I am the third of three sons and a daughter, and everyone made it home this Christmas season. I have learned a lot about the amazing truth that loving brothers and sisters in Christ is the same as the love you love God with, my family has taught me a lot about blood-brothers too. In fact, the photo currently at the top of this page (it may not be there anymore) is from about 1989 when me and my brothers sat around a table in a lake house in upstate New York to celebrate my mom’s birthday. I have a best friend who has lived next door to us all since I was 10, and he’s pretty much like another one of us, and is friends with all of us. Having my brothers and my best friend home has been really great, and we are up to all our old tricks (like riding bikes all over town, playing different kinds of ball, cards, video games, and various projects; most of which involving small explosions). The problem is, the tricks are old tricks because they are old. We wanted to do something a little different, and, as with all things, we wanted to go to the limit with it.
So yesterday the four of us were sitting in the living room and had the idea to take some canoes down North Carolina’s Haw River and find a place to camp! It seemed like such a simple idea, and fun too! The weather was nice and sunny and barely 60 degrees out. We learned by the end just how different your mind can make something seem when you want it to.
We hit our first roadbumps when we found out how hard it was to rent a canoe anywhere around here. We finally found a place, but they only had one canoe, and a lot of kayaks. We wanted two canoes, and go 2 and 2, but we settled on a canoe and a kayak to go 3 and 1. After some difficulty finding the launch spot, which is out in the country about 25 minutes from home, we set off! It was a warm 50 degrees and past 5 pm when we were finally on the water, but what a feeling! I was in the back of the canoe with my friend in the front and my first brother in the middle. My second brother took the lead in the kayak. Ahead of us, the river disappeared into miles of quickly greying forest–a stately, wide, flowing highway to take us as far as we would go. The sun going down and the temperature dropping only urged us on! I guess we didn’t think it was dangerous or risky enough since the river was wide and lethargic, so we wanted to make full advantage of the dangers of any rocks by making them impossibly hard to see. Crows flew overhead, and we heard no sounds. Then we heard it, some rushing water. There was nothing to do for it, so we intrepidly went ahead, making the best attempt we could at not hitting a rock and guiding the craft down the dark waterway front-first.
After some pretty scary (but adrenaline producing) tips and tilts and an hour of going, it was completely black dark and we thought we would just find a place to camp. Ahead we could make out by the stars showing in the gaps of the trees there was a large island. Perfect! This is what we were looking for, a place where it was sure that nobody or nothing would be able to bother us easily. As we pulled up the canoe and kayak, we made some talk about possible night invaders, hiding ourselves, and possible defenses, and got out our gear. Our kerosene lantern broke on some nettles that ripped the mesh globes, but it didn’t matter so much when we settled on a site and lit a fire. We elected not to bring a confining, restrictive tent, but instead used one canvas tarp strung up with ropes for a roof, and one for the ground under us. After this was made, we started an entertaining ourselves by making a dinner of chicken and hot dogs on the fire, and it was entertaining to joke at each other for the way we were cooking and making up games or words about everything! The food was pretty delicious. We capped it off with handmade s’mores, and not just using any old American chocolate, but something truly incredible from Europe, I can’t remember what it was called, but it was the best s’more I’ve ever had. We melted the chocolate by putting it on a graham cracker that we called the ’shield’ graham and holding the thing over the fire laying flat on the fork in a stick. It tasted slightly of mint-chocolate when it was melted–a taste that was indistinguishable when eaten solid!
We slept that night in our shelter, and I think I was the only one who wasn’t cold… but I have a down bag and Therm-a-rest® ground pad. The others were kind of chily and complained about it, but nothing unbearable. In the morning, we had a breakfast of granola and hot cocoa, and got everything ready to go–same configuration as the day before. Then, disaster! It was about 845 in the morning. The very first section of river that we launched out in immediately rejoined the river on the other side of the island and produced violent rapids! We couldn’t help anything, and the heavy canoe with all three of us and almost all the gear in it gave it up and poured us straight out into the rushing, rock-infested 38ºF water. I yelled ‘grab the canoe!’, and put one hand on it and the other on the big black canvas duffel bag with all our dry clothes in it. I looked around and my first brother was just struggling to the shore as fast as he could go. My friend and I brought the canoe into control and slowly maneuvered it to the shore. I had gotten over the shock really quickly, and as soon as we were all standing, I was ready to just get back in the boat, soaking wet, and go on until we really felt the chill. My first brother wouldn’t hear of it though, and we waited for him to change into dry clothes. While I was waiting, I took off my wet shirt and jacket and put on a dry hooded sweatshirt–why not? We were soon going again. It didn’t feel too steady, and come to think of it, all along, from the start, it seemed like the canoe wasn’t that solid or stable at all. We went on! We all cracked up laughing at my first brother though, sitting in the middle with his knees to his chest and a blue suit of longjohns! Down a few more sections of uneven water, each one looming ahead of us and putting us all on edge for another spill, until ahead we saw a major drop in elevation, coming up fast. It did NOT look good for us, especially since we didn’t have many dry clothes left. As we talked about it, we got a little nervous and then realized if we didn’t want to get dumped, we had to scramble for the shore.
