A River Trip with My Husband

Courtesy of: http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/images/401/Magnoliophyta/Magnoliopsida/Malpighiales/Salicaceae/Populus/P_deltoides/Cottonwood_tree_MC.JPG

Yesterday was the best 4th of July I’ve had in years…possibly the best since the years described in the post below, with the wild antics of my brother and his best-friend cousin.

My husband proposed a river trip, from the bridge near town, to five miles as the crow flies, to a friend’s ranch. This being the first year we’ve had rain enough and leisure enough to float the river, I was delighted. He asked if I would like him to put the motor on his little Alumicraft boat. I suggested we’d have more fun, and see more, rowing. He left the engine at home.

We left the kids with some friends, and put into the river just past one bridge, near a willow thicket…the only nearby place where the ground and foilage looked anything like a suitable ramp. Cottonwoods are thick along both sides of the Southe Platte River, as are bushy willows, berry brambles, and wild grape vines (most years, bearing nothing but leaves). We plunged in, got settled, and steered the boat upstream and around the willow patch, at last having to haul across a gravel bar beneath the bridge in order to reach clear water.

Most years, there is not enough water in the river to warrant putting a boat in, and some years, we have been able to walk across it without wetting our boots, so this was a treat, to have a choice in where to go.

The currents were slow, but strong, around the various islands and meanderings, and Will found he had forgotten how to steer a boat without a motor attached. After both sniping and laughter, and running into three separate willow thickets and drowned trees, we finally got figured out how to work in sync, and began to notice the wildlife.

A blue heron rose graceful and long, flying back and forth from shore to shore, and surveying us. A bald eagle made a jaunt out from its tree, and a string of baby ducks paddled furiously across in front of us. Among the muddy foam from pollution stood out now and again a floating mass of eggs, from an unknown fish or amphibian. Some of the masses had hatched, and nothing but the sheets of foam were left.

My thoughts kept running to Sacajawea, whom I had just been reading abbout in a book by Scott O’Dell, and I thought how strong she must have been, to go on a river day after day, with a baby in his cradle board strapped to her back, and then to help with gathering food, and cheering up the men of Lewis and Clark’s crew, at night. True, this river was much different from the one she began on, but I was amazed at how much doing it took just to keep our boat from being swept into sandbars and fallen trees.

It was also true that many boats had been broken beyond repair on the Southe Platte, by just these things. I feel certain that much beer was involved in most of those particular floats.

Will and I had agreed to put into shore just past a pile of broken cement, where the river bowed around a corn field on our friends ranch. We had gone a few more miles by water than the five miles of road that ran nearby, and were afraid at first that we had missed our landing place.  But at last the cottonwoods opened out and became sparse, and we found a place to drag the boat up and under a wire fence to where our truck was parked.

Just before we put in to shore, I grabbed some willow twigs, stripping them from their stems for later use as both an aspirin substitute, and as a plant-rooting agent. Will has become used to me snatching and plucking this and that, without explanation, but has also come to trust my judgment on such things.

After picking up the kids and heading back to get the car at our starting point, we spent a few minutes berrying, as black berries grew thick near the State-land driveway. That afternoon, I made jam.

I also found several thistle heads having suitable maturity for a vegetable rennet extract. I’ll let you know how that works out.

If the river is up next year at this time, we plan a second such excursion, perhaps from Fort Sedgwick to home.

Courtesy of: http://phelangardens.com/Products/Trees/popup/Cottonwood.jpg