Blake and I depart for the far reaches of Canada in just three weeks. In recent days and weeks, I've been reflecting a lot of my experiences as a paddler. The more I've thought about it, the happier I am to recall many years of memories, a lot of good times on the water with paddle in hand. Here's some of them:
My first canoe race... At least that I remember. I may have participated in a Camp CS Klaus "Water Follies" event or two in years previous (definitely the Greased Watermelon, I won that 3 years in a row! Victory will forever taste like watermelon), but this particular year in question was by far the most memorable. Age 17, at Camp CS Klaus in Colesburg, Iowa. The "Water Follies" were a weekly event that had us competing with all the other Troops present at summer camp that week. Another older Scout, Ryan, and I tag-teamed almost all the canoeing events, or canoeing portions of events, being the most senior members of the Troop. The events? The In-And-Out Canoe Race, the Rowboat Race, and the coveted Iron Man Race.
The In-and-Out Canoe Race was a race where each Troop had a representing team of two people in one canoe. Ryan and I tag-teamed this one. The goal was to paddle out to the buoy in the middle of the lake and back, but with a twist... Every time a whistle was blown, the racers had to jump out of the boat to swim their canoe until the whistle was blown again and the paddlers could jump back in and keep paddling. Repeat over and over until the race was won. Ryan and I took the victory in this one.
The next race, the Rowboat Race, is a true team sport. Five guys in a rowboat, fours racers and one cadence-caller. We had our form down and our cadence-caller, Wolfe, had the beat to perfection. I would later go on a long-distance hiking trip with Wolfe that saw him grow and push his limits beyond what he probably thought possible. The foal of this race was similar to the In-and-Out, row out and around the buoy and back in. All this team cohesion brought us to shore victorious.
Then, the last race, the big one... the coveted Iron Man competition. This race consisted of different legs of different challenging kinds of races. It began with a tag team 200 foot swim. One swimmer would run in from shore, hit the water swimming and head for the dock where another swimmer was waiting to tag in and launch from the dock, swimming the remaining 100 fee back to shore. There, a runner was waiting for the tag to take off up a hill, down the road, and across the dam that contained our lake for a total spring of about a half mile. The second runner would tag in to run the half mile back and push the awaiting canoe team out onto the lake. The paddlers then took off to the buoy, now moved further away from the previous races to the far end of the lake. Our Troop had experienced trouble with this one in the past. One memorable, albeit unfortunate, year had us leading the way for the win up until the second runner shoved the cane team out onto the water where they paddled a little too hard and out of sync, only to result in their tipping the canoe and getting disqualified. But this year, we had something to prove and a Water Follies Championship Paddle to win. While I will admit that I don't remember everyone's name that was a part of the six-man team that year, I do remember some highlights. The second swimmer, Jake, was a competitive swimmer in high school, so he solidly anchor the second leg of the swimming portion. He had the honor of tagging our first runner, Rashae, who ran his damn heart out, blowing open a huge lead for us and going so hard and exhausting himself in that half mile that he tagged and collapsed (he was fine, but the effort was legendary). The second runner made his way to the canoe push-off, where Ryan and I were ready to go and riding the high of our previous successes. After the heroic work on the part of our teammates, we paddled our butts off to take the win!
Now, these may seem like cheesy Boy Scout summer camp stories. It's because, well, they are! But everyone has to start somewhere. Ryan would go on to become an incredible trail guide in the Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota and Ontario's Quetico Provincial Park. I would eventually go join him up there in a managerial role. Wolfe joined the Navy, where you can't be shy around water. Jake remained a swim and an avid outdoorsman. We all fell in love with this kind of stuff and it led to more adventures in the future.
Our Troop, as much as we loved to hike and backpack, were always (at our core) a canoeing Troop. We had adult leaders with combined years and years of Boundary Waters experience. We all grew up along the mighty Mississippi River. We canoed down Big Muddy a couple times, sometimes short distances, sometimes long. My friend Simon and I almost got smoked by (what we thought) was a 10-year old on a jet ski. Hazards of a busy river, right? But we paddled nonetheless because we loved it. Many of us moved on to other things in life, but my canoeing adventures and antics continued...
