I wrote this two years ago after my last kayak outing of the year. I'm sharing it in response to the OBN outdoor writing prompt "My Outdoor Scary". My outdoor scary is drowning....
3 o’clock, December 2, and I’m out cleaning up my yard
before the snow arrives tomorrow. My beloved kayak, a Wilderness Systems Tsunami 125 is sitting in my yard- it needs to be dried out and put away for
the season. I realize then and there
that it’s the perfect afternoon for one last paddle. It’s perfectly calm and relatively warm for
December in Northern Michigan.
I change my clothes, dig out my pfd and slide off into my
canal to the river, cutting through the skim of ice leftover from the night
before. I push out into the river and head
downstream.
There’s a surprising amount of mallards on the river today,
but they all spook as soon as they see me.
They’ve been shot at for two months now so I guess I don’t blame
them. I paddle down to the area called
Hay Lake, just downstream from my house and intend to paddle in and check out
the beaver pond and find some of the deer trails, but the area is currently
occupied by three mute swans, an adult and two juveniles, and I know better
than to press my luck- they can be very aggressive, even to the boats that race
up and down this river in the summer.
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| Cranes coming in to roost on the river |
But there are no boats anymore, and I’ll have the river to
myself. December in Michigan becomes a
kind of perpetual twilight, and I sit under the gray skies watching my swans
for a minute and ponder this years kayak trips.
That first spring paddle on the first warmish day in April on the Bear River,
happy to be out paddling again, the river extremely high but slow. There’s the overnight trip in May on the
Pigeon river, a small, fast, class II local trout stream. Fighting cold rain and hypothermia, a paddle
that stretched on for nine arduous hours over exhilarating rapids, and miles of
trees that have been toppled by beavers, which had to be portaged. Two party members rolled that day, and we spent
fifteen frantic minutes trying to free my kayak from a blow-down, my bow wedged
under the trunk and myself with it, my whitewater skirt the only thing between
me and disaster. Eventually my friends
drag me over with the bow still wedged under the tree, to where they can wade
in and drag the whole mess up on shore.
Let’s see, two other high water spring trips on the Carp River
through rapids approaching class III, me trying to keep my 12’ boat straight in
the current, waves slapping me in the chest and face. I went and paddled in the waves on Lake
Michigan one windy afternoon, trying to surf just a little, but the waves
weren’t quite big enough, so I paddled over to the break wall and photographed
the kids jumping off into the water.
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| summer fun in Northern Michigan |
Then there are the two trips I took to the Les Cheneaux
Islands; one solo afternoon trip in which I circumnavigate Government Island,
dodging the boaters who don’t even bother to slow down for you, and on the far
side of the island having to drag my boat over the three hundred yards of canal
made dry by dropping lake levels. With
fewer boaters being around, the overnight trip in September was a more
enjoyable paddle, but the camping was marred by the obvious over-use of the
campsites and the amount of human waste in the bushes.
Regrets- I missed my opportunities to do some real kayak
surfing on days that the waves were up on Lake Michigan. Courtesy of the economy, we canceled plans
for our annual extended trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It was a very cold and wet summer, which
definitely cut down days on the water. I
never did spend any time just practicing my basic skills and rolls. Next year.
I push on downstream intending to go the full four miles to
Burt Lake from my house. You can hear a
lot of highway noise on the open marsh in the Hay Lake area, but as soon as I
get into the cedars all is dead quiet, not even any bird sounds. This kind of quiet is so profound and unusual
in this area, that I pause to drink it in.
Nothing moves, nothing stirs, no ripples on the water, and it feels as
if all of the outdoors is holding it’s breath, waiting for the coming
snow. I paddle on past the little huts
of the deer hunters in the woods. The
deer have been shot at for two months now, so I won’t be seeing any of those
today. Their trails through the muddy
river bottom are quite obvious, though.
People don’t realize that deer are more of a wetland creature than
forest creature. They’ll cross and
re-cross this river all winter long, hardly seeming to notice the frigid water.
I didn’t bring the camera today, and now I’m kicking myself
for it. Photography is an activity of
itself, and I wanted today’s trip to be about kayaking. The reflections of the birches in the water
would make a nice shot. The only
movement on the waters surface is the occasional dimpling of minnows, locally
called “blues”, that run up the river from the lake this time of year.
