowing on us all night, and the stars were just a glance away. We pitched one edge of the tarp into the wood-chipped hillside, just below the railroad tracks and strung the opposite side down the hill a ways. This created a low angle lean-to with a flat spot underneath, and a soft bed of wood chips to lie on. Perfect.

That night I awoke to a mighty earth-shattering rumble and roar. I virtually rolled out of my sleeping bag from the ground vibration, the roar of raging mass and clanging of loosening self-destructing machinery. I looked up to the sky and saw a monstrous speedy blur of a train swaying wildly from side to side right above me...swaying as if it were going to re-enact the maelstrom disaster for us that night...right down upon us. What a waking nightmare! It felt worse upon waking up than what it ever could have been dreamt of as I slept. I didn't trust falling asleep very much the rest of that night.

Over the few days since our first upset on the river in the rock garden, we ran rapids like Big Slough Gundy and Nine Mile Rapids while the worlds of our families, the local community and the authorities were busy scurrying in distress because of a car that was found parked, or "abandoned" near the Reservation. The car sat for a few days until the Reservation Police became concerned that, if it were left there, it might be vandalized. So they had the car towed to Shawano. Using the license plates to trace ownership of the car, they contacted the Minnesota Department of Motor Vehicles which told them it was owned by a leasing company in Minneapolis. The leasing company then gave them the name of the person leasing the vehicle...the father of one in our group. The father got a call from the reservation police. Then his parents called my parents; my parents called the other parents; one authority called another authority...until all of the parents were talking to each other...some who had never met each other or spoken for years...and were in contact with all of the authorities. There was contact with the Wisconsin State Patrol, local police, the Menominee Indian Reservation Police and the Tribal Chief. Reservation officials were worried about the whereabouts of the canoeing group. No one back home could tell them if the vehicle they found had been the vehicle at the put-in or at the takeout on the river. This information would have told them where we were on the river. The other vehicle had been properly parked in a private location...catching the attention of no one.

Our parents had learned that the Wisconsin State Patrol, the sheriff and/or local police could not go on the reservation grounds to search for us. Neither could they do a helicopter search above the river because the airspace was Indian territory. Our parents found out earlier than most what difficulties can arise dealing with a sovereign nation. Our parents learned that the Langlade police had come upon a group of four young men from Minnesota who had been canoeing down the Wolf River, but they were not the group of such great interest to everyone. The no news, or no good news thing went on for days. We were running low on supplies, so we decided to run into town to restock before re-immersing ourselves in the tranquillity of our exciting experience again. When we walked into the corner tavern/store, people did not respond to us in a friendly manner. In fact, they were very short with us. They asked, "Are you boys from Minnesota?" in a tone as if it were a crime. We asked, "Why?" "Just answer the question!" they barked back. "Yes," We were the guilty party. "The police are looking for you," they said. I called my mom while the others shopped for supplies. While talking to my ma, my disposition became very irritable...from being hot from sunburn, hungry, tired from running the river gauntlet all day, being hassled by the local business folk and now hearing about our vehicle predicament. My ma suggested I eat a candy bar before I call her the next time. This would raise my blood-sugar to a more diplomatic level for dealing with bad news. We were finishing up our business as a trooper pulled up and was reconnoitering the first of us to leave. That was all I needed to get off the phone with my ma. We learned that our shuttle vehicle had been towed and impounded to Shawano, which cost us 50-something bucks...tow and impound fees that teenagers cannot spare even if they have the money. The trooper was nice enough to shuttle one of us up to the put-in car, so we could drive to get the impounded car. The parking location of the car had concerned the tribal council. No one the authorities contacted knew where we were going to be paddling on the river based on the vehicle's location. If it had been the put-in car we would've been running section 4, in Reservation territory, without permission, in aluminum canoes. If you've paddled that section, you know what predicament we would have been in. Otherwise it's killer class IV for plastic boats and bumpy for rafts.

The tribal elders were also concerned about the free spirit of the Reservation "Braves" during that period. After Wounded Knee issues in the latter 1970's, they had a reputation of harassing people passing through, which might include the river if they encountered us. Our parents had been told stories of young braves dropping trees across the roads, stealing the cars that come along and stranding and harassing the travelers. The tribal council had met and were ready to put on the river with rafts to search for four innocent adventurous boys. Then we turned up in town. Everyone was thinking the worst, including our parents back home...kept in the dark...until we turned up. It seems the parents and locals had had an adventure of their own. It took us the rest of that day to get the car out of impound, park it at an appropriately safe place and set up a quick easy camp. The rest of the trip had been what many others may experience in their adventures. We had an adrenaline-pumping class III+ rapids (a lot by inexperienced teenagers and aluminum canoe standards) at the end of the trip to remember the intense rush of the river. We had two banged and bent up canoes with a popped seam and rivets sheared off, allowing water streams to shoot into the boats like fountains. After taking off the river and packing up, we decided to go check out what all the scare was about downstream at the "Dalle's" area of the river. What we saw was what boaters and local people call "Tea Kettle" or "on zero Upper Gorge" Rapids. It's a long, fast slide in a narrow chute. This was only one of the rapids of concern. When we saw it, standing there on reservation territory, with the roar of the river as the sun was setting behind the trees and darkness was setting in, after all that had happened to us, stories we had heard and all that others had been told might have happened...I could think of only two things: the movie "Deliverance" and getting out of there fast!

This trip had such a memorable impact on me that four years later I organized another trip to the Wolf River, for six of us that time, to relive the past thrills and experience new ones. That time we knew where to park. I have since returned as a kayaker, remembering the intense primal thrill I felt those early days venturing in dangerous remote territory, with hopes of fun and excitement and to hear the howl of the Wolf River again.