The Spring Vice and Its Applications

I scheduled my mammogram last week after procrastinating for two months.  The woman on the phone was nice, telling me I wasn't that bad, that many women wait a lot longer. 

"Are you having any problems with your breasts?" she asked.

"Well, they're sagging a lot more than they used to."

....

"No real problems?" 

Except for the lack of any humor, no.  No real problems. 

"Your appointment is at 11:00 am.  Your actual appointment.  That means that you should arrive about fifteen minutes before your appointment."

"Huh?"

"Well, we'd like you to get here for your appointment on time, so could you show up fifteen minutes ahead so that you can check in?"

"Okay," I said.  I don't get this.  If the appointment is at 11:00 am and I show up at 11:00 am, then how am I late if I don't care to sit in their waiting room for fifteen extra minutes?  Some places quibble over that sort of thing.  I want to tell them that they should say my appointment is 10:45 am then and not at 11:00 am.  Or let the X-ray technician sleep in for fifteen minutes every morning and get each appointment started five minutes after I check in at 11:00am, or later because I'll have to sit in the waiting room and wait for them anyway.  No, no real problems, except for the lack of sense of humor.

So then on Monday, they called and left a message that they'd like me to call back and preregister for my appointment.  Okay, can you copy my photo ID and my insurance card over the phone?  Do you plan to bill me in advance as well?  Can you give me the privacy policy to review ahead of time?  Just what are you going to do over the phone?  I did not call them back.

So I arrived for my 11:00 am appointment at 10:45 am.  I was checked in at 10:50 am and proceeded to read my book until 11:20 am.  So much for the actual appointment being at 11:00 am.  I didn't actually mind the delay.

When they finally called me back, I was ready.  I'm fifty-two years old.  I know the drill with these things.  It'll probably be quick.  If I'm lucky, I'll get a sensitive woman doing the work.

No such luck today.  This woman grabbed my breast like it was a piece of meat on a cutting board, waiting to be tenderized.  No stance I took was good enough.  She'd get me nearly clamped down and then she'd start over.  It was humiliating and awkward.

Then she'd clamp the two plates together.

"Don't move," she said as she ambled behind the leaded barrier.  What was I going to do?  If I'd moved, it would have torn my breast off.

"Don't breathe," she said.  I could hear her snickering under her breath.  Masochist!  Okay, I didn't hear her snickering, but really.  How the hell could I have breathed at that moment?  My knees were bent, my face pressed up against Plexiglas, my left hand was holding my left breast out of the way and my right breast was clamped so tightly in the vice, I couldn't have breathed if I'd wanted to.  I was at her mercy. If I did it wrong, she'd make me do the whole thing over again. Four times, I endured this torture to get the correct views, each time it seemed that she screwed those plates down tighter than the time before.  I'm surprised one of my breasts didn't pop like a tomato on a grill. 

Honestly, if men had to get this test done once a year to screen for testicular cancer, someone would have designed a better machine.  Where the hell are all the fifty year old female biomedical engineers? I want one of them to design a better mammogram device that isn't closely related to a spring vice. 

Later, when I was at the market, I texted Mike to find out what he wanted for dinner.  He knew where I had been.  His reply:

turkey breast, tenderized

Smart ass!  When I got home, I took some Advil, but I'm still sore.  I'll be sore again tomorrow. I'll be sagging more tomorrow too.  No real problems.  No.

Thank you for listening, jb 

Their Voices

I took Teddy to try out a different doggie daycare today, the one at VCA Animal Hospital.  He's only going to be there for a few hours and for one good playtime, but that way, they can see if he eats bark.  Last time we tried out a doggie daycare, he ate bark, a lot of bark.  It cost us $543 for x-rays and the visit to the vet.  I'm happy that these people are willing to see what happens, not to rule out his being there because they have bark in their play area.  They haven't condemned him to living in a basket muzzle while he's there either. 

But that's not what I wanted to tell you.  I wanted to tell you about anthropomorphism.  I am condemned to that embarrassing state of mind in which I try to imagine what my pets are thinking, giving them human voice to go along with their eloquent expressions. At least, in that, I am not alone.

It turns out that the lady bagging my groceries at Whole Foods has a made-up voice for her dog.  It was her husband's doing, though he won't admit to it, and his perfect voice makes her laugh out loud when she thinks of it while she's putting my milk and shish kabob ingredients into my ratty old plastic bags.  The cashier and I laugh along with her though we can't hear the voice because her husband isn't there and wouldn't have performed the voice even if she'd asked him. 

