by Don Miller
One of the many things I like about January is the arrival of all those gardening catalogues. Not that I garden anymore; with so many good farmers’ markets around and friends with excess veggies, there is no logical reason for me to spend the time. But it is an indication that soon I will be receiving Rutabagas’ (the canoe place, not the vegetable) newsletter announcing one the biggest canoe/kayak extravaganzas in the nation. Also it means that the Milwaukee Sierra Club will be posting their list of water trips for the upcoming season. So my mind slips from blue lake green beans and red globe radishes to this years canoe dreams. MMMMMM?? Much like Homer Simpson drooling over his elusive doughnut, I salivate over this years dream trip. The Green in Utah? The Spanish in Canada? What was that one in Oregon? Then I begin to think of that great trip last year to Michigan and ALL those rivers we haven’t yet run…My mind floats with the flow of imaginary rivers and trips not yet taken, to ones already experienced. There have been many….
A few years back, the Severson Dells staff and a couple of volunteers traveled to the Wolf River in northeast Wisconsin. There we took part in a four-day, intensive canoe certification workshop to become more proficient paddlers in order to safely and correctly pass our passion for this incredible life experience on to others.
On the last day at the last hour of this event, a few students were trying to qualify for whitewater classification. They were to run a final set of rapids which were rated class II and class III. I had already run class I and class II rapids to earn my open water and moving water certification. The whitewater certification wasn’t on my agenda. Our group scouted the impressive rapids as we walked along a half mile of riverbank. The white foaming fast fluid was mixed with some slow still eddies the color of root beer. The swift water was so loud at times that I couldn’t even hear myself think, except, “I don’t want to try that!” The instructors told my partner John and me that even if we didn’t want our whitewater certification, we had the skills to run this stretch of river — up until this point I had the utmost respect for my instructors and their opinions. Up until this point! John quietly offered and not quite confidently enough, “We can do this. We can do this. We can do this.” I wasn’t sure if he was trying to talk himself in to it or me. It didn’t matter because I couldn’t talk myself into it. “I can’t do this! Sorry John, maybe we can work next year on our skills and confidence and then return to run the Wolf again.”
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The call came almost exactly a year later on a mid fall Wednesday night after a summer full of canoeing. I was reading an article in the Canoe Journal about a couple of guys’ disastrous trip down the Wolf. One was an engineer whose motto was “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” The phone rang and the call went something like this:
“Hey Don, what are you doing this Saturday night and Sunday?” It was my canoe partner and my engineer friend, John.
“Uuhhh..nothing?”
We are going to finish what we started last year. Are you up to it?”
“Uuuhhh..?”
We will be canoeing the Wolf before you know it. I’ll pick you up on Saturday evening. See ya, then.”
So after a four-plus hour drive on a Saturday evening, John and I find a pristine lake in northeast Wisconsin, setting up our tent in the dark of night. As with many events, the anticipation of the next day’s happenings fill us with both wonder and fear. A toast of a cold beer over a small smoky fire doesn’t settle the butterflies at all. We gaze upward into a sky full of more stars than I had seen in a long time. The seeming eternity of stars is a reminder to me of how short and minute a human life is. I wonder to myself, why am I trying to shorten it even more by chancing a run down the Wolf? I think that is why John offered to drive, so he has control of the keys and can keep me from bolting back to Illinois. The night goes by surprisingly quickly and soon the sun rises. However, we don’t see it because it is buried behind a thick, gray, immovable cloud layer. Somewhere beyond the moisture on our glasses, heads, and equipment and filling the air is the warmth of the sun — a warmth we won’t feel for the rest of the day. The temperature is around 40 degrees. I look at John with a quizzical expression and get a reply of, “At least there aren’t any mosquitoes.”
We load up wet and head to the canoe rental place to get an early start on the water. We arrive and are informed that a couple of kayaks are going out and we can’t go until 10:00 am. We have two hours to kill, way too much time to think about what we are about to undertake. We opt to try to find spots along the road in our van where we can check out the river. The rhythm of the windshield wiper is about as fast and loud as my heart. What was I worried about, people canoe the Wolf everyday?….but I don’t, that is what I was worried about! We don’t find any great viewing areas so we return to the rental place to walk their nature trails. John and I hike a short ways; it appeared that a small-tracked Sherman tank squadron has just completed war maneuvers through these woods. At the lodge nearby we see what had left the ruins of war behind. Over fifty mountain bikes and an equal number of mud coated biker clothes are scattered over every available railing. On our journey, John and I would leave no trace of our journey. Such is one of the joys of canoe travel, no signs left behind to tell anyone you had ever passed this way — your passing is known only to those critters of the forest and river, the mosses on the trees and lichens on the rocks. The only proof of existence is in my mind. Since we will be floating in one of those state of the art new fangled plastic canoes, we don’t have to worry about leaving behind us the shiny rock trail of an aluminum canoe on its not quite faultless trip.
This brings me to the topic of the canoe we are using. It is an Old Town “Freedom”, a boat engineered to be okay on flat water and whitewater, a hybrid of sorts. But it’s purple; yes, purple. What a horrible thing to do to a canoe. It was a color that one wouldn’t want to see on an Easter egg. We would soon find out the color made no difference to us, as this would be the vehicle, which would give us the canoe’s namesake that is, “Freedom.”
