How canoes became the enemy

         My early years began over in the State of North Dakota. Famous for friendly people and freezing winters. Ok, not famous, but if anyone passes through, that’s what they would remember most. It’s true though. Both of those things. It gets so cold that a person wants to leave their heater on in their car when going into the store. And it’s so friendly that they can do that without worrying about that same car being stolen.

         Despite these two not so famous facts about good old North Dakota, Mom and Dad had a yearning to return to their own place of birth. The great state of Montana. They missed its…well you see what they missed was…um, actually, you would have to ask them what they missed about Montana. Cause the two states aren’t really all that different except that Dakota’s folks are friendlier while Montana has got mountains. At least those were the only notable differences some eighteen years past. There have been some changes since, but I digress.

         So, around about my sixth year, good old Mom and Dad packed us up and hauled us to Montana where they took over running a little motel in a little town next to some very big mountains. Personally, I loved it. The big pieces of rock tended to block the howling winds that I’d grown accustomed to over in the flatness of my birth state. Well, Mom and Dad loved it as well. They were ready and willing to go out and show me and my older brother (Jeremy) the wonders and the beauties of our new home. Too ready and willing in my opinion. Gung-ho would be the operative word.

         The first hint of spring and a canoe trip was planned. Their excitement was infectious and soon Jeremy and I were both as eager for the expedition as two trusting kids could be. Now, when I say ’hint of spring’, that’s exactly what I meant. A hint. It wasn’t actually the real thing. Spring doesn’t come to Montana in March, but I guess my homesick parents had forgotten this in their absence. So, our rather ancient, fiberglass canoe was loaded up one morning and we drove down to the river.

         You see, it had to be the river since all the lakes still had several feet of ice on them.

         Everything started out fine. It was the first time I’d ever ridden in a canoe and I quickly fell in love with it. Sure, it was a little cold, but Mom had bundled us up and it wasn’t anything compared to the- spit and it will freeze before it hits the ground- kind of cold we had been used to. Ok, so there was snow on the ground, but the sun was shining and making all that whiteness pretty instead of threatening.

         Before too long, the first hitch came in how shallow the river was. See, the water level was rather low since the snow on the mountains hadn’t started to melt yet. So the canoe grounded a couple times, but this was no problem for my big, strong Papa. He proved my faith in him twice by getting out of the canoe and dragging us along the river bottom until we once again could float.

         The next thing that happened was a weather change. Nothing bad, just some extra cloud cover that hid the sun. There was a bit of a temperature drop, but I wasn’t worried. Mom was still leading us in rousing songs like “I know an old woman who swallowed a fly.” Or, “Do your ears hang low?” So my spirits may have wavered but were kept buoyed up on these classics.

         The bad news is that the weather didn’t change back to sunny skies. Instead, it began to snow. Not those nice, big, soft fluffy flakes that make Christmas mornings either. No, this was definitely a March kind of snow. Small, mean, selfish, little ice particles that like to invite the wind to come and play with them. Then the canoe grounded again, rather badly, and while my big, strong Papa tried to wrestle us back into deeper waters, it began to tip.

         If you have ever been in a canoe, as a six year old girl, on a river, in a March snow, which is tipping, I am sure that you will fully sympathize that my spirits took a bit of a plummet. Luckily, Papa actually was big and strong beyond my girlish awe, and he saved us from a cold bath.

         Now, you may be wondering why my responsible parents didn’t call a halt to this adventure. Quite simple actually. We had taken two cars on this trip. One, we left at our starting point while the other had been dropped off earlier at our end point. In-between, was forest service land, privately owned property and road. To get to our car, and thus home and warm, we needed to continue traveling down stream. So that is what we did, we forged on.

         To be absolutely truthful, I don’t remember much of what followed in exact detail. It was all very frightening and miserable. I probably cried some and I know for a fact that I had a double, white-knuckle grip on either side of the canoe. We passed through an enormous set of killer rapids (which I recognize now to be rather small and inconsequential) and almost tipped again except that time my feet got wet.

         It was probably around this point that Mom and Dad decided to stop the madness. I recall them telling us that we were stopping and climbing out of the (by now) hated canoe and scrambling up a steep wooded hill. At the top was a lovely looking house which my folks must have sighted from below.

         There was a wonderful lady who lived there. None of us had ever met before but I only realize that in looking back. She greeted and invited us into her home as if we were old friends and not a bedraggled, wet looking family of maniacs. Dad used the phone while Jeremy and I sipped on hot cocoa provided by that angel of a woman. All this last bit is very hazy, I can’t remember the lady’s name or face, only that I was warm and safe where a moment before I’d been cold and scared.

         It is about here that I can’t recall anything more. We must have made it back home some how and changed into warm, dry clothes and crawled into warm, dry beds after eating a hot meal but I don’t really remember any of it. What I do remember is the next day Mom and Dad went to retrieve the canoe and abandoned car. They finished the trip down the river and came back glowing with excitement. The day had been warm and sunny and the jaunt down river delightful.

         All the same, I didn’t feel any disappointment when Mom expressed her wish that we could have been along. Frankly, I was relieved. My trust in canoes was broken. It would take years before I climbed into one again and years more before I felt any comfort in doing so. To this day I still have a suspicion of them, not encouraged by the fact that another one dumped me into a lake just last summer.

         But, that’s another story.