It’s been nearly thirty years since I’ve been on a canoe trip with teenagers. The next trip is not on the calendar yet. Some experiences last a lifetime.
I worked my way through college doing a number of different jobs. Great jobs actually. A priceless part of my education I’d say. One of those jobs was working as an aircraft mechanic at the Grand Rapids School of Bible and Music. That kind of sounds like it needs an explanation. I’ll put it on the list of “things to explain”. Anyway, the school held a summer Aviation Camp and I was asked to work as a counselor. We gave the kids a good dose of aviation what with mini maintenance demonstrations and lots of flight time. Toward the end of the week someone decided the kids needed a break from the airport and so a somewhat hastily planned canoe trip was proposed.
There were at least seven counselors supervising the canoe trip. Six others and myself. I can put names on four of the six. Dardee was our one female counselor. She and Frank were a couple. Dan, a few years older than me had seniority in the group and John was as I recall the organizer of the fiasco. There were two other young men whose names escape me. The one was an athletic fellow and it turns out an expert canoeist. He was also the humblest expert I've met as he did not reveal his skill until it was pretty much too late. The final man in my recollection was, I think, maybe, Tom. That or he was another tall skinny young man. Just like Tom.
There may likely have been others. We had a mob of campers and I don't recall leaving anyone back at the airport. The number seven is easily recalled twenty-seven years later for reasons soon described. I know we put one counselor in each canoe with two campers, two life jackets, and two paddles. That was the rule save one canoe that held two counselors and no campers. The responsibility of that final canoe, as John explained at the river's edge, was to hang back and make sure no stragglers ran into trouble. I remember being impressed by the admixture of maturity, inventiveness, and cunning. The job had to be done, it was obviously a cake job providing two counselors a four hour break from teens, and it wasn't proposed until every kid and counselor had been assigned a seat. I was grateful that John’s plot included me in that canoe.
The first escapade of the trip may or may not be relevant to the remainder. It did continue a theme. The counselors had played a series of pranks on the campers, mostly involving dramatic forms of rousting them from sleeping bags each morning. Launching from the river's edge, John and I waited until all the canoes were in the water. A paddler at each end of the canoe and a counselor in the center seat, they began working their way downstream. With about a hundred yards between us, John and I pushed off and began paddling furiously; Upstream. We hollered after the mob "Hey! You're going the wrong way!" The flotilla turned and began the terrible chore of fighting a relentless current. John and I eased our exertion, just holding place, until the group had caught, passed, and moved out ahead of us. When they had got just about earshot distance we turned downstream and laughed loud enough for them to take note. We paddled easy so they could, again, catch and pass us. Pass they did, but not before converging on us and settling the score. With every single canoe inverted in the waist deep water and every single boater soaked, we started off for real.
John and I held back letting the others get out ahead. With enough distance so we could neither see nor hear them, we settled into our simple duty. Turns out, we had misjudged our role in the trip. Not fifteen minutes down the river, we came on one of the counselors standing in the water. No canoe in sight. The kids had overturned the canoe, apparently by design, and had escaped during the commotion of the moment. After giving him a little grief we took on our passenger and continued. Ten more minutes, another counselor. Then another and another. Care to guess how many ended up in our canoe? We were seriously overloaded and had a long paddle in front of us. We were, everyone of us, poor college students. There weren’t too many extra baggage calories among us. Still; the canoe rode low, dragging bottom in shallow water so that two or three guys would occasionally jump out and run alongside the canoe until we reached deeper water.
Some in the group knew the area around the Lowell Airport well. I didn’t. I hadn’t known that the river flowed into a lake that required us to make a long angled crossing to the portage at the Lowell Dam. It was suddenly sobering, entering that lake, no other boats in sight, knowing that five canoes with unsupervised teens had already crossed. At least they each had a lifejacket. We’d come up one short in our canoe right from the start. Ignorant of the existence of the lake, I’d not given it a second thought. I was a poor swimmer. One trip across the pool on one breath was my limit. This was my first time on a river. We’d proved in those first few minutes of battling boats that the water was only waist deep. I suppose I made an unconscious assumption that the river would stay the same throughout. We headed across the open water with little anxiety other than that produced by the fact that we knew we had been traveling very slow and were well behind the other canoes. Two paddles, with much encouragement, dug in and strained to make up for lost time.