Rachel has a voice for her dog Rex.  His is a Forrest Gump kind of voice, as if he's from the deep South and is very polite.  Her dog's voice is low and calm and seems to be in command.  Rachel mimics her husband's voice for Rex too.  It's so funny that, again, I can laugh even though Wendell isn't there to perform it.

What is it about men that they can have such great and wickedly funny voices for their dogs, yet they won't admit to it, let alone do it in front of their wives friends?  I want to hear his voice for Rex.  I really do.  I'm not such a stranger after all, am I?  Ah, Rachel and I seem to have that problem a bit, that we're together so much that we're relaxed around each other, but our husbands aren't there yet.  Hell, I don't really care.  Well, I have to admit that I do care, at least a little.  It was always my job when I was a kid to make people laugh to get them comfortable in a social setting.  It's a hard legacy, but I'm learning to break it.

So here it is - Mike has the perfect voice for Teddy, it's something I can copy pretty well if I try.  Mike barely does the voice for me now that I'm trying to do it.  Our version of Teddy's voice cracks when he talks because he's a teenager.  He's kind of whiny too, like he's going to miss out on the last piece of pizza while he's still hungry. In fact, we have voices for the cats too.  In my imagination, I hear them.  I have to be careful, don't I, not to say I hear voices in my head.  I always have a song running through my head too.  Is that like hearing voices?  Anyway, I can imagine the cats talking to each other and to Teddy.  Today, it went like this:

"Hey, the slave-woman took the smelly dog away," said Seth, coolly.

"You mean that thing that looks like a coyote?  It is smelly, isn't it?  I wish it would stop slobbering on my mouse toys. Most of them are slimy and ruined," said Buddy, stretching out a leg to lick his butt.  His voice sounds like he smoked too many cigarettes, though he uses a baby kitty voice on all the people around him. 

"Do you think they'll bring him back?  I miss whacking him.  There isn't anything to do."  Seth sat with his front paws folded in the front, looking like the Sphinx. 

"What the hell?"  said Buddy, moving into a yoga pose.  "You're daft.  I hope she took him to the orphanage."

"What's an orphanage?" asked Seth.

"It's that cold concrete place where slave-people come look at you to see if you're the true king."

"Never heard of it."  Seth got up and walked casually toward Buddy.

"What? You've got to be kidding me," said Buddy. "You really are spoiled."

"I really am king.  Now bow before me, serf."  And then Seth licked Buddy twice then grabbed him by the back of the neck and rolled him over. 

About that time, Mike came home with Teddy who eagerly raced up the stairs, then from being to being saying, "Hi!  Hi!  I missed you.  I love you.  Got anything to eat?"  Teddy's voice cracked a couple of times.

"Thought they took you to the orphanage," Buddy muttered.

"Oh, sorry.  I didn't mean to bump you.  They did, but they came back and got me.  There were other dogs to play with and toys and ..."

"Shut up!" Buddy said and whacked Teddy on the head. "You smell bad."

"Oh, sorry," Teddy said from under the coffee table where he had retreated, his voice cracking again. 

"You know," Seth said in a smooth voice, walking close to Teddy's haunches to taunt him, "you're adopted."

"Oh," said Teddy, believing every word and looking so very ashamed. 

Thank you for listening, jb

Luxury

I wanted to tell you about the time Mike heated water for my bath on a camping trip.  It was not a trivial event.  This was our first canoe trip without a whole crew of Explorer Scouts.  It was ironic that we'd just moved to Washington state and that, on that first trip, we went back to the Adirondacks.  That place felt like home to Mike, since he'd been a camp counselor at Sabbattis for years.  Oh, I'd been up to Sabbattis often enough for Explorer Post trips that I loved the place too.  We'd even planned to retire there, in a cabin by a lake. 

Enough other people had had the same idea and the first two days of our trip was disappointing.  Being just outside the park boundaries, the lakes were packed with cabins.  I had trouble finding a place to pee, the lawns were so obvious and the cabins built so closely together.  We didn't see anyone around, but it still felt as though eyes could be behind every window.  I don't like being part of any one's picture postcard, especially when I'm peeing. 

