Day One

Day One

The sun shone down from a crystal clear, blue sky. The day was already warm, and the humidity was brutal as we waited for the boat. There were three of us. Andre was tall, broad, French, and well-muscled whose primary skill was canoeing, especially around portaging. I had seen him flip canoes weighing a hundred pounds with one hand. Despite his machismo, he was a nice guy and always willing to talk. Our other instructor was Lauren. She would be a gourmet cook and was a wizard with dehydrated food. I had only heard about her skills, but Andre raved about her beef stroganoff, so who was I to argue. I was the youngest of the three and the only one not yet in University. Lauren had just finished her first year, and if all the women in University looked like she did, I was in for a long, long four years. She was an auburn-haired beauty with athletic curves and a sultry voice that could make you hard just listening to her. I idly tossed rocks into the lake from the beach when I heard the bus.

“Bus is here,” Andre said a second later.

“Boat just came around the point,” I said.

“And I thought we were going to have it easy,” Lauren added.

I looked where she pointed, and sure enough, the boat, a barge really, towed three war canoes behind it.

“I guess we get to teach them how to paddle, too,” I observed.

“Build up their stamina,” Andre said with a laugh, and I could not help but laugh with him.

“I could do with some of that build up too. I was hoping it wouldn’t be today. See those white caps?”

“We won’t be doing the heavy lifting on this run,” Andre said with a laugh as he went to help tie up the barge.

I followed behind, and we pulled the war canoes around the side and pushed them towards Lauren, who pulled them up onto the sand of the shore. They were made of fiberglass and wood, heavy enough to handle the dozen people they were designed to carry but light enough that one person could easily move them in a calm setting, like in the protected harbor.

“Where’s your paddle?” Andre asked.

“Over with my gear.”

“Which boat do you want?”

“Doesn’t matter. They are all the same.”

“Good man,” he said, slapping me on the back. “Let’s get them going.”

Lauren directed the new staff to put their bags on the barge but to keep their paddles and life jackets out. There were several unhappy faces as I picked up my bag and added it to the pile.

“Everyone, listen up!” Andre said as people turned to look at him. “Grab your paddles and lifejackets. Ten to a boat, the instructors, will stern. Let’s move. It’s nine miles to dinner.”

There was some jostling as folks made their way to the canoes. I steadied the one on the outside as two lovely women got in, their short shorts leaving little to the imagination as the material buried itself between their butt cheeks. Two guys followed them, and my boat was full.

“Ready?” Andre asked as he looked across at Lauren and myself.

We responded by pushing our sterns, and with a bit of help from our new paddlers, we were quickly afloat and underway. As we turned the corner out of our small harbor, our real task lay ahead of us. Nine miles of open water some five miles across at the narrowest part, and a wind was blowing mostly straight out of the north at about ten to fifteen miles an hour. The wind made the lake choppy, and soon we were struggling to move forward.

“Andre,” I yelled across the gap, “head for the west shore, it offers some protection from the direct wind.”

He only nodded, and we started to move into the shelter of the western shore. It was a bit easier to make forward progress, but there was still a good deal of hard work ahead of us. The way the waves splashed off the side of the canoe and the paddles meant I was almost soaked before we were half-way up the lake. Andre and Lauren were not much better off. Lauren had already pulled her t-shirt off and stuffed it into the back of her shorts, a tiny orange bikini top restraining her curvy breasts. She looked over and noticed me looking. She smiled and winked at me before she pointed with her chin. I looked forward and adjusted the forward motion of my boat a bit to the right to make room for the other two canoes to slip around the point and into the next small bay.

Our boat was just ahead of the others, but I could not spare much energy to glance back at the rest of the students. The waves splashed and whipped against the side. When we came around the point, a particular combination of wind and water almost flooded the front of the canoe.

“Right side draw, hard, everyone else, put your back into it,” I said as I rode my paddle like an outrigger over the left side as we came around.

“Everyone paddle forward, hard, hard hard, when we pass the point, let’s get left fast. Bow, watch for rocks!” I yelled as a wave of water rolled down the middle of the boat, three inches deep.

Our feet were soaked as we made the corner and into the general safety of the next small bay—the other two boats where behind us by several lengths.

“Keep paddling, just not so hard,” I said as I looked back and waved the other two up to my position.

Lauren came up on the right side, Andre, on the left.

“I’m shipping about three inches of water,” I said slightly breathlessly. “You?”

“About the same,” Lauren said, looking down.

“More than that,” Andre said, “and a broken paddle.”

A lady in the middle of the boat held up the stump of her paddle.

“What do you think?” Andre asked, deferring to me.

“There’s a pull-off just ahead, you can see the cut in the forest. It’s where the portage comes in on this side. The bottom is shallow. We should be able to dump the canoes. Our feet are already wet.”

“That’s true,” Lauren said.

“Let’s do it,” Andre agreed.

We broke our flotilla, and once we had some free water, my team started to paddle. We slid into the portage landing first, slowly.

“Bow, slide out and stabilize us, then first third over the side, the rest move up.”

We made way for the next two boats and helped their teams out before we secured their canoes. Andre and I did a quick review of the bottom, then picked out six of the biggest guys we had to choose from, and with Lauren directing us, we lifted the canoe and tipped it over, the water cascaded out. We passed the empty canoe over to a couple of others and repeated the exercise with the other two boats.

“Want to balance the boats?” I asked as we spun them around.

Andre took charge and assigned people to the canoes, and we were soon on our way again. I had the dead stick in my boat. She sat in the bow and faced me while she kept the cadence for the paddlers as we headed back out into the lake proper.

“Here we go again,” I said as the waves started to increase. “Pull hard, let’s see if we can keep the water out this time!”

My muscles felt like lead as we reentered the lake, but there was nothing else I could do but to focus on the bow and keep paddling. I pointed us at the camp, now six miles and a bit away, and dug in with each stroke. I would occasionally look at the girl in the bow, and she would smile back at me as she called the count. She was as wet as any of us, t-shirt stuck to her body, and nipples pressed against the material. I must have stared at them as she looked at me, then down at her front, then back up at me and smiled again. She made an effort to fluff the shirt away from her front. I winked, then turned my attention back to the direction of my canoe. For the next two hours, we paddled hard, eventually breaking out of the wind and into the sheltered harbor of the camp. The barge was already secured, and the administrators waited for us on the beach.

“Hold water!” I said as we slipped forward onto the sand. “Grab your life jackets and paddles, put them above the rack, then come back and let’s rack this canoe.”

We dragged our exhausted bodies out and soon had the canoe up on the rails where it rested. Lauren and Andre were only a minute behind us, and together we got the other two canoes up on the rails before we formed a loose half-circle in front of the administrators.

“Good evening. We were worried we would have to send out a boat to rescue you.”

“No need. John knows this lake like the back of his hand, it seems. He got us shelter and found us somewhere to drain the boats when we swamped coming around the point,” Andre said, slapping me on the back.

“He should after all the time he’s spent here! Alright, everyone get some dinner, then we will assign bunks and talk about the plan for the week.”

We trooped into the dining hall and helped ourselves to roast beef and all the fixings. I was slumped in a corner, shoveling food into my mouth.