My river-rafting adventure started on a bicycle. The small daypack I wore carried a hatchet, a saw, some scraps of rope, food, water, a garbage bag bivy sack, a hat, and odds and ends. It weighed less than fifteen pounds total. It was late May, so Id stay warm in my homemade bivy, without a sleeping bag. I might wear my hat, and pile up some leaves to sleep on. If
mosquitos were bad, I'd use my headnet, which, I had learned, would also trap warm air around my head, keeping me warmer. I had matches and a lighter, in case I needed a fire in an emergency.
Thirty miles of pedaling had brought me from my home in Traverse City, Michigan, down backroads to Baxter Bridge, on Manistee River. It was almost 10 a.m. I pushed bicycle into woods, and rolled it along, lifting it over logs, until I was a mile upstream. Looking around at trees, I knew this was place to start river rafting part of trip.
Sometimes Adventure Involves A Lot Of Work
The first tree was biggest, and I almost couldn't drag ten-foot sections to river after cutting them. They were perfect, however. Dead, dry-rotted Poplar was always good, because it was like styrofoam inside. It cut easy, and floated well. White Cedar was best quality, but it was more difficult to find, and to cut.
When I had hauled enough logs to river, I got into water and pulled first two pieces in after me. I tied them together, then tied two long thin poles to them perpendicularly near either end. The other logs were guided, one by one, under these two rails, and tied in place.
By early afternoon I was finished. With last piece of rope, I tied raft to shore. I cut a good rafting pole to guide me. I was ready.
Tom Sawyer Day
My first river rafting adventure had involved four of us. I advertised it to my friends as an adventure-disaster, sure to get them wet and cold. Three took bait. Apart from snacks and water, we took only a hatchet, a small saw, and whatever scraps of rope we could find. It all fit into a small backpack.
We parked near river and hiked a trail upstream until we were a few miles from car. The plan was to build a raft, using only dead trees and our scraps of rope. We would then get on it and go rafting back to car.
It was dubbed "Tom Sawyer Day," and became a much anticipated event among an ever-changing group of participants. Since it was, in equal parts, fun and dangerous, we didn't usually bring beer. Even sober, it was enough of a challenge to keep a thousand-pound pile of logs, with four people on it, from going where it wanted to go. Where it wanted to go inevitably involved pain and cold water, but with each trip I managed to learn a little. Sometimes we even stayed dry.
Sometimes Adventure Involves Math
The first trip, Roland and I were cutting and hauling logs to river, while Cathy and Leslie cooked hotdogs over a fire. We began to do geometry on a piece of birchbark, trying to figure out how many logs were needed, allowing for dishonesty of women's stated weights.
"Cedar weighs 37 pounds per cubic foot," I told Roland, "leaving a lifting capacity of about 27 pounds, given that water is 64 pounds per cubic foot." The girls were laughing at me. "The volume of a cylindrical object is pi times radius squared, times length, right?"
Roland agreed. We counted out logs and began to build raft. When finished, we had a floating pile of old rotten logs and two frightened women.
Sometimes Adventure Involves Getting Wet
Leslie and Cathy sat on a stump in middle of raft. Roland and I stood with our poles, ready to fend off banks of river and overhanging trees. We did this successfully for at least fifteen minutes.
Then, when a low, horizontal tree refused to move, Roland pushed us all off in order to regain his balance. We quickly gave up trying to find bottom of river, and swam after raft. Sputtering and cursing at Roland, three of us climbed back on.
This first rafting trip was in late April, when water is still like ice. The sun warmed us, but our feet were almost always in water. It was bad enough that raft didn't float very high off water, but then it began to change shape before our eyes and under our feet. "It's a square. No wait! It's a parallelagram... Now it's a square again." The girls decided that there was too much geometry in river rafting, so a few minutes later we let raft drift close to shore, where they stepped off into shallow water.
