The Rogue

Needless to say, I maintained the caretaking and cleaning in our home, needling for sanctions and demands to be put on the child, to pitch in. There was a huge battle that resulted in the police coming to the house. Casey had called them but the neighbors may have as well. Her claims were of child abuse. Before leaving that night, the officer stated that it was clearly a discipline problem. Well, it remained a problem. The courts should mandate some counseling in these cases because it manifests into a burden on society, and reverts back to the thing about acorns. I call it Frig Newton’s Law.

As for Casey’s brother, Kenny, he had moved in with his dad, virtually, as soon as I was living there full-time, escaping from the rigors of sharing a home with an implied living standard. Casey’s claims of being groped and molested remained to be ignored by her mother, which should have said something to me. Kenny stayed at his dads but continued to come over to leach, stealing his mothers weed, beer, and porn she kept along, with raiding the house for money.

When he did come over whether family function or not, he would always ask for things that were not in the house, requiring a special trip to the store. These were things like whole milk instead of the two percent we had. And she would send him to the store in the finest vehicle we had in the garage instead of … his own vehicle or the bike.

When Kenny was invited to family dinners, that I cooked, he would only eat a cut of beef that was a prime rate cut, and he had to have it cooked to a blackened burnt mess that ruined the cookware. This added a huge portion to my anxiety and psychiatric issues that I could just barely handle as it was. I felt that they were trying to kill me.

One day, Danimal came around to organize a kayak expedition. Bruce agreed to let us use a few of his kayaks, and to drop us off at the Rockford Dam, on the Rogue River. When we got there, we launched amid Spring Steelhead fishermen and a mob of others with a clear case of Spring fever. It was the first of April 2005.

Julie and Casey took the two man ‘yak, and Danny and I both had Daggers. None of them had the boots that fitted them to keep the water out of the cavity. My big idea for the safety of the girls was to bring my cell phone, placing it and all other dry items in a re-sealable plastic bag.

The fear was that the kayak could flip and cause someone to suffer a serious injury, maybe a head injury. And, since the Rogue River is a category three river with lots of rocks and boulders, it goes without saying that it’s dangerous. Never mind that Dan and I didn’t consider drinking to be an added hazard potential.

So there we were on the Rogue, passing through the areas where fishermen were hoping for Spring Steelhead, and on top of the world in the great outdoors, waiting to laugh at the first one to flip over.

We drifted in the current past the areas where people were, and into the seclusion of inaccessibility where we could tip our beers. My forty-ounce bottle seemed to taste great, and Dan and I were in our comfort zones loving the moment. The day was beautiful, yet only in the fifties, which gave the impression that the water was anything but thirty-something-degrees. As we approached Childsdale, I noticed the artificial flies lost to the branches by fly fishermen. Taking advantage of being on the water to collect them, I gathered as many as I could safely reach.

Danimal was hurrying along in the lead, and the girls trailed along behind me when I heard the first screams of the day- curses against the frigid waters.

Casey had leaned too far when she tried to duck a branch instead of staying in her position and using her hand to push the branch out of the way. Apparently the water was shockingly cold. My challenge was to conceal my outbursts, quietly relishing their discomfort. In a kayak, it’s always head first. The icy temper of the Rogue River only made it that much more amusing to me. I only wish Danny could have witnessed any part of it, as it was only a matter of time before they went in. What I did not expect was to receive my own dose from Mother Nature. What was good for the Witches almost earned me stitches.

Bruce’s earlier warnings to go left at the fork in the river were abandoned for the right. This didn’t seem like a bad idea at the time because, from where I could see, the left side was a walking route that was strewn with boulders. I didn’t feel like getting out.

The water sped through what used to be a dam. It had been washed out and removed. The river broke off in two, around a small piece of land, and reconnected. Right as I was trying to go through, Julie and Casey came through in a panic. We all realized Bruce was right but it was too late. They almost ran into me but I pushed them back away from me, which put them in the best spot to descend the eight-foot falls to safely pass through it. It didn’t look like too big of deal, so I followed suit. As I went over the fall, I knew it was a mistake because I couldn’t get into the main current, which swiftly took me to the bottom and spat me out the right side and rolled me upside down. The kayak instantly filled with water. In my struggle to gain control of it, and grab onto something to help pull myself out of it, I lost my paddle. It didn’t dawn on me how important the boots were until this point. The current had grabbed the kayak and was yanking on me to follow down stream. I managed to wrestle the thing while being bombarded by the falls. It would have been so much easier to just go to the left, and get out for a minute, like I had been told to do.