You know that rhythmic “bob” that sets up as two paddlers plant paddles in unison and pull hard? The canoe would lunge forward and down, bob upward just a little, and then forward and down again. Each time the paddlers pulled, the lake would come up, just to the gunwales, and occasionally a little bit of lake would come onboard adding weight increasing draft and eventually making the inevitable obvious. There were no tools for bailing so the group began talking about a plan to deal with swamping. Turns out one of the guys was an experienced canoeist. Who’d of known? Just passed the lake’s halfway point the canoe stopped, filled, and settled flush with the the water’s surface. I had been at the aft paddle when we sank. I could offer no more contribution at this point. I backed off from the canoe with one shoe in each hand and taught myself to tread water. They offered me the life jacket but I was young, proud, foolishly confident, and there was a girl on board. I think I would have chosen drowning over that jacket. I’ve never treaded water so long since. The guys had two different methods to get the water out of the boat. It appeared as though none of them had ever actually practiced either. It took a long time to raise that canoe. Finally, sloshing water out over the sides of the gunwales it rose and we were ready to climb on board. New problem. Seven people out of the lake and into the canoe without dumping the canoe. This also took a great deal of time. Dardee in first. Petite, she fairly flew out of the water, hoisted by three guys. Then it got harder. Dardee wasn’t much counterbalance and the heavier guys didn’t fly very well at all. Somehow scrambling and flailing got another in, and more bodies in the boat provided counterbalance and pull, and then we were seven on the water instead of in the water. We managed to delicately paddle ourselves to the portage. The river below the dam was deep enough for our load but not so deep as to make the occasional water dump difficult.
We were tired and a little concerned about how the campers would handle getting to the pickup point well ahead of us. We didn’t talk much at all. Seven soaked sardines. Five sat. Two paddled. I was one of the five. Though not blamed directly, there had been intimations that my novice skill in the stern had provided the necessary provocation to upset our precarious lake crossing. I plead no contest and make no promise to aid another victim of a mutiny.
The campers were waiting for us. Their stories? Routine canoe trip.
I worked my way through college doing a number of different jobs. Great jobs actually. A priceless part of my education I’d say. One of those jobs was working as an aircraft mechanic at the Grand Rapids School of Bible and Music. That kind of sounds like it needs an explanation. I’ll put it on the list of “things to explain”. Anyway, the school held a summer Aviation Camp and I was asked to work as a counselor. We gave the kids a good dose of aviation what with mini maintenance demonstrations and lots of flight time. Toward the end of the week someone decided the kids needed a break from the airport and so a somewhat hastily planned canoe trip was proposed.
There were at least seven counselors supervising the canoe trip. Six others and myself. I can put names on four of the six. Dardee was our one female counselor. She and Frank were a couple. Dan, a few years older than me had seniority in the group and John was as I recall the organizer of the fiasco. There were two other young men whose names escape me. The one was an athletic fellow and it turns out an expert canoeist. He was also the humblest expert I've met as he did not reveal his skill until it was pretty much too late. The final man in my recollection was, I think, maybe, Tom. That or he was another tall skinny young man. Just like Tom.
There may likely have been others. We had a mob of campers and I don't recall leaving anyone back at the airport. The number seven is easily recalled twenty-seven years later for reasons soon described. I know we put one counselor in each canoe with two campers, two life jackets, and two paddles. That was the rule save one canoe that held two counselors and no campers. The responsibility of that final canoe, as John explained at the river's edge, was to hang back and make sure no stragglers ran into trouble. I remember being impressed by the admixture of maturity, inventiveness, and cunning. The job had to be done, it was obviously a cake job providing two counselors a four hour break from teens, and it wasn't proposed until every kid and counselor had been assigned a seat. I was grateful that John’s plot included me in that canoe.
