We were the only customers there. When we drove into the yard, there were three men sitting around a weather-beaten picnic table. One guy, their leader, wore what appeared to be a khaki safari outfit and his hair in a hippie's pony tail. After he had taken our $60, plus a $20 deposit, and had us sign
One was a Czech who expressed disdain when we said we had a friend in Prague and saw what a beautiful city it was on PBS. "I hate Prague," he said. Wow. Some Czechs hate Prague. Who knew?
The other man kind of resembled Shaggy from Scooby-Doo, but without the hip beatnik facial hair. He was really spacey and said "definitely" a lot. In fact, he used that word at least twice in every sentence.
These were our guides.
After we strapped on our mildew-stained life vests, the guides huddled us into a van and took us to the put-in point on the Battenkill, a seemingly docile river. There, they gave us a brief tutorial and asked if we had any questions. When my wife asked Shaggy what I recall was a fairly important question, he couldn't answer it and just said, "Definitely, definitely."
They put us in the water, and we rocketed toward the opposite shore, which had brush jutting out from it. (The guides, by the way, did not go with us; we were on our own.) We turned in time to miss hitting the shore, but now we were right next to it and heading for the overhanging brush at a pretty good clip.
It is at this point that my wife executed by far the best limbo move I have ever seen.
I, however, did not.
While she came away unscathed, I suffered the brush gauntlet, a rite of passage that many a Mahican Indian man had done before me.
We had similar run-ins with a series of deadfalls across the river. This was a small river, by the way, so a deadfall usually took up about three quarters of its width.
Once we got past the deadfalls, however, it was quite peaceful. Too peaceful.
Being from New Jersey, we were used to the boating on the Upper Delaware River, where you are part of a noisy flotilla of rafts filled with strangers that meanders downstream. When it's over, you take a long, smelly bus ride home, and, three days later, come down with the flu.
This was not like that at all. There was NO ONE. No buildings. No sign of man at all. Just us and the ducks. And they weren't even those suave Mallard ducks. These were strange backwoods ducks with bizarre head plumage and the most evil quacking I have ever heard.
The guides had said that we could stop back at headquarters if we wanted a short trip, or continue to the next put-out point if we wanted a longer trip. We stopped at headquarters.
Being the chivalrous man I am, I held on to the "dock," which was a large stick stuck askew in a slab of mud, while my wife got out. I said I wanted to re-park before I got out, and she ran off to use the bathroom.
My plan was to paddle back upriver and then dock again, kind of like going for that second try when you know there's no way your going to pull off parallel parking in New York City. I paddled upstream, turned, almost capsized the boat, failed to park, went back upstream, did it all again.
My wife must have told the Czech I was in trouble because he came lumbering down. (No sign of Shaggy. He was probably taking a break. Yeah, definitely, definitely.) He pulled the boat on shore. I got out and, feeling like sort of a schlub for having to have him come to my aid, attempted to help him pull the boat the rest of the way out. I immediately slipped and covered myself in sweet, sweet Vermont mud.
Our fun over, we got our deposit back, hobbled across the parking lot, and got out of the heat and into our climate-controlled car.
The moral: A canoe trip is kind of like life: Sure there are a few bumps along the way, but in the end there's lots of air conditioning. Yeah, definitely, definitely.
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