My Canoeing Adventure

Once a favorite activity, I haven’t been in a canoe in at least 11 years. So when my parents asked, “What do you want to do?”

Let’s go canoeing!

I have wonderful memories of taking a boat out with my sister. And before that, I remember when all five of us fit in one canoe. There we sat in the boat like five orange bumps on a log. Peering over the edge looking at the fish. Chasing a blue heron around the lake. Paddling down a river between majestic mountains, singing “How Great Thou Art” at the top of our lungs. It’s been a few years, but canoeing is like riding a bike right? You never forget.

Tim and I shared one canoe. Mom, Dad, and Janice Williams (an old family friend) took the other.

The adventure began when Tim and I found a little tributary curling out from the lake. We were no longer vacationers in a rental canoe. We were explorers. Who says imagination dies when you get old. Never mind that the water was only about 18 inches deep and we were using the paddles to push ourselves up and over sandbars, rocks and logs. Never mind the stream was so narrow and the bushes so dense that I kept getting whacked in the face. Never mind that our beautiful lake had become a rancid smelling bog, and we were stirring up swarms of insects that were making it very clear that they preferred not to be disturbed.

What do you do when you find a bridge in the middle of nowhere? That’s easy. You go under it. Uh…we got stuck. So the water was increasingly becoming shallower. My head was scraping the bottom of the bridge. Yeah, there were spiders under there. And I was in the front trying to navigate around protruding logs. Didn’t work.

Plan B: We’ll carry the canoe over the bridge and lower it down on the other side. Never mind that the two of us were carrying the canoe uphill. Never mind that the path was not wide enough to support two people and a canoe. Never mind that on the other side of the bridge and around the corner, that water dried up and there was nowhere to go. Never mind that jumping in to a canoe from a bridge is a pretty likely way to topple it.

This is Tim gracefully lowering himself into the boat. Hmmm, for some reason the boat did not remain stationary for him. And as the boat carried his legs under the bridge, he held on for dear life.

I don’t have a picture of me falling in the lake. Good thing too. If he had sat in the boat snapping pictures while I struggled to get in a wobbly boat, I don’t think he would have lived to tell about our adventure.

I don't know. Something about me and water....I always seem to fall in. So yeah, I was wet for the rest of the day, but that's okay. We had fun.

And no, we didn't tell the rental people what we had done with their boat.