I once borrow an Alumacraft canoe from Northern Tier High Adventure (where Blake and I met), strapped in onto the roof of my new-to-me-at-the-time 2006 Subaru Forester, and hit the road. I took it across the country, snapping photos of it in the mountains of West Virginia, paddled a small lake at a camp in the Carolinas, dipped it in the salty waters of the Atlantic Ocean and portaged it down a beach on an island in the Florida Keys. It made a pit stop with me for a po' boy in New Orleans, Louisiana. Some friends and I "paddled" it across the plans of West Texas. I even got it into a reservoir in the dry, high desert of New Mexico! It even got some mud on it "off roading" (it was on a road, it's just that the whole thing turned to clay-like mud). The car got beat up and eventually met its end, but that canoe is still as tough as ever. This, and more, was all done with the help of friends along the way. I consider myself one of the luckiest people in the world to have the network that I do and a lot of what we all share in common is the love for the outdoors. That particular canoe never made it back to Minnesota (yet). In honor of that trip, the canoe was bought and gifted to me by a group of friends. Money doesn't buy happiness... but it buys a canoe that'll make me happy for a very long time.
One ridiculous event that happened on that road trip was on conscription into the "Gator Guard" at a camp I visited in south Florida. Now, being from the Midwest, I'm not used to worrying about big lizards with big teeth in the waters that I paddle and swim in. Admittedly, I did paddle a canoe near Tampa, Florida years prior where I almost whacked a (quite small) alligator with my paddle on accident... It happens? But anyways, Gator Guard is a group of volunteers that create a perimeter around an area where some watersports events are happen Canoe Battleship, things like that. But there's gators! So someone has to keep an eye for them. The Floridians around me didn't even bat an eye, but I was a little nervous... I'm happy to report that no gators made an appearance that day. I'm sure they probably didn't want to deal with us anyways!
There's been a number of trips before, in between, and since the ones I've wrote about. Blake and I, along with our friend Josh, did an amazing Yukon training trip in the Boundary Waters, paddling 115 miles in 72 hours. Recently, I joined a group of guys last minute to paddle the St. John River in northern Maine. I only knew one of the other nine paddlers I adventured with for 113 miles downriver with whitewater over the course of four days. By the end of the long weekend, I had eight new friends! Just weeks before that, a friend and I paddled a 10-mile race down the Sandy River near Farmington, Maine where I met another Yukon 1000 paddler! Small world, right?? There's far too many to write about, and I could go on and on, but that's not the point... The point is that, in the face of this epic adventure coming up in less than a month now, I find it important and helpful to remember all the adventures, the scares, the lessons learned, the exciting times, the dreary days, the calls of the loon, the stars in the night sky... and everything that comes with it. I'm getting so, SO excited to dip my paddle in the fast-running Yukon River and to challenge myself with my canoe partner and close friend, Blake. We've been working towards this for years, longer than most any Yukon 1000 participants.
Maybe relevant, maybe not, but I'll share that I had a dream last spring... One that I remember pretty well. Blake and I were frantically prepping for the race the day before, putting together our kit, tying up loose ends, and whatnot. We were woefully unprepared and running everywhere to get packed. It was chaos. We did everything we could, we sprinted to the starting line and got there just as the race begun. At the same time as the other racers, we throw our boat in the water, buried our paddles in the river, and... I woke up. It was strange because I don't feel unprepared. maybe at the time of the dream I did. We've come such a long ways and we've done so much to make this a reality. The stories above prove that the experience is there and I know Blake has a million more paddling stories of his own. On our end, we're doing what we can.
There's gonna be some days, other days where others are training harder than you. As I sit here and type this, there's someone with their seat in a boat and a paddle in their hands. That's the way it goes. But it all adds up. And that's what counts. We have to be the ones that trained the most, that read the maps the most, scoured the internet for resources the most, mentally steadied ourselves. That's what's gonna do it. We've done what we can up to this point and, with just a few weeks between us and the Yukon River, we're going to keep doing what we can. We're in this and it's almost go time! Or, it's been go time for a while now... Either way, we're doing the thing!
For those of you that made it this far, thanks for reading! I'm getting beyond excited for this race and this blog has been a great way to gush it all out. I know there's so many people that are supporting us in this crazy adventure and, for that, I'm so very truly grateful.
Here's to the Yukon!
-Dan
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