I’m sure the walleye and perch are here as
well, following their food. I’m surprised at how clear the water is now- I can see the
bottom throughout most of the river, something you don’t see in summer. In summer, Crooked River has the plankton
bloom of a warm slow river, coupled with the turbidity of heavy boat traffic,
much of it at full speed in a river that is only five feet at its deepest. There’s been some debate over the years of
making the entire river no wake, something that would certainly cut bank
erosion and slow down the silting process in my canal. It would make conditions safer for
paddlers. It would also greatly increase
the trip time for locals heading down to the lake to fish or recreate, and so
the idea has lots of local opposition, which I understand to some degree.
A little further down I find fresh activity- birches down in
the river, bright wood chips littering the banks, and a large raft of saplings
yarded up next to shore, the winter larder of a family of beavers. I find this interesting, as I haven’t seen
this kind of activity in this spot before.
I approach the first homes of the Devils Elbow area, about a
mile of vacation homes for boaters. A
few are full time residents, and the smell of wood smoke drifts on the
air. A pair of mallards hiding in a boat
basin lift off, the hen quacking reproachfully.
Just a little ways further, near where a small creek enters, and blues
are dimpling the surface, a large walleye surfaces like a trout- first his
upper jaw breaks the surface, then the opalescent eye, then his back and tail
fin. Just as quickly he disappears. Good, I hope he got his meal.
I push on through the tight bends of the Elbow. Almost all the boats are gone now, the
cottages dark, shut for the winter, waiting for the snows. I move past the golden Buddha statue, the
toilet someone has mounted on their dock (in protest of something having to do
with a septic permit), the plastic alligators and the signs saying “paddle boat
parking only”. I push past the few year
round residents who sit at their windows but don’t wave. If it was summer they might have come out to
talk. I paddle past the seawalls, the
empty boat houses and abandoned docks.
The air vibrates to the sound of a myriad gurgling springs. Virtually every home in this stretch has its
own artesian well, some of the best tasting water in the country. I know- I have my own flowing well at home.
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Eventually I make my way out of the homes and back into
state forest. It’s only another mile to
the lake. I paddle past the last hairpin
turn towards the lake when I notice a break in the reeds. I’ve seen this before, but have never checked
it out, so I paddle in to explore. It
turns out to be an oxbow, the old riverbed, and it loops in a long arc back to
where I came from. Like my canal, it is
crusted with ice, and I enjoy the crunching sound of my hull cutting
through. I power through the thin veil
of reeds back into the main river and head back upstream.
Then I notice a little water sloshing in the cockpit, which
seems a tad unusual and reach for my sponge. I realize with horror that the
water is roiling in- I must have cracked my hull somehow. As it floods the cockpit I’m struck by the
shock of the forty degree water rushing in, taking my breath away. I haven’t told anyone what I’m doing or where
I’m going, haven’t even packed a dry bag with a towel and dry clothes. I dig for shore, but with the cockpit
flooding and my rising center of gravity, it’s all I can do to remain
upright. In one sudden motion the kayak
is over, spilling me into the frigid water.
Holding my breath, and fighting panic, I grab the cockpit coaming and
pull my head above water, gasping raggedly.
I can hardly take a breath, and my head and chest hurt. I reach for my pfd stowed in the rigging on
the back of my boat. Managing to free
it, I fumble with it, trying to get an arm in.
I can’t do it without letting go of the kayak so I do, I let go. I
manage to get one arm in, but my rubber boots have filled with water and my
clothing is rapidly water-logging. As I
thrash with the vest my head repeatedly goes under. The kayak has drifted several feet away. The cold and struggle are rapidly sapping my
strength, and after one last effort my head slips under the water not to emerge
again. As the pain in my chest builds, I
wait to draw in those first painful breaths of water.
My cell phone rings, breaking this reverie. Why did I bring that thing anyways? Thinking such thoughts can’t be good. I have less than an hour before it gets dark,
and so I dig in earnest for home. I work
on the stroke, concentrating on using my abdominal muscles, on making a full
reach, and on transferring the energy of the stroke into the boat through my
feet. I power on past the vacation
homes, the beaver homes, the deer hunters huts, the minnows, the Buddha, the
springs and creeks. It is just getting
dark when I emerge back out into the open marsh of Hay Lake. I can hear ducks talking in the hidden pools,
roosted for the night. As I approach my
canal, movement over the water catches my eye and a mute swan emerges from the
gloom, flying just off the water, passing directly overhead. I can hear the beat of his wings and the
hoarse whistling of his breathing. It’s
amazing to see such a large bird in the air, more like an aircraft than a
bird. I watch as he continues
downstream, makes two turns, and then hear the splash of his landing, out in
the gloom.
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