Eventually, we found some privacy as we entered the park and finally we were truly alone.  I remember a secluded campsite on the third or fourth night, not visible from the water. It felt like an island, but I'm not certain of that after all these years.  How one part of my memory can be so vague and another part so visceral is beyond me. 

The only other things I remember from the trip were the slightly creepy pitcher plants and the motor boat that circled us on Saranac Lake, with his huge wake on all sides.  We struggled to keep from pitching over.  What an ass!

The only reason I remember that particular campsite is that I was feeling kind of scummy and had decided it was warm enough to wash my hair.

I planned to do my usual, take the piddle bucket to get water from the lake, walk about a hundred feet away from the lakeside to a quiet place, and bathe.  The rule was to wash at least that far from the water so the lake didn't start getting soapy from overuse.  Then the wash water traveled through the dirt, a natural filter, back down to the lake.  What the hell is a piddle bucket, you ask?  Sorry.  We camped with a collapsible bucket that was supposed to stand upright after you filled it with water, something like a reverse dry bag.  This was a great idea until we realized that, after one of us had hauled a full bucket from the lake to the campsite, the bucket, as if it had a contrary mind, waited until you turned away and then began to pour out the water you'd just carried.  We kept using the piddle bucket because we didn't have anything better to use that was lightweight.  The weight of things mattered on these trips, because we might have as many as six portages every day and some of them were a few miles long.  Imagine how careful we were packing our gear, knowing that we'd have to carry everything including the canoe between lakes. My favorite photo of myself is when I was strong enough to carry that canoe.  I never did get strong enough to carry the canoe and my backpack at the same time.

Piddle bucket, Camp Suds, and bandanna in hand, I went down to get some water.  I passed through camp to go search out my grotto for a nice bath.  Mike had the Peak I going with water on to boil.

"Want some hot water for your bath?" he asked.

"Do we have enough fuel?"  It was pretty important not to run out of fuel for cooking on these trips, but I had no idea how to gauge how much fuel to pack or how we were managing what we had left.

"Sure!" he said. " Why don't you take your bath here so I don't have to carry it?"  It never occurred to me that this was an option, especially when I was used to traveling with a dozen teenage Scouts.  I had even gotten used to washing with my bathing suit mostly on for fear of being inappropriate.  Ha!  In camp!  I was going to be naked in the middle of camp!  I felt like I was breaking some kind of rule, but Mike and I were the only ones around. 

My hair was long, half way down my butt for this washing and I was still small, so I know it was before Mike and I were married.  I cut my hair after our wedding ceremony but before our honeymoon three months later.  Poor Mike was so sad when I did this.  It took a lot of water to wash this much hair.

I felt strange, taking my clothes off in the middle of camp.  It was all very erotic. I used a little water from the piddle bucket to get my hair wet, then closed my eyes against the Camp Suds and began to lather up.  I started with my hair and washed all the way to my toes, working quickly in the chill.  There wasn't much use in washing my feet since they'd be filthy from portaging soon, but it felt good to have clean feet anyway, even for just a little while.  

A slight breeze felt like feathers on my skin.  Todd had mixed his hot water with my cold and stood there next to me, ready to pour, but my eyes were still closed against the soap.  I could hear him breathing.  I stopped and stood waiting.

"You ready?" he asked.

"Yup."

And he poured that warm water gently over my head while I stood and turned, trying to rinse the soap from my hair, from my face, from my body, from places he couldn't see.  That warm water was such a luxury out in the woods on a six day trek.  It brought tears to my eyes, though Mike couldn't see them from the water he was pouring over me.  In my memory, he helped to dry me off with fluffy towels, but neither of us would have packed towels, weight was so limited.  I must have air dried, using my wet bandanna to sluice off any water that I could. 

I can still remember the warmth of the water.  Bathing in the fresh air had always been my favorite part of a canoe trip, but until then, it had always been with cold water, refreshing, but, well, cold.  I could only afford to bathe when the weather was warm enough that I'd dry warm.  Hypothermia is a big deal out in the woods.  That bath was the sweetest moment of the entire trip, the best bath I ever had, with the warm water and the cool breeze playing over my skin.

Thank you for listening, jb

Abundance from a Park to a Single Trail

I'm winding down for the day.  Why is it that when you're having fun, you wind down and when you aren't, you come to a grinding halt?  So I want to tell you everything we did today, hiking and biking and weeding, then having an early dinner only to be asked by friends to meet them at another restaurant for drinks and hors d'oeuvres.  I'm still full. 

