Near death on the river (or the story some of you have been waiting for)

The view from here

Last Thursday, my daughter, Emma, and I had a scrape with mortality. The good news is that we lived to tell of it and now will have a story to share for years to come.

Thursday was a beautiful late spring day promising to be perfect for canoeing. Since 2008 I have made it my goal to canoe the Red Cedar in its entirety and since 2009 Emma has been my partner in this endeavor. So, a couple of times a summer since then we have canoed various sections of the river. On Thursday, we set out to cover the section between the landing below Colfax on Highway 170 and Lamb's Creek Park north of Menomonie.

My co-pilot

The Red Cedar is what you might call a “family-friendly” waterway – it usually meanders slowly south ambling its way toward the Chippewa. During the “dog-days”, one of the favorite past-times of people in these parts is to float the river due to its laggardly current and relative shallow depth. This is no Wolf or Colorado with their Class III or IV rapids. But we had a lot of snow this past winter and what's more, we had quite a bit of rain of late and so when we arrived at the landing it was very clear that the water was up and the current unusually strong.

We lathered up with sunscreen and bug spray, donned our preservers and put in. Immediately we were greeted by an eagle making his way downstream. Humorously Emma assumed her best First Nations accent and remarked, “Father, it must be a good omen.” We were moving along at a brisk pace and as I am wont to do, after a few strokes I would take a moment to squeeze off a picture – a picturesque sandstone bank here, a massive eagle nest there. In my backpack at my feet, among my other gear, were my palm-size video recorder, my digital camera as well as Emma's phone, my wallet and the keys to the van. Just like I've always done, as the fancy hit me, I would pause from my paddling, reach into my back pack for my camera, take my picture and then return it to its place and resume my paddling.

Beaching the canoe for lunch

Snags are frequent at times

We couldn't have been more than ten minutes into our journey when attempting to detour around a snag as we came around a bend, we suddenly capsized and just like that we were in the water. However deep it was at that point, we were in over our heads. The canoe temporarily lodged under an overhanging tree branch that we both vainly tried to hold on to but the river was relentless. Emma let go and the current took her quickly downriver. Somehow or other she managed to hold on to both paddles and our bike helmets (we had stashed our bikes at the take-out so that we could bike back to our van) but the backpack got away from her. Meanwhile, I managed to pull myself up onto the south bank holding on to the canoe which was half submerged. About 40 yards downriver Emma was able to get out on the north bank. Thankfully, we were emerged fairly unscathed but now about 30 yards of fast moving water stood between us – she on one side with the paddles and me on the other with the canoe. What to do?

Just like that

(I couldn't figure out how to embed Google map into this blog but if you follow this link you can see just where our canoe upended At the bend in the river)

Behind me was nothing but woods but about a 100 yards behind Emma was a farmhouse and so I shouted to her to go for help. Perhaps someone would give her a ride to my side of the river so we could at least get paddles and canoe together? I saw her walk off while I stood on the bank of the river fishing my smart phone out of the pocket of my shorts. My new phone of only two months had been duly baptized. Amazingly, it came to life – and I had signal! But not wanting to scare my wife, Linda, unnecessarily I turned it off. Even if I had chosen to call her what would I have said that wouldn't have made her worry anyway? About ten minutes later, Emma returned to the north bank with the woman who apparently lived in the house. I asked her if there was a road behind me somewhere and if there was could she be so kind to bring Emma to me? She informed me that she would be happy to help but I would have to make my way back up river about a quarter of a mile or more to where a road neared the river. While they drove off, I started walking the bank walking through tall river grass that I couldn't help notice had a fair share of what appeared to be poison ivy in it.

Near the place where our canoe was swamped, the bank is steep so I had to climb about 50 feet or so to the top and make my way east adjacent to the river. Within 15 minutes or so here came the lady in her van with Emma riding shotgun. Her name was Candy and she handed me a little piece of paper with her phone number on it in case we ran into any more trouble. We thanked her again for her kindness and with that she drove off and Emma and I proceeded due west through scrub pine and underbrush back toward the canoe. After passing through a few barbed-wire fences and meandering through more river grass we made it back and put our 17 foot fiberglass canoe back in the river. Our hope now was that the backpack got caught up in another snag somewhere downriver. I figured my cameras were lost but my wallet, Emma's phone (in a zip-lock bag) and especially my van keys perhaps could be recovered.

