Spring is Coming! - Canoecopia

64
“Rooted in the outdoors since 1976”
ELIZABETH KATT-REINDERS
I
dip my paddle in the river and feel the pull of the current. The
baby stands between my knees, clutching the gunwales with his
chubby fingers. He strains to see past me, peering at Dad who
sits smiling in the stern, instructing our two other boys, three
and six, in their paddling “technique.”
We’re on our first overnight canoe trip, paddling down a stretch of
the Wisconsin River with three other families. John has been pushing
me to take a river trip since we had our first son, but until now I have
been hesitant to try anything bigger than a lap around the lake or a
mile long stretch of a quiet creek.
John and I share a love for time spent outdoors, and before we
had kids we enjoyed plenty of backpacking and wilderness camping.
When we started our family, we transitioned to car camping and
discovered plenty of great campgrounds around the country. But an
overnight canoe trip? It seemed like more than I wanted to take on.
The idea of packing our kids and all of our gear in a canoe and then
setting up camp hours away from either our origin or our destination
seemed crazy. What if we dump the boat and all of our gear gets wet?
What if the boys get antsy sitting in the boat for so long? What if the
baby crawls off the sandbar and floats away downriver? My anxious
alter ego somehow surfaced and took over my naturally adventurous
self when it came to a paddling trip, and for six years I shot down
every overnight that John proposed.
But something shifted for me when my friend Molly invited us
to join a group of families on their annual fall paddle down the
Wisconsin River. I had heard about the hardcore wilderness paddlers
who take their babies on weeklong Boundary Waters trips, washing
cloth diapers in dry bags and watching as little ones cut their teeth
on old wooden paddles. And while I liked the idea in theory, I knew
I didn’t have it in me. But this trip felt doable. We’d paddle a twelvemile
stretch, taking our time and camping on one of the large sandbars
in the middle of the river for a night. We’d have the company of other
families with little ones, and we’d all be in it together.
So we loaded our tent and sleeping bags, a few clothes and enough
food for the one meal our family was in charge of into our big blue
barrels and we set off down the river. The older boys sit atop dry bags
in front of John, and the baby settles in at my feet in the bow.
As I pull my paddle through the water, my tension dissipates and
A Family’s Tale from the River
flows downstream with the current. As parents of little children, it can
be too easy to get in the habit of not doing things, to prophesy gloom
and doom, to swear off those activities we once enjoyed because
they seem too hard to do with kids. But out here on the water the sun
shines, the breeze blows, and kids laugh and squeal from four canoes
floating down the river in succession. There’s nothing hard about this.
I remember what it is I love about being out here—what it is that
brought me and John together in the first place. Out on the water,
outside the confining walls of home and work we feel our true size in
the scheme of the planet. We move through the landscape at a slower
pace, noticing the details that go unnoticed at a faster speed. We feel
the pull of the current and the water on our paddles. We inhale the
moment, letting go of life’s distractions, letting nature restore our
energy and feed our souls.
My-six year-old wants to shore up to every sandbar we pass, eyeing
opportunities for exploration and adventure. But we paddle on for
another hour since the baby is happy, not wanting to push our luck.
We watch turtles sunning on logs, and we sit slack-jawed as an osprey
swoops down, snagging a fish right out of the river. By the time we
climb ashore at our sandbar of choice, my baby has fallen asleep and I
lay him down for a nap on the beach while we set up camp.
I’m so grateful that John didn’t let me back out of this trip. We’ve
been taking the kids camping since our oldest was seven weeks old,
but a canoe trip feels different—no car, no jungle gym, no electricity,
no toys. Traveling by canoe makes the journey as special as the
destination, and the simplicity of a boat and a beach and barrel of
necessities keeps us that much closer to nature.
We want our kids to be comfortable amid the elements—big sky,
big water, big wind—and we want to share our love of nature with
them at their young, impressionable ages. We want to instill a passion
in them for the natural world, a sense of awe for the vastness of it all.
We want them to discover hidden places accessible only by foot or
by boat. And we hope these trips will help them know us better, that
by seeing how we choose to spend our time that we’re showing them
what’s important to us, what we value and love.
Dark blue swallows the oranges and pinks and the last of the
s’mores are eaten around the fire. The kids surrender easily to
bedtime, spent from hours digging in the sand and splashing in the