Man-Rule: Never Voluntarily Get Into a Canoe

I’ve always wanted to be an outdoorsman.

Testing my wits against Nature was a part of growing up for me. My parents were avid campers when I was a child, and it was nothing for me to explore the rugged wilderness, learning the flora and fauna of new locations, and hiking through trackless forests for upwards of fifteen minutes at a time. Then I’d go back to the camper and turn the air-conditioner on “high” while I sipped cold lemonade and watched “The Andy Griffith Show” reruns on the built-in television.

Naturally, our television in the camper was black-and-white. We roughed it, just like the original pioneers did. Many people believe the reason the West was settled was because the pioneers were looking for a color TV.

But as the years went by, the opportunities for me to be a “mountain man” became fewer and farther between. Life intervened. Marriage happened. Kids came along. Color televisions weren’t very portable for a long time. So I sadly gave up many of my outdoor activities.

Then, one day, my friend Randy asked me if I’d like to go canoeing with him. Immediately my outdoor juices began flowing, and I responded in true Manly pioneer fashion. I turned to my lovely and talented wife Kristin and said, “Can I go canoeing with Randy?”

I may be a rough, tough outdoorsman, but I’m not stupid.

She said yes, so we began planning our trip. It was just going to be a Sunday afternoon deal, a couple of hours of Manly Men guiding their canoe over tumbling rapids and through idyllic river scenes. It didn’t occur to me until later that that’s how the excellent documentary film “Deliverance” began, and it didn’t turn out so well, Ned Beatty-wise.

Randy began telling me about the route we’d take, and the places we might have to carry the canoe around the rapids because they were too rough, and the places with might have to dynamite our way through due to boulders falling into the river, and places we might want to use a pig call (“Just to be safe”), and it occurred to me that while I have dreams of being a rough-and-ready outdoorsman, Randy actually IS one, and I was going to look like an idiot to him.

So I was on the verge of telling Randy that my wife wasn’t going to let me go after all (“Darn the luck … I forgot I promised her I would iron the doilies today”) when he said, “I haven’t been in a canoe in YEARS, so I’ll probably look silly out there.” This reassured me, so I kept my mouth shut. I mean, if the rough-and-ready outdoorsman was worried about looking silly, I was probably not going to embarrass myself.

Naturally, I didn’t realize at the time this meant neither one of us would have a clue what we were doing, canoe-wise.

Randy had a new canoe, and a lot of canoe-oriented gadgets, like paddles and stuff. We met at a public park to begin our adventure. He had tied the canoe to the top of his Jeep with nylon ropes and straps and things. I tried to look Manly and outdoorsy while I helped him unload it, but mostly I stood back and concentrated on not tripping over my own feet while offering helpful suggestions like “Boy, that looks heavy.” Then we carried it to the creek where we put it in the water.

Because we were in a public park on a pretty afternoon, a small crowd gathered to watch us launch the canoe and possibly drown. Randy went back to his Jeep to get a few things, so I squatted on the bank and held on to the canoe while small children peppered me with questions and I tried to look knowledgeable while I made up answers. (Sample question: “How far are you guys going?” My answer: “Not too far … just four or five hectares today. We’re planning a seven-kiloliter trip next month, though.” Little kids: “WOW! You guys are REAL outdoorsmen!”) One little girl, who was probably all of six years old, told me I looked like a TV star. I was consumed with pride, until I asked her who I looked like. She said, “The bad guy on my show who always wants to steal the flowers.”

I didn't understand this reference, but her mother thought it was hilarious.

Randy came back with the stuff he’d gotten from the Jeep at this point (“Hey, I only have one life jacket, so I’m gonna wear it”), and after a couple of false starts in which I accidentally (I swear!) pushed the little girl into the creek, we both got into the canoe and shoved off.

You know how, in all the Old West movies about Indians where they paddle their canoes down a river or across a lake, the canoes go in a straight line? Yeah, those Old West filmmakers lied through their celluloid teeth. It is physically impossible to make a canoe go straight. We hadn’t been in the water five minutes when we rammed ourselves into the bank for the first time. Apparently we were in one of those rare kinds of creeks where the water flows toward both banks all the time.

But we got that straightened out, and spent the next three hours alternately fighting enraged sets of rapids where the water surged to depths upwards of 18 inches at times, and floating blissfully through a tree-canopied wilderness, listening to birds and the idyllic murmur of the water for as many as 10 minutes at a stretch, when we’d run into the bank again. At one point – this is true – we somehow got both the front AND the back of the canoe stuck in the bank, which I would have thought was impossible.

When we finally reached our destination, we were canoe-handling pros. To get out of the canoe, we had to ram into the bank, and we did that like the bank-ramming veterans we were. We stood looking at the river we had just tamed by the might of our muscles and the sweat of our brow, and we felt a peace, a sense of accomplishment, that non-rugged outdoorsmen could never hope to achieve. We had matched wits with the wilderness, and emerged victorious. We had confronted Mother Nature on her own turf, and conquered her. We were masters of our destiny.

And then Randy said, “I think I dropped the keys to the Jeep somewhere in the river.”

(c) 2012 John Puckett