Paddle With Us

The timing was perfect as Karen arrived just minutes after I did. We are on our way to the river!

Day One: I’m on a layover at Midway waiting to board the plane to Columbus, Ohio where Karen will pick me up. 2 1/2 hours from there we will meet Sheila who is the angel helping us with transportation. This afternoon we will put into the river and paddle for 11 miles where we will spend our first night on the river in a motel.
The irony? As we get ready to paddle the ways of people from hundreds of years ago…maybe thousands…I am looking at the Sky Mall catalog and realize how fast the technology is changing. Vizix wrap 1200 is video eyewear! And then there is the Solowheel sort of like a Segue. And the solar generator so that you can watch tv while camping! Yikes. Give me a paddle and I’ll be happy! A quiet week away from all technology save for my iPhone is in order. While things change rapidly around us, we will let the river carry us slowly and gently.

One of the fun things about our journey is sharing our stories with others. My seat mate on the plane from Manchester was an enthusiastic listener. Thanks, Ken, for listening! Hope to hear from you on the blog!

Last night when I went to bed, I said a little prayer asking for guidance in finding the right people to help us on the river this year.  Because our trip was postponed a couple of weeks, we lost our driver, the person who meets us where we put in and picks us up where we get out.  So for a couple of weeks I have been searching the web for hints of helpful people.  I’ve called churches and marinas.  I’ve asked about outfitting stores.  Nothing.  This morning I went to the computer, googled Athalia, OH, and found one of those listings of all sorts of things in a community, many of which I did not expect Athalia to have as it is a tiny river town and I didn’t see any businesses in it when I google mapped it!  But I took a chance and scanning the listings, I went to “community centers” and found the Chesapeake Community Center a few miles down river.  I called and was received warmly by two women,  the receptionist and the director.  Within seconds, the receptionist had volunteered for this unique position.  Now, I can’t really say how prayer works.  Had I just called enough people that the odds were I would find a helpful person?  Did I simply get the right lead this time?  Well, perhaps.  But when I learned her last name, I knew there was more to it than coincidence.  Tiller is her last name!  Now, we don’t have a tiller on our canoe (except on those rare occasions when we try to rig a sail and Karen uses a paddle for a tiller), but the boating metaphor was close enough for me.  I look forward to meeting the most recent member of our support team!

John and I went out shopping today. That was a big deal for two reasons. One is that it is the first shopping trip of the season in preparation for the crazy canoe ladies to hit the water again in two weeks. But even more importantly, it was the first major shopping trip John and I have taken for over a month. Four weeks ago yesterday he had quadruple bypass surgery. We postponed the canoe trip not knowing how well he would recuperate. I must say I am amazed that at four weeks he is driving, walking 30 minutes a day AND putting up with me drooling over a new sleeping bag (yes, Karen, I want to be like you with a tiny sleeping bag and one that is not designed for subzero weather!), dehydrated dinners and drip dry shorts! He got a new pair of walking sandals out of it, at least! The day he was released from the hospital, May 14th, I asked if they thought I could go ahead and plan my annual canoe trip with Karen. The nurse said: “Of course, you should. You need to do that!” Indeed, May was a crazy month and it seems to have literally evaporated. This major life event in our lives reminds us of the thin threads that hold our life together at times. The fragile arteries of John’s heart, now repaired, are a metaphor for the fragile nature of life itself.
This now lifelong commitment to paddling to the Mississippi River with Karen is a statement of faith and trust in this life we are given. Each day on the river is a surprise. Fortunately, the surprises have by far been mostly good. People helping us and directing us to what we need. The odd sighting of a deer swimming across the rapidly flowing river. The birds, the barges…all are wonderful.
We are fortunate to have the time and the health to do this week long trip. Our bodies may be beginning to cringe at the idea of sleeping on the ground for a week. Our minds have to get around the logistics of getting two women from two different states to the same point on the river that we ended our trip last year. But our spirits soar at the anticipation of what we will learn this year, who we will meet, what we will see. I can’t wait!

So Karen and I talked on the phone last night and set the dates for our next 100+ miles down the Ohio River. Funny that at nearly the same time, in the cold and snow of the winter, we turned our imaginations to the river we have grown to love. It’s time to figure out how we are going to get there, who will help us into the river and who will meet us some miles down the river. Will it be hot like last year…over 105 degrees when we got off the river…or cold like the years that inspite of our wetsuits we were both silently sure that we might die of hypothermia? One thing we feel sure of is that we will continue to meet wonderful and helpful people along the river’s edge. And we know that we will enjoy the silence of paddling for miles just looking at the river or pondering the horizon and that when it is time for silence to pass, we will talk and share the journey of our lives for the past year since we were last on the river together. This challenge/dare to paddle to New Orleans that started 12 or so years ago has matured into a spiritual and physical discipline as well as a testament to a 20 year old friendship. Three months to go!

We arrived at our destination in Athalia, Ohio, at almost exactly 1 pm.  Our ride showed up just a few minutes later and we were packed and heading back to Marietta in no time.  The last leg of the journey, about 12 miles, was beautiful and yet again gifted us with some strong headwinds, particularly as we neared the end.  Why is it that the last few miles of a long journey can seem so very long? It’s the home stretch thing, we presume.  After 125 miles on the Ohio, we are more grateful than ever for an enduring friendship, the beauty of God’s creation, the fact that our bodies can still sleep on the ground and paddle when our muscles seem spent.  We are grateful for challenges that teach us lesson upon lesson about life and faith. We are also grateful for our friends who have thought about us and prayed for us this week.  We will post more stories and photos when we get back to our regular sized keyboards…so tune in later this weekend or next week for more.

After a day in the heat, we braved swimming on the Ohio and then paddled four more miles til we found a lovely campground where they gave us ice and a free camping spot overlooking the river. We paddled a cool creek as well.

So, rain and wind and cold have never stopped us but heat has stopped us midday for an indefinite period. We paddled against the wind to get through our last lock of the week and found a bit of shade and have rested. We are considering a swim in the river. Here is a photo of our shade.

At this very moment we are sitting in this beautiful spot having lunch hoping that the wind will subside and it won’t take us 10 hours to get to the lock two miles away. We always seem to be lucky to find such places for respite. The paddling is hard again against strong headwinds.