The fishermen quietly resented our being there as they fished the riffles. My paddle had to have drifted past them but they weren’t having anything to do with helping. We had molested their hunt for Steelhead. Now, I realized how Bruce might have gotten hold of so many kayaks. They were probably inexpensive. No one wants a kayak without it’s boot, otherwise they’d buy a canoe. Oh well, I was still happy to have their use. I can’t say that I blame them for not lending a hand but I totally resented their resentment.

As I drained the kayak, it wasn’t surprising that all of my belongings and findings were gone. My pack with the phone, smokes, snacks, the flies, and my bottle of beer, were all gone. Down around the bend, where Childsdale road crossed the river, Danny and the girls landed and waited, wondering what happened to me. Suddenly, they spotted my beer bobbing in the water as it moved along with the current. Since it was half full it was upright, which was good because the cap wasn’t on it. “There’s his beer,” they said. Dan retrieved it, and then noticed my pack floating along behind it. Soon after, I caught up and we wrung ourselves out, continuing down stream toward Bruce’s house on the Grand River.

The girls entertained me by flipping three more times, finally deciding that the smart thing for them to do was to get out of the river. They beached the ‘yak and found a trail to get them somewhere that was dry, and hoped to use a phone to have someone pick them up.

They were pretty upset but not nearly as upset as they were to find themselves being. It was the trail they chose to take that added insult to their humiliation. My pleading with them to stay the course to Bruce’s was useless, so I said I’d see them at Bruce’s and come back for the kayak later, planning on going down the river a second time but without them. This would also give me a chance to scout the trail they had taken, telling me the story of what happened on their adventure.

When I went back for the kayak, I investigated the trail. They had told me the story but I needed to see for myself. It was a heavily used Deer run that took them through places only a Deer could manage. There were large areas of it that were so trodden that it looked like they had a Deer festival. There were places where it was like soup because it was so wet and tore up, impossible to step through because it would suck even the best-tied boots right off of your feet. Other areas were all Hawthorns, briars, brambles, Blackberries and wild Roses. The Deer had serious numbers, judging by the looks of the torn earth.

Anyone that’s hunted them knows you can’t follow a Deer run very far at all. They ended up walking over a mile through the thickest of brush and mud. The last stretch of their hike was uphill, although so uphill that it was more like a cliff, having a 70 to 80 percent grade, which had a stretch of Hawthorn bushes about seventy-five yards deep before they got to the foot of it. It was like having to hike through the Mangroves. They had little choice but to ascend.

At the top of their climb, the summit, I guess you would call it, was an extravagant looking home that was nicely isolated. The view below was beautiful, facing east over the area. The stonework that covered the exterior looked very handsome, and the entrance was a grand set of double doors with double leaded glass detail. I only got a close up look when they drove me to the home explaining their misadventure. (This is where I started the hike back down to retrieve the kayak, getting to witness their experience).

And, oh, how they told me about it. No one was home, they thought but, finally, a man came to the door in a robe, looking like the guy from the male enhancement commercials on television- huge smile on his face. My guess is, that he was surprised to find two females, covered in mud, soaking wet and disheveled, interrupting his “private time” but he let them use the phone. After all I had been through with these girls I was pleased with the whole thing, especially being able to complete the journey in peace- twice. No sounds but the birds and the babble of the water on the rocks of the Rogue River. It was fifty-five degrees and I was absolutely an element of nature and happy in those moments.

As for Danimal, he hurried on ahead with enthusiasm fit for a Novice, and in an effort to get away from the girls, completing the voyage back to Bruce’s Holler.

On one hand, I can’t say I blamed him because the girls were a wet blanket, unless you were drunk, which was part of the problem because I didn’t necessarily want to be.