Now, I am a pretty experienced river-canoe guy, and I really do know what I am doing. I know how to pry, j-stroke, river-cross, canoe-on-canoe unswamp, eddy, and other stuff. Something about it though, I just couldn’t help it and as soon as we tried to go sideways to the shore, we flooded. This time I yelled ‘just get out! stand up, take the canoe!’ and so we saved getting ourselves wet above the waist. We walked the boat to the side over really slippery and jagged rocks under fast flowing water, and stood on the shore freezing our legs off. I, again, tried to say we should just get back in and catch up with my second brother ahead in the kayak, but my first brother refused and said we needed a fire to get warmed up. So we stopped there, and my second brother pulled off downriver and walked back to us. I wasn’t that bothered, I mean, it was OK. There were some, however, who were a little too distressed about it. We had a fire going pretty quick and got warmed up. It was a cloudy day, and that made it seem even colder, and the three of us in the canoe thought our feet would fall off. We ate, changed into whatever dry clothes we had, and hung up wet ones on a line by the fire.
We talked about what to do.
Finally, me and my second brother volunteered to take the canoe down the rapids ourselves, pull off, and walk back up to carry the gear down on foot. When we got in the canoe, just us 2 and no gear, it was a revelation! The canoe was not meant to have as much in it as we had, and that’s why it had fallen over twice! It wasn’t too hard (but still a thrill) to get down the rapids and we had a serious talk about weight distribution. We put my friend in the kayak, with much more gear than before, and went on. After pulling out, we see that my friend is floundering–now the kayak had the same problem the canoe did before! We spoke a few light oaths about why we had brought so much junk. After 10 minutes going down some moderate river, the kayak had taken on a lot of water, and a few of us were bitterly cold. So we pulled off again, right before a rough rush of river, intending to regroup and maybe let off some people and gear and walk it to meet the boat after the rapid downstream again. Most of our stuff was soaked.
My first brother had an idea. Even though it seemed like were in the middle of nowhere, there were probably country roads not too far off. He wanted to go find a road while we were emptying the incredibly heavy kayak. Fine. He comes back in 5 minutes and says there’s a dirt road like 300 meters away, and he wants out. He wants to go to the road and get picked up by our parents or by us as soon as possible. My second brother is just sitting in the aft of the canoe in the water being impatient. ‘Fine, do that. I’ll go down the river to the highway 501 bridge.’ I tried to think of some way we could not split up, but it didn’t seem like an option. I at least didn’t want anyone to do anything alone, so I sucked it up and said I’ll go down the raging river with my second brother. And it was raging. Right after that point was a huge drop, and we had to speak loudly to each other just to be heard over the roar.
At that point, I had a bit of a reckless abandon. I’ve been dumped twice today already, what’s a third time? A fourth? Even though I was pretty dried out, I jumped in with my second brother and we made plans with the others to find them on the road in about an hour or two (we thought) when we came to the bridge. Our cell phones were shot. We just left it to chance, really, and left. My second brother was being classically impatient.
The canoe was so responsive with just the two of us! Still, the first rapid gave us a shock–but we made it through only a little splashed. More came up ahead though, and for the next 20 or 30 minutes, we had to be constantly vigilant. I was in front and had to shout things like ‘rock on left! pull right! let’s shoot through the center of this one! pull through it, hard! hard! bow downstream, now!’ But we loved it, it was how it should have been the whole time! After paddling long enough, we were warm from the work, contented and actually looking forward to some action on the water.
Then it all smoothed out. No more rapids, just calm, wide river. We went on for about an hour, always looking forward and around the next bend to see if we could catch sight of that bridge. I kept on saying how I was sorry we left them to carry as much gear as we did, and we really could have taken some more of it. We heard an engine. Was that a car? No, a plane. Keep paddling. Ten minutes passed and we were wondering if it would be another mile or another three miles, when I heard cars! Cars, trucks, buses, whirring the air across a high bridge! Then we saw it. We knew from the past that the access road was on the right, but that was when the bridge was under construction two years ago. Had they changed anything? We had to decide, there was a dam that let the river over a straight down, 10-foot drop ahead of us, just before the access road. So we chose left bank. There it was, the access road, everything as we remembered it. So we hopped out, and pulled the canoe with the one heavy bag out of the river, and lifted it up on our shoulders and headed up the steep path to the road. We got halfway up there when we looked across and saw that there was a parking lot and road on the OTHER side of the river! It was newly built, and must certainly be the new access road. We had to turn around and carry it all the way back to the river and go straight across, keeping no more than 20 or 30 feet from the lip of this dam. As we got nearer to the other side, we saw a familiar car… we saw our dad, our sister, our mom coming down towards us! It was perfect timing! Then my brother said, ‘who’s that other person with them?’ I said I didn’t know, I had no idea. Who could it be? He said it looked like… our first brother! No way! Impossible! We got closer, and saw that it was none other! And my fried was there too!
What a happy ending for everyone! We were so confused how we could leave them on the side of the river in the middle of nowhere and they could BEAT us back to the meeting place! They told us they met a guy who lived near where we dropped them off, and they asked to use the phone, and he offered to drive them right over there in his truck. Well that’s country people for you, so nice.
We secured the boats on top of the family minivan and all got in, all seven of us, and just crashed. 25 minutes later, we were home and washing up, and all having a good nap.
After reflecting on it all, it was probably kind of hasty to do that and if we had avoided having too much stuff, it could have been a much better trip. There is something to be said, however, for the going getting tough. You either get tough or die, in some cases. Whatever aches and bumps we feel now, I know we’ll talk about it for years to come.
