Canoe Trip

Probably one of the most fun things I did last summer was to go on the canoe trip down the Chattanooga River while at a teen camp in Dahlonega, GA. It seemed like a good idea at first. My two best friends and I were going on a canoe trip with the rest of the camp. The weather was perfect, the sun was out, and a cool breeze chilled the otherwise stifling heat, making it bearable and enjoyable. It seemed like the perfect way to waste an afternoon. 1

The problems started just as soon as we got to the river. We were only allowed to have two people in a canoe, and Katie and Amanda both wanted to go with me. Mr. Martin, the gray-haired seventy year old man who was taking us, was starting to get impatient and told us to decide. Katie ended up going into another canoe with a girl named Clarin. Amanda and I  plopped down in the canoe next to theirs. Ours was a silvery blue one that I noticed had some dings and scratches in it. It had a hole in the middle that seemed to be only halfway repaired, and there was a little water in the canoe, sloshing under our feet. Mr. Martin asked me and Amanda who wanted to steer. Amanda had never been in a canoe before, so I said I would. I had never steered before, but I thought, 2

“How hard could it be?”3

We started and although the river was lazy we were able to go along fairly fast. I was able to steer us away from some tall, jagged rocks, but another canoe team hit the rocks and flipped their canoe over. Mr. Martin, who had been right in front of us, quickly went over and helped them flip their canoe the right way again. He then decided to stay behind of the rest of the canoes and rescue stragglers, like a Shepard does with his sheep. 4

It wasn’t until the river started speeding up that we had problems. The river seemed to want to push us into the riverbank. There were trees that hung over the river, and some sort of a vine with purple and white flowers covered the trees. They were really pretty, and I steered over to pick some. What we found out right away was that the flowers attracted all sorts of bugs, not to mention spiders. Amanda had a phobia about spiders at the time, and she would not paddle until all the spiders were killed. She and I were hopping about the boat screaming. Since she would not paddle with me, we could not get away from the shore; the longer we stayed there, the more spiders fell into our boat. Mr. Martin came over to see what the trouble was, and then he too got caught in the battle, hitting the spiders with his oar, his white arms flashing in the sun. He had sense enough to pull us away from the shore, and then he started helping us kill them. Amanda was still shaking when all the spiders had been killed, and she begged me to keep away from the shore after that. It was easier said than done, since the river was getting faster and the currents seemed to pull us closer to the shore.5

It seemed like hours had passed when we caught up to the other canoes. My arm was aching from keeping the boat away from the shore and killing the spiders. We started to lag behind the other canoes because every time I would go near a bush, Amanda would go crazy looking for spiders. Mr. Martin decided that we were going too slow and started pulling us behind him. Clarin started laughing at us being pulled by old Mr. Martin, but Amanda and I were exhausted. We had spent too much time goofing off the night before instead of sleeping, and a nap was starting to sound really good. 6

Being pulled by Mr. Martin was extremely relaxing; we were able to enjoy the river. I was pretty embarrassed because the seventy-year-old man was actually going faster than we had been, and he seemed to be much stronger than us as well. I had not really paid attention to it before, mostly because of the spiders. But the river was beautiful; there were sweet-smelling flowers dangling over the trees, on the sides of the river there were huge shale rocks, just jutting out into the river. We also saw the remains of a water mill from the gold rush. There were sluices lying under the water. We scraped over one of them and the sealant from the hole in the canoe started to peel off. Amanda and I just watched as the water slowly came trickling into the canoe. We called to Mr. Martin, but he said not to worry, we were almost at the end of the trip. We looked at each other for a moment, and then started watching as the water came into our canoe. Amanda unconsciously pulled her feet out of the water and into her seat.7

The water was ankle-deep by the time we pulled off the river to go home. Mr. Martin had to turn our canoe over to let the water out. He left us, shaking his head and muttering something about canoe repairs. Our legs looked like we’d been wading, and there were little leaves and dirt smeared all over us from our rendezvous with the spiders. Katie just looked at us funny and started talking about her canoe trip. Clarin, an experienced canoeist, had not spent much time looking at the scenery. Katie said that she and Clarin were the first people there.8

Looking back on it, I can honestly say that it was the most fun canoe trip I’ve ever been on, and that I will always remember it.9