But I want to tell you about the place where we biked, Tolt-MacDonald park in Carnation.  I just love this place.  Nearly twenty years ago, Mike and I were married at the Eagle Scout altar across the suspension bridge.  It was a lovely ceremony, with flowers hung from the altar and chairs lined up in rows in front of it.  Every time I visit the park, I look around and say to myself, "We were married here."  We hired a bluegrass band, Three Pigs Barbecue catered it, and we played volley ball in the grass.  When it was all over, Mike and I stepped into our Old Town canoe and paddled away. 

Before the area was settled by Europeans, Tolt-MacDonald park was a permanent wintering village of the Snoqualmie Indian Tribe.  Once, when I was there walking with my friend Rachel, there was a man digging what seemed like random holes.  I became so curious that I asked him what he was looking for.  He was from the Snoqualmie Tribe and he was looking for artifacts.  He said that the Tribe wanted to find pieces of their heritage there.  He even gave me his business card.  I remember finding arrowheads when I was a kid.  Boy, was that exciting.  Isn't it interesting that what we call trash now could be considered an artifact a hundred years from now?  It just doesn't justify leaving it lying around though. 

In the 1970s, the area was turned into a park and campground under the guidance of Boy Scout Council Chief John MacDonald.  It became one of the country's larges bicentennial projects wherein 20,000 Boy Scouts spent five months developing it into a park with campsites, picnic areas, and shelters.  The suspension bridge was build at about the same time by the Army Reserves 409th Engineering Company.  The bridge is now host to a small geocache, though we've never managed to find it.  Most of our wedding photos were taken on that bridge with the river and mountains in the background.  The trail that leads from the campground, across the bridge, and up the hill connects to trails that run all the way into Redmond.  Since I haven't hiked very deep into it, I feel as though I could get lost up there.  Imagine that, I could get lost between Carnation and Redmond, there is so much of a trail system.  Boy, I think I need better trail maps. 

I think it apropos that we found Tolt-MacDonald Park when we were looking for a pretty site to get married outdoors.  Mike and I had many of our first dates surrounded by a band of Explorer Post Scouts who would all be in their forties by now.  They've scattered to the wind, living in Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, Montana, and a few are still in New Jersey.  These days, our lives are filled with Boy Scout activities.  Most of our friends work either with the Boy Scouts or with the Cub Scouts.  It feels like we were somehow drawn to the collective good will of the 20,000 Boy Scouts that built that park.  We had no idea its history when we planned our wedding there.  Nor did we know any of this when we had six or seven of Nick's birthday parties in the big red barn there either.  I even took Nick and Adrian there last summer to practice riding their bikes on real roads.  They're still not ready for anything busier, but last year, we discovered that the trail from the campground crosses under the bridge that spans the Tolt river and joins with the Snoqualmie Valley Trail.

The Snoqualmie Valley Trail runs from Rattlesnake Lake near North Bend all the way to Duvall and connects to the Tolt Pipeline Trail and the John Wayne Pioneer Trail.  There are still a few detours, but somehow it would be nice to connect all of these trails into one trip.  Isn't it strange that I have traveled on one trail and have thought of it as many different places for so long?  We've traveled through the tunnel at Iron Horse State Park, walked a section with the dog near the Off Leash Dog Area at Three Forks, walked another section near Fall City, and traveled on it today through Carnation.  (Yes, Carnation is the town from whence the Carnation Instant Milk and the Carnation Evaporated milk has come, but that is owned by Nestle now.  The original location of Carnation Farms has been turned into Camp Corey, one of the Serious Fun Children's Network, founded by Paul Newman.) 

I am sitting here, feeling so blessed by all of the beauty that surrounds me, mountains, valleys, and rivers, and by all the people who had the foresight to create parks and trails for me to use.  I'll be able to see a lot of it on this single trail.  What a wonderful plan for the summer, to walk or ride the different sections of the Snoqualmie Valley Trail until they connect into one in my heart.

Thank you for listening, jb

Older than Dirt

I woke up at 5:20 this morning.  I hate when it gets light so early and the cats seem to feel that we've missed some sort of deadline, the bus has left, the meeting has begun, the house is on fire.  Wake up!  They go walking around the house crying the alert.  You can imagine how that makes me feel when I haven't gotten enough sleep to begin with.  I got up and the clock said it wasn't even time for me to get up to make a lunch for school, and it is Saturday to boot!

