2opnboat1 wrote:My first was in a Mohawk in the early 80's I was just a little kid. This was the days of the strofoam blocks, my pop carved me a seat in front of him and we hit the rivers in N. Arkansas. The Piney creek, Mulberry and the Buffolo. My first trip was during an eclipse,very cool. Have been hooked every sense
Did the Boy Scout thing on a "lake" in South Arkansas. Took the class and became a WSI which let me teach canoeing along with rowing john boats with oars.
Next trip was a trip from Buffalo Point to Norfork on the White River in two days during July.
Bought an aluminum canoe. Took cousin on Big Piney at minimum level and were by ourselves. We almost "died" several times. Next trip, took wife on Piney at flood (old pics suggest maybe 7') and swam twice. Avoided divorce that time by promise that we wouldn't do THAT again.
Ended up getting a Bluehole and we eventually could get down the Nanty without swimming!
Started canoing with the Boy Scouts - flatwater tripping in a Grumman. Flatwater trips with my family came soon thereafter (again in a Grumman), followed by some ventures into easy WW (you guessed it, in a Grumman).
It was a soft summer evening during my 14th summer that the magic was originally felt. Tangibly felt.
My family was camped on Lac Vieux Desert, the large boundary lake between our native Wisconsin and the upper peninsula of Michigan. To arrive there we drove four and a half hours from home. As we first entered the Nicolet National Forest campsite, we noted ironically that our neighbors from back home were camped here also. Four and a half hours away and the neighbors didn’t change.
After helping pitch the tents and putting in the boat I wanted to enjoy the quiet of the Northwoods. “Hey, do you want to take the canoe out? We can paddle over to the dam.” the neighbor asked. “Sure, Bob. Sounds good.” I could not remember paddling one since Boy Scout camp, a few years back. I didn’t really enjoy canoes then. They didn’t go straight unless you were trying to turn and they did not want to stop once they were going. But it was fun to swamp one and mess around with it on a hot day when you wanted to get wet to cool off. It was a boyhood pastime. But now it was time to put away the things of boyhood. It was time to feel the magic. I just didn’t realize it yet.
I had been out on the lake at dusk many times before, feeling the large body of water begin to settle in for the night, allowing sounds to be amplified so that conversations a hundred yards away sounded like they were very near. Seeing a mysterious swirl out on the calm surface, wondering if it was a bass? A pike? A muskie? The stillness on a lake can be seen and heard and felt as the sun drops and the light turns golden. Somehow, the canoe heightened this sensation. We traveled soundlessly, I in the bow and Bob in the stern. If we had to talk to each other, it was in hushed whispers but mostly we were silent. It would have been inappropriate to talk, we did not want to contribute any sound to the sacred silence.
In the waning light, the water turned inky. We passed over weed-beds through which you could never run an outboard. The thick weeds served to mark our progress as we slid by. Our rate of speed surprised me, but still more surprising was that we moved in stark silence. Suddenly only five feet off our bow a large fish rolled when the canoe spooked it. My heart skipped a beat as its splash interrupted the hushed evening. We could never get that close to a large fish with an outboard running.
I read once that the canoe is a craft of exploration. This is true. I had been to the dam before, but always propelled by gas and noisy machinery. Now we approached under our own silent and stealthy power. My father’s runabout would have needed to be staged thirty feet offshore to protect its expensive propeller but this slender craft allowed us to gracefully proceed where engine-driven boats were unable to go.
On that night many years ago a 14-year old promised himself that he would own a canoe. A craft which explored waters the runabout could not run about in. He would own a craft that could make magic.
My first experience was early 60's renting Gruman canoes, on the lake at a local swimming hole. It was such a treat, because that cost more than swimming. Unlike todays neurotic parents, this was Moms break from the kids... Someone would drop us neighborhood kids off and several hours later, we were all better off.
Of course we also hiked 2 mikes through the woods for salted peanuts to pour in our Cokes and BB's. Which we would shoot at each other across the creek, so as to not put out an eye. Or make homemade bows and shoot golden rod knobs, which pack a wallop. Our mountain bikes had foot brakes. And our tree houses and fort made with wood, from a carpenter down the street. No one never thought much about canoeing being special, except for me.
My first time was very scary ,it was dark, I was all alone...Wait wrong first.
First time in a canoe was in a alum craft (I think) My dad took me on the Buffalo in Ark. around 82. Then spring river with the Boy Scouts a few years later.
Also spent my honeymoon on the Buffalo river in a OCA.
I bought my first Solo canoe 2001 but I still didn't start to get serious until 2007
My first canoeing experience was taking a cute graduate student and her teen sister out on the Schuylkill River in a rented Grumman. Though stable, the Grumman was much slower and directionally challenged than the single scull I was accustomed to row on that river.
Aluminum Grumman, Manistee River in Northern Michigan 1975 with my parents I think. I would have been 4 or 5.
In my teen years and into early adulthood I worked at a Boy Scout Canoe camp on the Rifle River in Michigan for three months a year - 8 summers in a row.
