[Spoiler alert: this story does NOT involve canoodling, unless you count the cicadas doing it. But this story does involve canoeing, and I’m a sucker for punny titles.]
This Memorial Day weekend, I traveled (by car, not bike) to southeast Missouri. To make a 40-year-old story as short as I can, my Rice U/Hanszen College classmate Rob Schultz has been hosting Memorial Day gatherings at his family’s cabin since we graduated. For many and various reasons—travel distance primarily, but also the fact that my sons’ birthdays straddle the holiday weekend, and we were always doing something as a family when they were young—I didn’t make it there until 2021. In ’21 and ’22, the group consisted of Rob and his wife Mary, my college roommate/BfAM* Mike Monarchi, and me. [* BFAM = Brother from Another Mother] In 2023, I was riding Stage 1 of Route 66 with Jon. This year, Mike couldn’t make the trip, but our friend Katherine Eggert would be making her inaugural visit to “The Cabin.”
Befitting the hosts, it’s a comfortable, laid-back weekend. There’s no fixed schedule, just some hiking, some canoeing, some sitting outside and unwinding in nature, far from the madding crowd. With regard to the canoeing, as you might imagine given a 40-year history of these gatherings, there is a fair amount of accumulated lore: snakes falling from branches, scorpions on an overnight float trip, a lost wedding ring after a capsizing. In my own limited experience, I had nothing to contribute to the lore: the water was too shallow, and Mike and I spent way too much time dragging bottom. This year, though, the water level was up… and I was about 100% sure that Katherine and I would be floating higher than me and Mike. Of course, floating higher also means we would have a higher center-of-gravity. (Yeah, that’s foreshadowing.)
This year’s float got off to an ominous start when Rob and Mary bumped into a bridge pier within 100 yards of the cabin and flipped their canoe. Katherine and I rushed to get our canoe launched, so that we could help gather the oars, ice chest, and dry bag (wallets, keys, etc.) that were floating away.
Once we got the Schultz canoe righted, we were on our way, and we made it through a couple of modest rapids without incident. I then made the mistake of joking about keeping a tally of the number of rapids that the Eggert-McCormack canoe would successfully navigate (vs. the number of rapids where the McCormack-Monarchi canoe would have dragged bottom). My gloating was very short-lived.
The next set of rapids was extremely problematic: they were deep and fast, with large rocks scattered randomly. There was no single chute to aim for. We made it through the first cluster of rocks, but then struck a rock head-on. With the bow of the canoe stuck against the rock, the current swung the stern around counter-clockwise, and we started moving backwards, fast. I kept looking over my shoulders, paddling to avoid several rocks, and I actually harbored the thought—briefly—that we were going to make it through just fine. Nope.
A large rock slid under the hull to our right, and it rolled us to the left. The canoe flipped, and Katherine and I hit the water simultaneously. My panicked thought as I went into the water backwards was, “Please don’t let there be any rocks where our heads are going.” (There weren’t.) We were both wearing life vests, so we weren’t underwater for long. The current pushed us clear of the rapids, but we were now in a deep pool. I don’t remember what I said to Katherine at that point, but her response was direct: “You know I can’t swim, right?” With as much confidence and reassurance as I could muster, I told her to hold on to the canoe: it was full of water, but it won’t sink. And then I grabbed the gunwale and started swimming, pulling Katherine and the canoe toward shallower water.
(Later, I discovered that my FitBit recorded a swim beginning at 4:51 pm, which sounds about right. What FitBit got wrong was the distance, because there is no way on Earth I swam 1,200 yards. I think it was probably closer to 50, but once the FitBit got wet, it must’ve continued to record my paddling the canoe as swimming.)
Meanwhile, Rob and Mary had seen us flip. Now it was their turn to rescue the oars, ice chest, and dry bag that we had put into our canoe after their canoe flipped. Rob steered their canoe into the bank and left Mary there, so that he could wade out, meet us in the shallower water, and get us back into the canoe.
We had one more incident after that: I had not done a very good job of emptying all the water out of the canoe, we got stuck on a rock, and Rob had to leave their canoe to rescue us again. But all of that occurred during the first hour of the trip. Once we got it out of our system, we enjoyed a beautiful afternoon on the river. We came back to the cabin, took hot showers, put on dry clothes, and enjoyed twilight on the deck. Rob strapped on a headlamp and grilled pork steaks in the dark for a late dinner. My reward for not letting Katherine drown (as well as my penance for flipping the canoe in the first place) was keeping her wine glass filled throughout the night.
All in all, a great weekend: sunshine, lush green foliage, the absence of civilization, the murmur of water running over rocks, swooping herons, the cacophony of cicadas seeking sex, a tremendous thunderstorm overnight, warm conversation, and the joy of enduring friendship.
Rideworthy 