My Boating and Camping Misadventure
Boating and Camping is a wonderful way and opportunity to see and experience so many places that otherwise may be unattainable. My own first experience of camping and boating involved canoes and rivers. Though I'd had a lot of day trip outings on various streams in the area I live, my real dream was to do some remote river excursions, and get away from some of the crowds. I finally had the opportunity and companionship to go on a long weekend years ago. We traveled to the South Branch Potomac River in eastern West Virginia to float a section of river commonly called the trough. This river and its relatively unspoiled banks of tall trees, unobstructed views of clear blue skies, and occasional cattle pastures with the cattle grazing peacefully right up to the water's edge. With water of such clarity a person could clearly observe the rocks and fish finning twenty feet below on the river bottom, and is in itself a truly soulful experience.
I was soon to learn my first lesson about daydreaming, taking in the views and failing to really observe my surroundings. There was a large rock shelf that extended from the bank to apx. 2/3 thirds. of the way across the river, and my own negligence to observe it far enough away left us unable to navigate around it.I'm here to tell you that’s it’s a sobering experience when you're in the middle of a river sitting on a rock shelf just knowing you'll soon be swimming.The water was boiling beneath the front of the canoe which was hanging in space above it, and the look of intense concern of my compadre of our precarious situation was almost amusing even considering the dire situation. Now I'm the sort of person myself if I'm going on an unexpected dunking, and I'd experienced plenty of them. I'd just rather not have any time or opportunity to contemplate about it, and here were just sitting and doing just that. It was decided that about the only thing we could do about our present situation, would be to carefully put on our life jackets. Figuring life jackets would be advantageous to us in gathering our boat, camping, and fishing gear after the certain upcoming calamity we were facing.
I'll state here that aluminum canoes do not slide well, even against slippery river rocks and knew that this also would be a contribution to this mess. And our slow grating crawl across the pinnacle of rock to free our boat contributed nothing towards our escaping of the undertow and precarious flow of water on both sides of us. Well as soon as the front of the canoe sat down in the undertow and my companion ineffectively trying to escape its grasp,but our boat quickly twisted around into the torrent of river water which instantly filled the boat, leaving us and our boat and some of our camping supplies bobbling in its undertow. You'd be amazed how fast and how widespread the current of a river can dissipate and scatter your supplies, and needless to say we did a lot of swimming in the effort to recoup them. Fortunately we were able to recover everything that floated to the river banks before it floated too far off into the next county downriver. Leaving all our sinkable supplies scattered in the swift current of the river bottom to somehow recover.
Have I mentioned the fact that we'd not packed along any food except for some now soggy munchies? At that point of time in my life and believing all the stories heard about the wonderful fishing in the South Branch all my life. Why would any survivalist such as us bother to pack provisions in a river so teeming with fish any fool could manage to catch a boatload? Well we were fools in more ways than one but the biggest one for the moment was that all our fishing gear and cooking supplies was now sitting on the bottom of the river. If you've ever attempted to recover items on the bottom of a river in a fairly swift current you'd realize how difficult a task we were facing with this issue. Listening to the constant muttering of my compadre lamenting about his loss of his fishing pole and a few lures,while I had considerably more at stake at least value wise also laying on the river bottom. That's when he learned the value of having the long piece of rope he'd complained so much about when I'd packed it on the boat. A long length of rope may be the most valued and possibly cheapest resource you can bring along on any kind of outing, being boating, camping or any activity. That rope in this instance is the only thing that allowed me to recover all our somewhat expensive and necessary belongings on the river bottom. By securely tying it off upstream of our event it allowed me a means to hold stationary in the river current while I groped around on the river bottom salvaging all our stuff.
The river gods must have been looking over fools that day,for they deposited all our gear in the general vicinity of the mishap without the wide distribution I was commonly accustomed to. As I was slowly gathering our gear my compadre on the river bank, carefully inventoried it and repacked it in our boat for our continued misadventure down the river. Now as you've probably guessed we'd burnt a lot of critical and necessary daylight in recovering from our event. And even though we'd fortunately recovered all our fishing gear we spent little time actually fishing, wanting to make up lost time and find a good site to camp early enough to also allow some of our things the opportunity to dry out. So we gently paddled miles down the river, enjoying all the breathtaking scenery to be observed everywhere along its course. We came upon island with spectacular views all around, and a wonderful sandy area to set up our camp and a beautiful river eddy that just seemed to holler out supper. Better places to camp are hard to come by anywhere in the wilderness. But as far as that eddy contributing anything for our supper sure left a lot to be desired.
After spending some time setting up a nice comfortable camping spot, and gathering some driftwood before getting serious about what we're going to cook on our campfire. It was time for some serious fishing, or in our case going seriously hungry. This is when another lesson of the wilderness was thoroughly brought into play. Though the waters may or may not be full of fish, there is no guarantee they are willing to bite or you'll be able to catch any of them. The worst part in this case though, in the crystal clear water of the Potomac the fish could clearly be seen swimming around down there. But despite trying seemingly everything in the tackle box they weren't taking or interested in any of it. Nor were any of them showing interest in any live bait that could be found in the river or on its banks. Needless to say the only nourishment to be had that evening were the liquid resources we'd packed along to wash down our now nonexistent planned supper. Still experiencing the babbling sounds of the river flowing through the rocks and watching the sunset over a nice pleasant evening campfire, was worth more than any temporary discomforts of the moment.
Dawn found us soon enough stirring around and putting everything shipshape with the world again while the campsite was cleansed as if we'd never been there. While standing alongside of the canoe surveying the surrounding insuring we'd left no trace, I really regretted failing to pack any provisions along for the longing of lingering there a bit longer. But grumblings of my compadre about the lack of food and the prospect of navigating several more miles of river before any road access made moving on the necessity of the moment. I slowly and regretfully pushed the canoe into the current and we completed a beautiful, albeit uneventful trip down the river to the landing. The moral of this story is always keeping a good long length of rope handy and available. You can throw a lot of lures in front of the fish,but you can't make them bite. Throw a few pounds of dogs and some beans in your cooler and you may not go hungry. Misadventures of the moment are often our most cherished memories in our future. Maybe by reading this you can avoid some of my mistakes.
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Posted by blog.houseboatodyssey1.com at 3/19/2009 5:43 PM 
Categories: Article, Redneck, Camping
Tags: camping outdoor recreation canoeing boating Potomac River fishing canoe
Categories: Article, Redneck, Camping
Tags: camping outdoor recreation canoeing boating Potomac River fishing canoe
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