I've had an interesting day.  I went to a presentation of a role-playing historian, Debbie Dimitre.  She took on the role of Louisa Boren-Denny, the first woman married in Seattle in 1851.  It was a fascinating account of coming West on a wagon and of packing just one 'frivolous' thing for the trip among the necessities, a small mirror.  Ms. Dimitre wrung her hands as she described how the raft on which she and the other women and children traveled almost went over the falls on the Columbia River because the crew had had too much to drink.  She nearly cried when she talked of being reunited with her husband to be on Alki Point, a place that was originally called 'New York!'  I really enjoyed her description of how 24 people lived for three months in a one-room cabin they built there surrounded by the Duwamish Indians until they could build other cabins.  Ms. Dimitre has a long list of roles she plays and I'd like to see every one. 

Then, after washing some dishes to clean up after lunch then picking out some books at the library, I listened to Susan Olds discuss Civil War quilts.  Did you know that there isn't a single quilt from before the civil war to support the belief that people used quilts to indicate that they were a stop on the Underground Railroad?  There just isn't any evidence.  I wonder if it's written in anyone's diaries?  I looked at slides of long narrow quilts that were used for the soldiers of the Civil War, both Yankees and Rebels, on their cots.  These men often wore the quilts across their chests like a sash as they traveled.  They apparently believed that if they were shot, the layers of the quilt might just save a life. I also looked at quilts that were made to celebrate the end of the war.  A lot of them had cats on them.  I asked about that, but Ms. Olds said there was no significance.  I can guess.  A woman was left alone for the four years of the war.  Any of her sons over the age of thirteen were in the war, as was her forty-year-old husband.  She was at home with nothing to do but manage the house and sew for the war.  Where would the cat have been?  The cat would have been right on top of that quilt, listening to the woman talk about her fears.  Of course the cat made it onto the quilt that was made to celebrate the end!  I couldn't imagine being in that position, losing both Mike and Nick to a war that might not send them home or else would send them home broken. 

It was a day of history lessons for me.  I did manage a walk with Teddy before I left.  Poor guy walked with Nick and Mike later too.  He's sacked out on the floor now.  I get to look out of the window and imagine what it must have been like to choose between enduring a war, possibly losing all the men in your life, and traveling westward, leaving behind nearly everything and everyone you know. 

These days, I enjoy history more and more.  I don't know why that is, except that maybe I'm getting some perspective as I get older.  Or maybe it was just the way history was taught in the public schools when I was a kid, leaders, battles, and dates.  BORING!  I thought I hated history.  Now, I'm old enough to have been a tiny part of history itself and people like Ken Burns and Geraldine Brooks has brought history to life for me

Someday, I'll be able to say that I'm older than dirt, but just look where that dirt has been!

Thank you for listening, jb

Part of a Love Story

I really don't want to write about my day-to-day so I won't. 

I had all these ideas for writing earlier when I was with my friend at lunch.  We had a great lunch, talking and listening. 

It's late, but I wonder if I could reconstitute  the honey moon trip Mike and I took on the Allagash river?  I've been a little nostalgic since we've been married almost twenty years.  Can you imagine that?  Even river rats get old.  See, I remember our honeymoon, but I it feels like snippets thrown about instead of one cohesive piece. 

There was the night at the end when the temperature got down to 28 degrees.  We were chilly, but prepared for it.  There was the bear and her cub we saw from the boat.  We didn't point them out to Indiana, wondering if she'd want to race up the hill and check them out.  There was the knee-deep water and dragging our loaded canoe over shoals.  I always hated that grinding sound. The funny thing was that it was such a smooth trip, not a lot else stood out.  Oh, you wanted to hear about what we did on our honeymoon?  Not a chance, Fred. 

I remember the only people we saw the whole week were a single ranger and a group of guys that were also out canoeing.  They kept landing at our campsite, as if they were dogging us once they found out we were on our honeymoon.  Really?  Can't you people go to another campsite?  Do you really have to buddy up with us?  We want to be alone. 

It was the week after Labor Day, a great time to paddle the Allagash River in Maine.  Everyone had gone back to school.  People weren't thinking of camping.  They were getting back to their routines.  It's as if Memorial Day and Labor Day are brackets within which you can camp and outside of that, the woods are empty.  Even the animals knew it.  I just wish this rowdy group of guys had known it too. 

