This story from Chuck’s teenage years inspired a recent adventurous trip to Upper and Lower Priest Lakes in the Panhandle of Idaho. ““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““`
THE BOATMAN
My Uncle Jack came highly recommended by my mother. She idolized her little brother so it was easy for me to do so too. He had pin-ball machines in his basement and drove a pick-up truck. I rarely saw him walk. More often, he was out of the truck before it came quite fully to a stop assailing the challenge of the moment. All my cousins were young so it was easy for me to claim a higher perch, appropriate un-merited status as it were. After all, I was the oldest. To me, the very fact alone imputed indisputable privilege.
So during the very short summer vacations I spent visiting the Mickmans of Minnesota I got to pal around with my hero. He always had so much going on; old farms he was converting to Christmas tree “plantations” (he called them); preparations for the “cone collecting season”; clearing brush on his land with his “Brush Hog” – to me it was exciting just hanging out with him. He gave me small responsibilities and I was eager to please. I think he liked the idea of having his own little Sancho Panza. Perhaps he was practicing on me how later to be a father of sons. A special relationship arose.
But years tumbled by. I went off to war and then to college and I largely lost track of Uncle Jack but never quite stopped idolizing him. To me he was larger than life. I suppose this explains why, later when he came to visit me in Basalt, Colorado, it was easy to fall back under his spell. One particular day stands out.
It was one of those beguiling Rocky Mountain springtime days. My Uncle arrived unannounced out of no-where driving an old Ford pick-up truck, with a camper on the back, a little dog inside, and a canoe on top. He’d come, to ply the fabled fast waters of Colorado in his aluminum craft, he said, and wanted to know where to “put in”. I eyed this caravan skeptically. First, there was the fact that I’d never seen a canoe on the rivers in our neighborhood. These were no-nonsense unforgiving waters, filled from bank to bank with the roaring ice-cold run-off from the surrounding high country. Kayaks were the craft du‘jour here. Even rafting was yet a future sport on these waters.
Then, there was the matter of credentials. He was a self-reported expert when it came to all things canoe, having honed his skills on Minnesota’s placid 10,000 lakes. He talked knowledgeably about his experience in all kinds of weather, clement and otherwise, and of his adventures in the Boundary Waters. He claimed having fished from canoes, swam from canoes, camped from canoes: even harvested wild Minnesota rice from a canoe. He claimed acumen in navigating rapids! (Rapids?, I thought, in lakes?) But you would have to have known my Uncle Jack in order to understand there was no denying him. His very thought was command. He was going to put a canoe into the Roaring Fork River – high water be damned. And – he wanted me to go with him.
Now, to be clear, I was no longer his acolyte. Experience, both in war and peace, had made me my own man. My frontal lobes were filled now and a quick review of his plan led immediately to the rapid firing of neurons in my head, the loosing of micro-currents and nano-voltages throughout my brain, and, inexorably, to the blaring sound of internal klaxons warning me of existential peril. I perceived that, like oil, a canoe might lie quite easily on the benign waters of a lake but never in the cataracts of a wild western river filled to the brim with the rampaging, freezing, flood waters of the snow-laden Rocky Mountains. I began evasive maneuvers immediately, offering up a logic that both reinforced a manly course and subtly offered a prudent one. – I thought.
My Uncle would have none of it. Finally, embracing a “guests prerogative” posture, he announced his intention to continue on to my brother Gregory’s house, up river, and to “put in” there. I was in check.
A nuanced interplay between several powerful ,yet invisible, relational dynamics had arisen. First was the tug-of-war between the Master and the former apprentice. I was asserting myself, my star ascendant, and he was loathe to accept the dimenishment of his sway over me. Second I was a Marine, after all, bound by an unspoken code to never submit to the will of any Navy man which my uncle was. And then, finally, there was my brother, Gregory.
Some years earlier Gregory had fallen under the spell of a couple of hack authors of books with titles like “The Peaceful Warrior” and “The Road Less Traveled By”. He had become enamored by the false gospel offered up by these naval-gazing self-absorbed scribes. Independence was their mantra and they preached it to the tune of the ever-popular ego-soothing “My Way” vocalized by their troubador and flag-bearer,, Frank Sinatra.
The reason Gregory was a problem was that I knew he would be “all in” with my Uncle Jacks’ ill-considered madness, perceiving that he was doing it “his way”. And besides, life had taught me that there were usually good reasons why people didn’t go down roads less traveled by. But I truly I was in check. I was going to have to get into a canoe for the first time in my entire life and push off into the never-forgiving fury of a river less traveled by during full-blown-spring-run-off, high water. And so I did.
My Uncle assured me that I was to be a passenger only, that no skill or action on my part was required, that he had everything under control, and that, at worst, occasionally he might call upon me to dip my paddle into the water on the right or on the left from my perch in the bow.
I knew all this to be pure bullshit and that we were about to die. And so, with Gregory standing by, offering his peaceful warrior benediction, we pushed out into the stream.
