:: in.a.mirror.dimly :: A theology and culture blog with the Bible in one tab and a news feed in the other.

I live next to the Battenkill river in southern Vermont. It’s a shallow, rocky river down in our town of Arlington, so we typically tube down from the covered bridge in West Arlington and hop out at our neighbor’s beach. It’s a pretty sweet set up. However, June in Vermont isn’t always very warm, and the Battenkill can be quite cold. On the warmest August day we still drink hot tea after exiting with our tubes.

Enter the kayak solution.

We purchased two nice kayaks worth $5000 for a ridiculously low price two years back. We found them at a yard sale and couldn’t pass them up. They are fiberglass and work well in lakes, ponds, and the ocean. Not so much for a shallow river that would destroy them. We use them all of the time up at Lake George and other lakes around here, but we can’t subject them to the punishment of the Battenkill.

Enter river ‘yak solution.

I found a dirt cheap, plastic river kayak on Craig’s list. We just purchased it, and yesterday, on a warm and clear late afternoon, I took the river yak on it’s first trip as our river craft of choice.

Julie is away this week taking a class, so I had to devise a plan that would enable me to kayak and still get back to my car in a timely manner. So I planned to drive the kayak down and leave my car at a parking area. I then kayaked down and pulled out at our neighbor’s and dragged it to the house. Once home, I would then hop on my bike and peddle back to the car.

So I hauled the kayak from behind it’s grassy hide-out behind the tiger lilies. I pushed the seats down in our wagon since I didn’t want to bother with the kayak rack straps. Before shoving it in, I noticed something odd on the kayak.

Peeping through a hole at the front end of the kayak was a mouse, a very still, dead mouse head. It could have been a mole I suppose, I didn’t look THAT close. I whacked it with a stick and couldn’t dislodge it. If anything, it slid further into the hole. Resigning myself to the gross task ahead of me, I used a wire to poke his 5 ” frame into the kayak. And this is the point where, if whacking the kayak with a board didn’t make me look absolutely insane, I sealed the deal.

I dragged the kayak onto the lawn, tilted it so the dead mouse slid to the middle, and then flipped it really fast. No mouse on the ground, since he just nestled under the top lip of the cockpit. I tried this over and over again. No dice. Alright, I thought, I need to get on some gloves and pick up this dead mouse. And then I had one last idea that would make me look even more imbalanced to my neighbors. Tipping the kayak upside down, I rocked it back and forth as fast as I could.

The mouse ker-plopped onto the ground. With a sigh of relief I set to work clearing out spiders, crickets, and the other nasty bugs who had set up shop in the kayak as well.

Once I settled into the river five minutes later, I quickly caught on to steering such a small kayak. It’s about 9 feet long, whereas our other kayaks are 13 and 15 feet, so I deftly whipped past rocks and enjoyed the beautiful river bank, setting sun, and birds flying all over.

Now if there’s one thing the Battenkill River is famous for, it’s fly fishing, and fly fishermen always come out in the morning and the early evening. So I was paddling through prime fishing time. Fishermen gravitate toward the deep pools at the river bends, and there’s a huge one on this stretch of the river. Of course there were two of them in my sights, casting out into the deep part that I wished to navigate.

Trying not to ruin their time, I aimed for the shallow shoreline on the inside of the curve. They were settled in the middle of the river. As I paddled over, the river unexpectedly pitched me toward shore and I nailed all kinds of rocks. While the front floundered, the back end spun around and I was just about to start going backwards right into the fishermen! I flailed my paddle and even reached my hand into the water to push off on a rock. No matter how often I straightened myself out, the river pushed me back on shore. Risking a collision with the fisherman, I managed to back away from the shore just enough to paddle between rocks and men. We didn’t say anything. They just stared.

Things went pretty smooth after that fiasco. There’s nothing like zipping through the swift rapids and your bow splashes into the waves sending a spray of water up. It’s the perfect mix of relaxation and excitement. That is, so long as you don’t have a dead mouse along for the ride.