The Old Man River

My summers were filled with work. Prepare the land, plant the crops, cultivate then fertilize, irrigate and finally harvest. This spring - summer - fall cycle, was a killer for my teenage voyaging spirit. I had rivers to float down and motorcycles to ride. This farming thing was really cramping my style.

On a rare afternoon, we got an unexpected break. (More likely my Dad was just sick and tired of all my complaining). Tyler, Randy, Larry and I grabbed a canoe and a rubber dingy and set off to explore the wild and untamed Old Man River.

Old Man River, whoa sounds scary...errr maybe not. I sort of wished we lived by a manly spot called Devil's Gulch or Hell's Canyon. Now that would be an adventure. But Old Man is what we had and we were not going to complain.

We dropped one car off at a park and drove up river a bit. How far was a matter of quite a debate. I was thinking we should go like 35 miles up stream - we had like five more hours of sun anyway. My friends moderated my enthusiasm and we went a mere 15 miles.

Well that was how far we drove on a road, a straight road; rivers are not straight. But why worry; we relaxed and had fun. The first few hours we just messed around. Tyler and Larry got stuck in the rubber dingy with a couple of broken paddles and soon gave up even trying to paddle. Besides the Old Man river soon deposited them in a sort of lake like bend in its meandering course and their paddling was of little effect.

Our speedy canoe soon came to the rescue and we tied them to us for a more rapid descent. Soon we had Larry in the canoe since there was precious little air left in the dingy. By night fall Tyler was in the canoe as well and we were dragging a rubber carcass behind us.

Now in the dark Tyler stood sentinel up front yelling directions to avoid rocks and other such items. Randy and I paddled and Larry sat in the middle feeling the rocks on the canoe bottom. In the moonlight of the cool Alberta night we ran the little rapids and tried to steer for calm water.

Somewhere around midnight we saw some headlights on a hill overlooking the river.

"Larry...Randy...." Randy and Larry's dad had come to our rescue. We drug our canoe out and made our way home.

Defeated by an Old Man, I entered my dark home. "I'm home Mom, Dad."

"OK.."

Dad had given me the day off and he knew I would be alright.