Immediately the river snatched us violently from the bank and closed around us. I felt like prey that had been set upon and was now in the clutches of an unforgiving foe. I gripped the gunnels with both hands and glanced rearward. The look on my Uncles’ face was not reassuring. He was clearly startled by the instant power of the waves tossing our craft around on the water. He plunged his paddle rapidly into the river trying to get a “bite” of it but the canoe was heaving up and down and was in and out of the water and rolling so unpredictably that no sooner did he have traction than he lost it. He yelled at me to grab my paddle. The validation of all my objections to this insane voyage was of no solace to me. We were in it together come hell and high water.
I was on a learning curve. He told me to face down-river and paddle right or left as he called out. It wasn’t apparent that my efforts were having any effect. He yelled “plunge deeper, pull harder, pull faster.” It was clear that he was struggling to maintain control and my efforts were only marginally helpful. The current had us captive: our speed was that of the water. “Right! Right! Left!” he called out as we hurtled down the stream clutched by its’ grasp.
We continued this way for perhaps a mile or more, never in control, tossed whimsically here and there by the muscular power of this aptly named river. Flotsam – branches, logs, stumps – was carried along with us in the stream.
We began to achieve a comfort level with our newly learned skill at navigating this deluge. Although there was no question of landing because of the rugged bank, our velocity, and our inability to steer predictably, our situation at least seemed stable and predictable. Complacency is the word, I think. Yes, complacency, a generous a word that forgives and does not quite indict.
But I must acknowledge that in another setting, an adversarial setting, a Courts Martial, for instance, words like dereliction, and nonfeasance might more accurately be used by prosecutors to describe my culpability. For in another moment I heard my Uncle call out frantically “LEFT! – LEFT!” He had spied a hazard in the river ahead.
I must have been “complacently” day-dreaming. Startled from my reverie, and without thought, I dove my paddle into the water. But on the right! Not, as commanded, on the left! Jack had paddled right too and we came about broadside to the current thirty-feet in front of a large boulder protruding menacingly from the on-rushing water. There was no time to recover. We slammed into the rock amidships and on the instant were thrown from the canoe and flushed downstream.
I don’t recall that we had on life-jackets.
We swam for our lives, neither in sight of the other, floundering in the frigid waters of the Roaring Fork, buffeted here then there, scraping over submerged rocks, hemmed in by the flotsam careening downstream with us. Finally I made it to shore on the north bank and when I pulled myself together saw my Uncle upstream licking his wounds from the ordeal he’d been through. I made my way along the bank to him.
We found our way to a road then back to Gregory’s house. We were mostly beaten up and exhausted. We speculated where on the river the disaster had occurred, got in the truck, and drove as near to the spot as we could, hiking the rest of the way to the rivers’ bank. There it was.
The canoe was midstream in the river wrapped symmetrically around the boulder. Both the bow and the stern were pointed downstream on either side of the rock and only the width of it, perhaps five-feet, apart. I said “Let’s get out of here before someone sees us and connects us with that boat. We’ll have to get it out of there” To which my Uncle replied, “Charlie, we gotta get it out. I’m not leaving my boat behind. that’s a good boat.” I was incredulous. How could he think of that boat as anything other than scrap aluminum? I was dumbfounded but he was serious and slowly the realization dawned on me that his plan was to go back into the water and get it. A plan I knew to be suicidal!
The resetting of my relationship with my Uncle Jack was not going all that well. No longer willing to be the obedient side-kick, I had become Jiminy Cricket instead. It was not possible to get on the same page with him. Nevertheless, I took my responsibilities as his shepherd seriously and concluded that if he was going to get wet again so would I. We made our way upstream and jumped in.
If anything, the river had risen as the progressing day had warmed the snow in the high country. Again the water snatched us from the bank: we fought to stay afloat. Our plan was to come down on the boat from above and somehow cling to it as we attempted to free it from the rivers’ grasp. In an instant it came into sight and we maneuvered to intercept it. This was successful and soon we found ourselves at the boat with the pressure of the current at our backs, laminating us to the upturned hull. We found solid footing for us in the rivers’ bottom four-feet down. We struggled to free it from the boulder, fighting the incredible force of the water. After an eternity of effort it began to edge upward, toward the top of the rock. Progress was excruciatingly slow as inch by inch it rose. It’s probably a good thing we were ad-libbing because in an instant the pressure dynamics changed and the boat suddenly rose over the top of the boulder and was swept downstream. We chased it madly and finally caught up, grabbing it and together tried fruitlessly to work it toward the bank. A small islet came into view, a postage stamp piece of soggy ground barely rising above the rivers’ surface. As we came down on it, the boat ground against the bottom and came to a halt. The river lost its grip on us and our salvation was assured.
It took us an hour to wrestle the boat to the nearby bank, empty it out, and drag it to a nearby road. We brought it back to my house in Basalt where the next day I saw a new quality in my Uncle: he was a stubborn man.
With a come-a-long, he stretched the canoe between a convenient tree and the bumper of his truck and for the next two days banged away on it with a hammer and a block of wood. He actually straightened it out quite well. Good enough, that is, so that it was again sea – er, river – worthy. He had enough confidence in the boat to take it back down to the river and put in again while I was at work one day. But other than to acknowledge that canoes are no good on raging rivers, he never told me that story.
I guess we’ll never know, for a few days later he got in his truck and my Uncle Jack drove away.
Chuck Cole, St. Elmo