Do you know, these men kept feeding our dog when she wandered into their camp.  Oh, I know that we should have kept her on leash, but that gets really tedious for a dog on a six-day canoe trip.  She liked to wait around until we weren't looking and sneak off to see them.  What she didn't know, that they told us point blank, was that they didn't trust pit bulls, even a pit bull mix like Indiana.  Even though she approached them with her tail wagging and an open face, they said they didn't trust her.  So, why would they be feeding her then?  Why not ask us to keep her in our camp?  After they said that, we didn't let her wander when they were camped nearby.

You know, I am too tired to do this justice right now.  I keep thinking about the night we camped on the moose-calving island, but that was Alaska.  And then there's the time Mike heated water up for me and helped me wash my hair, but that was in the Adirondacks.  And I don't want to write the whole thing about my honeymoon with one complaint after another.  That definitely is not what my honeymoon with Mike was about.  I'll have to leave the rest to your imagination for now. 

Thank you for listening, jb

Adventures in Physics

I'm feeling nostalgic tonight.  Maybe it's because Rachel and I walked at Tolt-MacDonald Park, where Mike and I got married almost twenty years ago.  The river there, the Snoqualmie, was swollen and moving swiftly.  I knew it didn't look like much.  Its usual riffles were ironed out, but that leaves it even more dangerous than usual.  I like reading the river, the eddies, the place in the river where the swiftest water flows.  The Snoqualmie still feels like our home river, though we haven't paddled it since Nick was born.  He's almost old enough for rafting now, but he's a few years away from being strong enough to guide a canoe through anything close to this.  The Snoqualmie river is routinely underestimated by people looking for ways to cool down in middle of the summer.  Every year, we hear of a death, usually a guy floating in an inner tube with no life jacket and a six-pack on a rope.  Yet there are instances when it takes even experienced paddlers by surprise.

Mike and I were river rats before Nick was born.  We'd canoed the Snoqualmie, the Snohomish, the Stillaguamish in Washington, the John Day and Deschutes in Oregon, the Delaware and the Wading rivers in New Jersey.  Yes, we have paddled in New Jersey and neither of us has grown an extra lung.  A miracle, really.  In rafts, we'd run the Wenatchee, the Suiattle, the Methow near home, the New River and the Taggert in West Virginia, and the Hudson river in New York.  We honeymooned, trekking along the Alagash in Maine.  We trekked in the Boundary Waters, in the Adirondacks, and in the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. 

One sunny afternoon, we'd gotten a late start and decided to paddle something easy.  It's funny how a memory can stay with you in all its clarity when things get out of control.  I'd told Mike that I didn't want to paddle anything difficult because my back was bothering me.  I have a very old break and after a surgery, I learned to listen to those aches and shooting pains. 

Mike accommodated me as usual.  He did all the work of getting our heavy Old Town canoe onto the truck, though I helped him tie it down with the knots he taught me, a succession of half-hitches if my memory serves me right.  He's already asleep now, so I can't ask him the name.  It's funny that I could tie the knot, but not remember the name of it. 

We left a bike at the bottom of the run, locked to a tree by the river in town, and drove upstream to our put-in, just below the rapids where the kayakers played.  We didn't even need class threes in our canoe to have a good time.  Class two rapids and riffles were enough for us, especially with Indiana in the boat.  She was one of those dogs who liked to sit, like a lab, on one side of her hip, usually putting the boat into a permanent uncomfortable tilt.  So we went downstream like that.  The river wasn't high, but it wasn't bony either.  Occasionally, I'd have to do a quick draw stroke or a cross-draw to pull the front end of the boat away from a submerged stone, but Mike did most of the work.  He was so attentive, he steered us away from rocks I didn't even notice. 

About a half a mile down the river, too late to turn back, a new section of standing waves appeared.  We could see on the left bank where a mudslide had occurred since our last float, changing the floor of the river.  We were suddenly much busier than we'd planned to be that day.  The water washed up over the bow of the canoe a few times.  The waves were bigger than we usually chose, but we'd managed worse on Ross lake one afternoon when the wind picked up.  Besides, I didn't mind getting wet.  That was the point, but I wasn't on my game that afternoon. 