The first escapade of the trip may or may not be relevant to the remainder. It did continue a theme. The counselors had played a series of pranks on the campers, mostly involving dramatic forms of rousting them from sleeping bags each morning. Launching from the river's edge, John and I waited until all the canoes were in the water. A paddler at each end of the canoe and a counselor in the center seat, they began working their way downstream. With about a hundred yards between us, John and I pushed off and began paddling furiously; Upstream. We hollered after the mob "Hey! You're going the wrong way!" The flotilla turned and began the terrible chore of fighting a relentless current. John and I eased our exertion, just holding place, until the group had caught, passed, and moved out ahead of us. When they had got just about earshot distance we turned downstream and laughed loud enough for them to take note. We paddled easy so they could, again, catch and pass us. Pass they did, but not before converging on us and settling the score. With every single canoe inverted in the waist deep water and every single boater soaked, we started off for real.
John and I held back letting the others get out ahead. With enough distance so we could neither see nor hear them, we settled into our simple duty. Turns out, we had misjudged our role in the trip. Not fifteen minutes down the river, we came on one of the counselors standing in the water. No canoe in sight. The kids had overturned the canoe, apparently by design, and had escaped during the commotion of the moment. After giving him a little grief we took on our passenger and continued. Ten more minutes, another counselor. Then another and another. Care to guess how many ended up in our canoe? We were seriously overloaded and had a long paddle in front of us. We were, everyone of us, poor college students. There weren’t too many extra baggage calories among us. Still; the canoe rode low, dragging bottom in shallow water so that two or three guys would occasionally jump out and run alongside the canoe until we reached deeper water.
Some in the group knew the area around the Lowell Airport well. I didn’t. I hadn’t known that the river flowed into a lake that required us to make a long angled crossing to the portage at the Lowell Dam. It was suddenly sobering, entering that lake, no other boats in sight, knowing that five canoes with unsupervised teens had already crossed. At least they each had a lifejacket. We’d come up one short in our canoe right from the start. Ignorant of the existence of the lake, I’d not given it a second thought. I was a poor swimmer. One trip across the pool on one breath was my limit. This was my first time on a river. We’d proved in those first few minutes of battling boats that the water was only waist deep. I suppose I made an unconscious assumption that the river would stay the same throughout. We headed across the open water with little anxiety other than that produced by the fact that we knew we had been traveling very slow and were well behind the other canoes. Two paddles, with much encouragement, dug in and strained to make up for lost time.
You know that rhythmic “bob” that sets up as two paddlers plant paddles in unison and pull hard? The canoe would lunge forward and down, bob upward just a little, and then forward and down again. Each time the paddlers pulled, the lake would come up, just to the gunwales, and occasionally a little bit of lake would come onboard adding weight increasing draft and eventually making the inevitable obvious. There were no tools for bailing so the group began talking about a plan to deal with swamping. Turns out one of the guys was an experienced canoeist. Who’d of known? Just passed the lake’s halfway point the canoe stopped, filled, and settled flush with the the water’s surface. I had been at the aft paddle when we sank. I could offer no more contribution at this point. I backed off from the canoe with one shoe in each hand and taught myself to tread water. They offered me the life jacket but I was young, proud, foolishly confident, and there was a girl on board. I think I would have chosen drowning over that jacket. I’ve never treaded water so long since. The guys had two different methods to get the water out of the boat. It appeared as though none of them had ever actually practiced either. It took a long time to raise that canoe. Finally, sloshing water out over the sides of the gunwales it rose and we were ready to climb on board. New problem. Seven people out of the lake and into the canoe without dumping the canoe. This also took a great deal of time. Dardee in first. Petite, she fairly flew out of the water, hoisted by three guys. Then it got harder. Dardee wasn’t much counterbalance and the heavier guys didn’t fly very well at all. Somehow scrambling and flailing got another in, and more bodies in the boat provided counterbalance and pull, and then we were seven on the water instead of in the water. We managed to delicately paddle ourselves to the portage. The river below the dam was deep enough for our load but not so deep as to make the occasional water dump difficult.
We were tired and a little concerned about how the campers would handle getting to the pickup point well ahead of us. We didn’t talk much at all. Seven soaked sardines. Five sat. Two paddled. I was one of the five. Though not blamed directly, there had been intimations that my novice skill in the stern had provided the necessary provocation to upset our precarious lake crossing. I plead no contest and make no promise to aid another victim of a mutiny.
The campers were waiting for us. Their stories? Routine canoe trip.