The time passes more quickly than we expect and soon we climb into a beat-up old fifteen-passenger van, full of forgotten river equipment and the smell of a musty basement. The rain has not let up and the temperature must have made a deal with the rain that it would not warm up until the rain quit. The rain isn’t quitting. I swear these canoe shuttle places must have the best mechanics around working for them. How anyone can keep these beat up old wrecks going is beyond me. As we rock and bump over roads that are even older than this ancient van, we meet the young couple of kayakers riding with us, who were the reason for our delay. She is a blond haired, blue-eyed, big-boned dairy farm girl from Wisconsin. He is a horned-rim wearing, kinky-long haired, wiry boy from California. I am older than their combined age. They are doing a shorter run in some kind of blow-up floatable kayak looking thing-a-ma-jig. I’m sure there is a name for it, but I don’t care. I’m a true blue, or today at least, a true purple canoe snob. We arrive at the young couple’s put in and help get their equipment into the river. I’m drawn to the river and last nights dread has turned into desire.
We arrive at our put in and portage the purple-rapid-eater one-third of a mile to the river. We will be paddling twelve miles on this trip. Four or so won’t be new to us, repeating some from our training run of last year. We do a quick equipment check and everything is ready. Were we? We put on our P.F.D.s snuggly and cinch down our rental whitewater helmets. I take one look at John with his helmet on and decide, that if he doesn’t take any pictures of me with my helmet on, I won’t take any of him. We look like a couple of mushroom-headed canoe geeks. We shake on the agreement and wish each other good health and a good run. We’re ready. I start at the bow with John at the stern. This is how we ran the river last year with good success, so we don’t want to change anything… at least not at the beginning.
Simply put, while in whitewater the bow person picks out the route through (actually around) the rocks, calling out directions. The stern person reacts to his paddle partner’s maneuvers as well as the vocal commands. No sooner had we put in and we are dodging rocks; no, they are boulders, in a swift current. We would no longer focus on the water falling out of the sky; we have other water to worry about now.
We head downhill, down river, in a hurry. I yell toward the direction of the river in front of me, “Are these rapids on the map?” John returns a cry, “I can’t hear you!” The sound of whitewater (while in it), can be deafening. Conversation is lost and concentration takes over as I try to pick the best safest route for us to traverse. “Left!” I call as I pull on a hard draw stroke on the starboard side; John reacts with perfection; a little right with a weak pry stroke to correct our line. I can only focus on about ten feet in front of me; the rocks seem to be picking up speed.
“Left!… No right!…Wait…Center…CRAP.! The river is kind to us and guides the canoe to safety at the end of this set of rapids. After catching my breath or maybe it was more like starting to breathe again, I pivoted around and looked into the face of my sternsman. I informed him, “I don’t think those rapids were on the map.” I give him a dimpled smile under my fungus looking headwear.
He returns an ear to ear grin and proclaims, “This is what we came for!”
“Ugh,” I say.
The thing about wild rivers is that they take you through wild country. We float along through a continuous series of calm water stretches followed by a run of rapids. It is during the tranquil waters that we see bald eagles, osprey, and beautiful wooded banks filled with pines and cedars. We notice some marsh grass moving along the shoreline, only to have a sleek, wet-furred, river otter swim out. The otter comes torpedo like to our midship as if to sink us for disturbing her. Two feet from a direct hit, she dives under, not to be seen again. We wonder about the behavior and decide it just wanted to get a close look to make sure the canoe was really purple. We paddle onward before the otter could return with all her friends to gawk
We stop among the cedars at the site a year ago I had a paddle stroke named after me. The stroke is the “Miller Duffek.” A duffek is a maneuver the bow person uses to plant his or her paddle in the water at the beginning of an eddy to act like a pivot point to slip into the safe calm waters of the eddy. If you miss, the end result means you negotiate the rapids going backwards — something my skill level has not arrived at yet. So thinking I was about to miss my mark, I planted my duffek (soon to be a “Miller Duffek”) and added a powerful forward stroke to keep us behind the rock causing the eddy. I brought enough water into our canoe and all over myself that I spit up water for the next four minutes. I almost drowned myself while I was still afloat. It so impressed my fellow classmates they dubbed the stroke the, “Miller Duffek.” You won’t see it in any books. I am not sure I’ll use ever again. It was this very spot that we ate lunch and for the first time since we put in, we realized it was still raining. Between the rain and the waves, both John and I were soaked to the skin. We got out the extra dry clothes we brought and changed for the last leg of the journey, hoping we won’t need another change of dry clothes for the remainder of our float.
Soon after lunch we find ourselves at the cabin which was our headquarters for last year’s training. In hopes of catching our instructors at home, we pull the canoe over to the bank. Colleen and Bob, past Olympic slalom canoers, greeted us like old friends. They gladly listen to all of the stories of the youth paddle camps we had run and our numerous canoeing adventures of the past year. Like proud parents, they were happy to see us return and challenge ourselves on a higher level. We are now at the series of rapids that I didn’t want to run last year. Bob and Colleen ask if we mind if they watched us attack this run. John wanted me to say something. I hoped he would speak up. Finally John says, “Sure that way someone will know where to look for the bodies.” At this point we have to go through with it, because we couldn’t paddle back up the river nine miles. They taught us well. We finish the run unscathed — and right side up.
We arrive at the take out elated, but sad that the run is ended. We give each other our traditional handshake and praise for each other’s company and skills. Good tandem canoers are dancers on the waters. We had a great dance. We feel good about ourselves, but both agree we had conquered nothing, to conquer means to have dominion over. We did sort of feel we owned the river because for six hours we saw no one else on it. However one can’t own a river, nor does one conquer it. The river allows us to experience it as if you were part of its current. The advantage we have over the water particles making up the river flowing seaward, is they can only encounter each part of the river once. John and I can shuttle our canoe to enjoy numerous adventures on this river. We will return someday to the Wolf River and when we enter her the next time, she will be a different river, but she will still offer us, “freedom.”
