|
 |
|
|
|
|
| Headwaters Canoe Club Rep: | Frannie Tjader | 218/751-5477 | headwaters@canoe-kayak.org |
The Headwaters Canoe Club, centered near Bemidji, sponsors the Mississippi Challenge, which is an opportunity to enjoy and contribute to a cleaner Mississippi River. Although the club is involved with river clean up during the entire year, formal celebration and recognition occurs in early June. Other club activities include weekly canoe tours, canoe safety and instruction, and an annual canoe race.
Headwaters Canoe Club
Canoe Diplomacy on the Headwaters
by Harvey Tjader
Occasionally, like a harmonic convergence, a couple of my many separate worlds coalesce. It is usually surprising, sometimes in a pleasant way, sometimes not. September 30 was such an occasion, a pleasant and rewarding one. The catalyst for this event was Mel Baughman, who is a member of the Minnesota Canoe Association and the Minnesota Society of American Foresters, as am I. My forestry world occasionally merges with my canoeing world, always yielding a good experience, but this time an almost completely different and foreign ‘world’ was also involved.
The preparation had begun two days earlier, when Bruce Cox, chair-elect of Minnesota SAF, called to inform me that Mel was traveling around the northern part of the state with a group of Norwegian forestry students and was looking for ways to entertain them for the weekend. Bruce was taking them fishing on Saturday and wondered if I would lead a canoe trip on Sunday. Mel, of course, was traveling with a couple canoes, but we would have to round up more equipment to outfit ten students.
My wife, Frannie, spent a good part of Saturday looking for canoes and inviting members of the Headwaters Canoe Club to come along. The weather forecast looked fair and we looked forward to paddling a stretch of the Mississippi River from the Grant Valley Town Hall bridge to Bemidji.
Sunday morning couldn’t have been more beautiful—calm, warm and sunny. LaMar Dela, a canoe club member with Norwegian roots, and Doug Johnson, a Bemidji attorney/ornithologist, were happy to join Mel, Frannie, 11 Norwegian forestry students and me. Despite Frannie’s diligence in planning how many canoes we needed, we ended up short one seat when an additional student decided to come along, so she volunteered to be the duffer in our Minnesota II. Another slight disappointment was the heavy cloud cover that slipped in before we got underway.
Trond, the young man who opted for the bow of our canoe, started dipping his paddle rather tentatively. Frannie straightened him out on which way to hold the bent-shaft paddle and I explained that he was to switch sides when I called ‘hut.’ This stretch of river winds through a wonderful stand of lowland hardwoods, including the greatest concentration of silver maple in this part of the state. Unfortunately, the black ash had already shed its leaves, but the maples were at their peak of color. They form a canopy over the river in many places and their yellow leaves contrast strongly with their dark gray trunks. This section of the Headwaters is notorious for its strainers, as every heavy rainfall results in high water that washes through the woods and takes down a few trees. We have paddled here at times when you could leave the channel and float through the woods, but the water level was lower for this trip. Frannie had called Tony McKeown, who had floated through here on a river cleanup earlier in the month, and he said there was only one problematic downed tree, and they had been able to float over it.
Trond spoke English fairly well, and we compared information about the species and ecologies of our respective countries as we drifted along through lowland grass and stark denuded ash trees. We had been last to get into our canoe and Trond seemed anxious to catch up to his buddies. Soon, we entered the silver maple forest and heard voices ahead. A large maple had fallen across the river, blocking it completely. Some paddlers were portaging around the obstacle. Mel was sawing on some of the smaller limbs. Two students were lifting a canoe over the tree and two were standing on the bow of another one, pushing it low in the water in an attempt to sneak under the tree.
That was the first of countless trees that had to be avoided, but the only one that anyone felt compelled to portage around. Now that Trond was back with his classmates, it became obvious that some serious competition was developing. These Norwegians, many of whom had never been in a canoe before, were determined to ascertain the physical limits of the craft. Several times, I watched a gunwale reach for the water as we evaded some vegetative hazard or another canoe. The students seemed to never consider moderating their speed for any reason. If an obstacle threatened, they wanted to deal with it as soon as they could possibly get there. If an opening was wide enough for just one canoe at a time, it had to be this one... and it often seemed to be all eight canoes at once!
Trond was quickly learning to anticipate my ‘huts’ and showed great intuition in the art of bow paddling. His strokes had become aggressive and his frequent glances and Norwegian comments to other paddlers revealed a competitive spirit. I tried not to hold him back, but the weather was a little brisk for swimming and I felt insecure about his lack of experience and our language differences.
Despite my caution, I think Trond and his friends had a good time. I couldn’t remember a cruise with so much laughing, and (miraculously) nobody capsized. One of the students told us that canoeing on the Mississippi had been his lifelong dream. Approaching Lake Irving near the end of our trip, we enjoyed watching some bald eagles. We gathered together on the lake and someone announced a race to the other side. I think we came in second-not bad, considering we had three people in the canoe and only two paddling.
We took the unavoidable group photos by the statues of Paul Bunyan and Babe, the blue ox, and bade farewell to Mel and the Norwegians, who were off to learn about forest management in northern Minnesota.
Paddle Home