The river was a welcome sight. After five days of intermittent walking we were granted the privilege of sitting for hours while still making progress. I was particularly pleased since I had somehow managed to strain my hip the day before, leaving me with a pretty good limp. Wes also had particular reason for joy, since he’d been given a loaner pack after the theft that was steel-framed and weighed about half the actual load it was meant to carry.
The sky was sadly overcast and a light rain was falling by the time we reached our birth that afternoon. But en rout we experienced the first real relief of the journey. There would be no more walking, and in another day or so, no more going hungry. I’m sorry if anyone gets offended by the constant talk of starvation and toil, given what many people worldwide experience on a day-to-day basis, with no end in sight. But to us Americans, this was a new thing, the notion that one could go without food for a week. It was remarkable. It was actually a smidge encouraging: if ever there is some kind of apocalyptic breakdown of our world as we know it, at least we’d not go out with the first missed meal.
While afloat we did little in the way of paddling. In canoeing, the front paddler is the power, the back paddler the steersman. In such a scenario sorry sap up front does most of the work. But by day five of our march, that setup was reversed, with the power-man sitting slumped over his oar, while the steersman in back spent more energy simply keeping on course. A curious thing, but a pleasant one. At least the position of rudder lent the steersman an invigorating sense of power.
Once we made landfall yet another camp was established as the rain began to fall in earnest. Our planned two-day canoe trip was to be curtailed due to thunder in the distance, but we were to compensate by sleeping in the next day while waiting for the water truck to arrive and ferry us back to the Center. One by one we retired to our tents and fell asleep. As dusk was setting in, though, my sister came by my tent. She peeked inside before retreating before the “man smell” that had stained the interior and seemed to get packed up with the whole contraption each day. After berating Wes and I on the condition of the tent – it was actually hers, I had borrowed it for the week – she asked if we had any salt left. I had plenty, hadn’t used any since the overhang. Good, because she and another girl had caught a bunch of crawdads and wanted to repeat the experiment. She was determined, despite the rain, to have a decent meal before bedding down that night, and promised me a tail if I donated salt.
Somehow, the girls coaxed a fire into existence. Dominic was off to bed, so he told them that, if they were able to actually boil the waterbugs, they should have Kyle test one for health and safety. Kyle grudgingly remained awake to watch the ordeal. The girls hovered about the fire and fed it what twigs they could find, but the drizzling rain soon soaked all the wood. But the girls would eat crawdad that night, so my sister retreated the only dry fuel she could think of: our toilet paper. None of us had eaten all week, so none of us had ever needed the several white rolls, so she determined that they would at last see service in the name of dinner. The boiling water was only just at a simmer, due to the pitiful, sputtering fire, and every time she fed a fistful of paper into the flames, they ate up the stuff instantly and threatened to fizzle out at once. So every couple seconds another fistful was sacrificed to the hungry fire, as Kyle called derisory and disdainful comments regarding the girls’ futility for the duration of the painful ten minutes of boiling time. At last, though, as soon as the ten minutes was accomplished and all the paper used up, the crawdads were miraculously boiled to perfection. One was duly offered up to Kyle for approval, who muttered, “It’s fine, I guess.” Shortly thereafter was a minor feast held by those trekkers who had participated in the escapade, as the stars appeared through the lifting haze.
As I write this, it strikes me how interesting our journey really was. I’d venture a guess that we were somewhat changed by the experience and the symbolism of the buoyant beginning, the mounting tension and strife, and finally the swift-flowing river fit very well into the conventional odyssey model of many “coming of age” stories. To be honest, I can’t really come up with an applicable message or moral. The whole tale just has a poetic overtone.
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