By comparison, the rest of our trip was uneventful. We made it to Tainter Lake without further incident but unfortunately without any sign of the backpack. Our languorous paddle across the rather placid lake was only interrupted once by the appearance of some long-ish fish (perhaps Dog Fish?) sunning themselves and one who decided to give the water a mighty thwack of his tail just as we reached him giving Emma an unexpected scare. At that moment I couldn't resist quoting Roy Scheider's infamous ad-lib from Jaws, "We're gonna need a bigger boat."

We eventually found the spot where the Red Cedar emptied out of Tainter Lake and completed the rest of our float to the take-out at Lamb's Creek without incident. Soon after I discovered that my Android phone made by Caterpillar that was supposed to survive up to 30 minutes underwater had essentially drowned after only two. So there we were without wallet, van keys or phone. We walked across the Highway G bridge to the Pioneer Grill and Saloon on Highway D north of Menomonie and I told the bartender, "I've got troubles. I lost my phone, my wallet and my van keys not to mention both my cameras and so I was wondering if I could use your phone." She very kindly allowed me to call Linda at work and inform her of our dilemma. I figured at this point this was a better place to be picked up than ride our bikes the ten miles or so back to the put-in below Colfax. Besides, here we were on a main road while there we would be in a mosquito-infested park waiting for perhaps an hour before Linda would arrive.

This from our passage of Rice Lake a few years ago

Good food found here

After I hung up, one of the patrons at the bar walked up to me and handed me a twenty dollar bill. "You're gonna be here for awhile and you can't hang out in a bar without money," he quipped. I thanked him for his kindness and Emma and I promptly ordered a few burgers for lunch. Following our satisfying meal, we checked on the canoe and then found a place outside the saloon to lounge until the cavalry arrived with the spare van key. After Linda got us back to the van, Emma and I had to drive back to the take-out to pick up the canoe and the bikes. We pulled in the drive-way at home just in time to clean-up a bit before dinner.

So it had been an adventure. We nearly died (well, let's just say we had a few terrifying moments), lost most of our gear but due to the kindness of a few strangers and Linda's boss who let her leave work early, we made it home and weren't late for dinner. Our phones have already been replaced. I had to cancel my debit and credit card in my wallet and will have to replace my Driver's License as well but as Emma concluded, "Well, at least we have a story to tell now" and Linda added, "and a sermon illustration." They both are right. Since I made the incident my status on Facebook on Friday morning, I have been asked about our harrowing tale by a number of my friends (fortunately, my mom isn't on Facebook yet) and at the Justice Center on Friday and at Refuge on Sunday, that story showed up as Linda predicted in my messages there.

And what's the moral? Easy. Life happens. It can be a fine spring day with the world as your oyster and just like that you can be in the water hanging on for dear life. A friend of mine presided at a funeral this week of a fine young man from their congregation who had just got engaged. While driving down a four-lane highway unexpectedly here came a car heading the wrong way. It was a head-on collision and both drivers were killed instantly. Two years ago on another fine spring day, Steve, a guy from Refuge, got on his Harley for a late afternoon ride when a deer ran into him. Just like that he and his family's life turned on a dime. So the fact that we emerged from the river camera-and-phone-poor but otherwise unscathed leaves us a lot to be thankful for.

Yes, life happens but God is good.  In Steve's case, that he hit a deer is not too unusual but it's where his long skid came to an end that is - within shouting distance of an off-duty EMT's driveway. That little detail is part of the reason his life was spared that day. The stretch of the river we were on is thinly populated between Colfax and the entrance to Tainter Lake but we upended essentially in someone's backyard. As Candy informed Emma, "It's a good thing you came to my house as everyone else around here is old. What's more, I'm usually not at home at this time." The long and short of it is we made it and emerged on the other end with a story of God's faithfulness that even came with a burger and fries.

Be back out there soon