That was cool!
My first experience was when I was 18. I was this macho kid that had just moved to Tennessee, from California. I met louie and before you knew it he threw me in a canoe. We went to the Nantahala, and he put me in a Quake. I'd never even been in a lake canoe so you could imagine my experience. I was a very painful and wet day for me. I was shaken up and didn't touch a boat for a year. I'd still tag along and take pictures, I was a shuttle bunny you could say.
Eventually i got tired off running down the banks and taking pictures. I asked Louie for a boat and he gave me an Ocoee that had holes everywhere. it was Jim Little's old boat and it was in pretty bad shape, but it was outfited. For me it was great, all I ever had to spend on it was $10 bucks on 2 rolls of red duct tape. I'd have to patch it up every time I took it out.
Now that I was getting serious about my attempt at paddling once more, I started on the lake to get used to the boat. Did a few class II rivers such as the Pigeon, and Hiwasee, and a few months later after numerous swims, I found myself on the Ocoee with Dick & Dopey. Those two really helped me dial things in. Four years later, here I am. Counting down the minutes till the next weekend so i can GO PADDLE.
Was a frustrated climber in the wetland of Scotland.
Went on a school trip to France to the Ardeche with kids. They put us onto horrible sit on top plastic things, and I found it passable.
Then 1 day a kid was off and I found myself one too many...staff loaned me a mad river one on my todd.
I could kneel into it...and it felt wonderfully better. Forgot aboot it all.
Two years later and after another pish summer with little climbing done I thought that I had to have a wet weather option. Tagged along with a yaker friend, sat into one of those torture machine and had to get out within 5 minutes...sore back, really uncomfy!!!
Someone suggested canoeing, remembered my previous experience. I talked a lot to helpful people on the net, someone gave me a c1 slalom boat I taught myself on, then bought a prelude.
Difficult working situation means that I have been moving around europe, middle east... so not devoted enought time to it but I'm loving it.
I like the added technical challenge it seems to give
(I'm a telemarker...and I love the look on boarders/skiers faces when i shred in a snowpark, down a gully...I want to feel the same in my canoe amonsgt buttboats).
Summer 1996, I was 14. Went to a summer camp in Orr, MN and we did a three day boundary waters trip in a pair of voyager canoes lashed together outrigger style. I think each canoe held at least 12 people, seated two by two. We paddled 40 miles in three days on flat water. I remember we camped on one island called Fox Island. When I got home from the trip, my dad bought a Old Town Discovery 169 and we did a few Class I-II whitewater trips in it, and some overnight trips (the Etowah comes to mind). I didn't paddle a canoe for probably close to 8 years until last September, when I bought my first OC1.
First time in a canoe - a Boy Scout trip on a lake in Indiana. First time on a river, a beer-assisted trip down the Upper Kalamazoo River somewhere near Albion, Michigan with a bunch of work buddies, and absolutely loved it! The same group followed that with a WW rafting trip down the Lower Yough.
The real bite was moving to North Carolina for school and getting up with the Carolina Canoe Club folks to combine the WW and the canoeing. I was hooked in a very short amount of time, going from my first beginner clinic to boating 100 days a year, within a 2 year timespan !! That was 22 years ago, and I still plan any job moves based on distance to good WW rivers.
A passenger in ~18' tandem(wood/canvas) with granddad & friend doing the paddling...on a pond up in Maine, NE of Moosehead L. I was just holding/using a flyrod but was my initial month of spending time in the woods, which were deeper in the early 60s than today.
That instantly spurred the enjoyment on the water...never got caught in that position as passenger again...lol.
Around 10 years of age at Camp Hanover. Got to do all kinds of crazy things with the canoe in the lake. We eventually even learned boating things with the canoe while on top of the lake.
First moving water experience was during a weekend overnight trip while in the Boy Scouts. My tandem partner and I ran a class 4 burble backwards. I still remember how WILD that moment was.
KNeal
C-boats Moderator
"Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing-absolutely nothing-half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."
First Canoeing Experience hmmmm .... i was 12 and in Boy Scouts when the opportunity to attend a Canoe School that was ran by the local District came up and i wanted to go ... the instructors put me in an Old Town Discovery 174 ( it was a huge boat for a kid weighing about 75 pounds). they put me on the lower half of the Hiawassee the first day so that i could learn how to steer the boat ... the second day i was put on the top half and loved it ... the next year the same instructors gave me the opportunity to paddle a Synergy solo on the Upper Hiawassee and i took that opportunity .... the next month the instructors gave the opportunity to run the Nantahala and i used a dagger ocoee and swam alot .... after that weekend it was a year (not many opportunities back then) but we had another canoe school and i was given the opportunity to paddle the Skeeter ... and have been paddling the skeeter ever since ... and now i go paddling with the instructors all the time ... known as the Lost Tribe ....
SG86
here in the south east god paddles on the left and that's how he made our rivers ~ oc1paddlr