It was when Indiana shifted from one side of the canoe to the other side, that I made my big mistake.  I forgot to brace using my paddle, and the next thing you know, we were flipped ass over tea kettle, the swiftest part the water carrying us along like children on kiddie ride.  Mike and I ended up on opposite sides of the canoe, each of us with our paddles in our hands and life jackets securely zipped.  I had hold of the canoe while Mike was out of reach and was then pulled further away by an eddy current.  Regular currents are tricky beasts.  Eddy lines are worse.  They mark the division between downstream flow and a current that folds back upstream.  There is often a strong undertow going through an eddy line.  It's where the whirlpools form. 

We floated past a woman lounging on her deck.  She jumped up to her railing to look at us.

"Do you need any help?" she asked.

"No thank you," Mike and I chimed almost in unison.  It was embarrassing to have made that move with an audience, but I hoped she'd watch long enough to see us on the shore.

To her credit, this woman watched us as we maneuvered.  Indiana made for the left bank, someones grassy yard.  Even she had her life jacket on, not being a great swimmer.  Mike opted to go with her, not wanting to get back out into that eddy line.  I headed for the right bank, canoe in tow.

Now, I'd gotten a jolt of adrenaline when I hit the water.  It was summertime, but the water was still cold, seeing that it had been snow not all that many hours ago.  About late July, I usually opted out of the wet suit, but I'm not sure what I was wearing that day.  Either way, I remember the shock of the cold water and the surprise that I was down in it.  This was supposed to have been a languid afternoon of paddling. 

That adrenaline and the very best life jacket money could buy helped me to swim with that canoe full of water to the opposite shore.  Well crap.  I caught my footing on the rocks and picked that thing up and dragged it across the rocks.  Where had all that strength come from?  Adrenaline.  The pure white charge of adrenaline. 

Then, I realized my second mistake.  I was up the creek without a husband.  I had my paddle.  I had the canoe, but the rest of them were on the other side.  I'd made that decision based on the current.  I hadn't even consulted with the more experienced paddler. 

Then, I got my first true lesson in ferrying a canoe.  I had never understood the concept.  Oh, Mike had described it.  Our friend Harry had described it.  Probably even the crabby guy who ran the Explorer Post in New Jersey had described it to me.  I just never got it before.

"What do I do now?" I yelled across the river to Mike and Indiana.  She was whining for me to come over.  She knew that this wasn't right.  I was supposed to be with her and the canoe was her ride.
"Ferry the canoe over," Mike yelled.

"How?" I asked.  By now, the nice woman on the deck had gone back to reading her book, since we were on shore, not drowning.  At least I didn't have an audience.  I don't learn well under scrutiny. 

"Just paddle upstream with the nose pointed toward the bank you want to go to.  Let the river do the work," he yelled.  So I got into the canoe and started to cross the river.  My j-stroke was weak since Mike had always done the paddling from the stern.  The nose of the canoe was airborne and I wished I'd thrown a couple of river rocks in for ballast.  Too late now. 
"Now point the nose upstream," Mike yelled.  I pointed the nose upstream, a little toward the left and promptly ended up where I'd started, just a little further down, our canoe firmly planted on the left bank. 

"Nose it the other direction so the current will push you!"

I had no idea how the current would do that.  I finally got the canoe in the water and by paddling really hard upstream, stayed nearly stationary.  Then, I nosed the canoe to the right.  I moved to the right.  I goofed and pointed to the left a little and swiftly, the canoe moved left.  I could feel the current pushing on one side or the other.  Oh!
It was like in physics class, when they split the vectors of force into horizontal and vertical motion.  There was an element of current trying to push me straight downstream, but there was a little bit moving me toward one shore or the other. 

"It's like sailing!" Mike yelled.  I had never gone sailing. 

By now, I was furiously paddling in the swift current, like a kid trying to run up the down escalator.  But I moved across the width of the river.  Once I got the hang of it, it was minutes before Mike had grabbed the back of the canoe, surprising me because I was already there.  I did it!

"I can't believe the way you lifted that whole canoe full of water up onto the shore!" he yelled.  He must have gotten a shot of adrenaline too.  More umph than a triple-espresso. 
"Yeah, did you see that? And I ferried the boat! I get it now!"  I said.  We looked through our stuff and had lost surprising little, a small cooler and a pair of sunglasses.  We figured we might even find some of it further down.

Suddenly I felt amazing.  This wasn't just a quiet afternoon on the river.  This was a down-home wild physics adventure.  'Use the force, Luke.'

Thank you for listening, jb