I thought it would be fun to go out on a canoe trip with my brother, Mark, since he lives near a major river – the Delaware. We had canoed many times when we were younger because my father’s side of the family owns 100+ acres in northern PA right along the Clarion River. Beautiful area and we spent many a Memorial Day weekend going as far as we could up and down river, exploring.

Well, I’m here to tell you that the Clarion River is nothing like the Delaware River, especially since it had been raining in his area for a few days. We’re traveling along on Saturday morning towards our remote launch point and he keeps making comments like, “Wow, the river looks really fast.” and “I think it might be a little dangerous out there.” and my favorite, “We might not be doing the smartest thing by going out on the river today.”

Again, I ignore that little voice inside my head saying “Don’t do this”.

Ok, so now I’m a little freaked, but us both being experienced canoers, I figured we could handle it. We finally haul the canoe down to the river… and it’s BOOKING. Rivers normally flow at 2-3 miles per hour. The Delaware was flowing at 4-5 that day. It may not sound like a big deal, but it makes all the difference in the world. It’s also about 5 feet above flood level. Again, I ignore that little voice inside my head saying “Don’t do this”.

We decided that we wanted to be on the river about 6 hours that day. Just float along and talk and enjoy nature. Ok, so we go about 23 miles upstream, that should last us all day – if the river was flowing normally. We get in the river and start our trip and it starts out very nice. The river is fast, but it’s also pretty calm… for a while. I’ve been on rivers for a large part of my life until I was about 30 years old. I feel comfortable traveling them in canoes or rafts and know how to handle bad situations.

I did not feel comfortable when we reached the first “rough spot” on the river for three reasons.

1. The river was moving twice as fast as normal
2. The river was about 30% wider than any one I’d ever been on
3. The river was about 10-20 feet deeper than any one I’d ever been on

By now I’m going through my mental checklist of “Ways My Life Might Be In Danger And How To Prevent Death By Canoe”.

Start getting nervous or panicky and it’s all over

However, I’ve learned through experiences like this that the best solution is to be smart and to be calm. Start getting nervous or panicky and it’s all over, so I remain calm, but also extremely alert.

*Info you need to know before I continue. Mark is used to canoing with his wife or my sister – each weighing approximately 110 pounds. I tip the scale, easily, at 265. I’m also in the front of the canoe.

So with my observations, we hit some pretty rough spots, but we also avoid disasters by me providing him with important information such as, “Killer rock ahead.” and “Tree of Drowning to our right, you might want to steer clear.” He has to work pretty hard to steer the boat properly and I have to provide information well ahead of time to avoid such pitfalls.

We avoided all Man-Eating Islands, Bone Crushing Boulders and Sneaky Trees of Death for the first 5 hours of the trip. We stopped once to portage past a particularly nasty looking, half-mile long stretch of rapids, stopped once to scour a glacial rock deposit, and once more to replenish our supply of water.

We were about an hour away from where we parked my truck, and I was very tired, and I did something very bad: I lost my focus on the river. I was stretching my back, taking a drink of water and looking at the beautiful trees along side the river and then looked ahead to see the tell-tale signs of a large boulder dead ahead of us. It wasn’t sticking out of the water, but it was only 2 feet down and causing a large enough wake to be avoided.

I did something very bad: I lost my focus on the river.

Too late.

We were about 40-50 yards away when I noticed it. The speed at which we were moving, we weren’t going to miss it. We gave it our best shot, but we didn’t have a chance. I quickly hunkered down – as I’m sure Mark did – to prevent tipping over, but we ended up going over the wake just the slightest bit sideways. That’s all it takes.

Two seconds later we were in the river.

The strangest thing, too. I remember not thinking much of anything about it – I guess my “survival instinct” kicked in. I quickly came up to the surface to see where the canoe was so I could avoid being nailed by it and also, hopefully, snag the life jackets before they got away from me. Luckily, the boat was only about 4 feet to my right so I quickly grabbed the jackets and gave one to Mark. We both grabbed an end of the canoe and started the looooooong process of trying to push it towards one of the shores. Meanwhile we had to avoid the trees and boulders to avoid getting caught and drowned or breaking a bone.

So we start kicking. We kicked and kicked and swam and kicked, and then kicked some more. Patience and vigilance are the *only* virtues in this situation. We slowly inched towards the left shore as our muscles starting becoming more exhausted with every push; our clothes and shoes weighing us down. I’m going to guess that this lasted about 15 minutes.

I came up with a plan that, looking back now, was quite ingenious

Then we see one of the islands coming up and all I knew is that I did not want to face that. The idea of being caught in the branches of dozens of trees that are almost completely underwater made our current situation seem almost pleasant. I came up with a plan that, looking back now, was quite ingenious. Using the last of what little strength I had left, I grab my end of the canoe and shove it towards the shore, then slowly swim back in position, and give it another huge shove.

Finally, we start making some real progress. After my 10th shove, we’re close enough to shore that the speed of the water was vastly slower and Mark was in a position to grab a stationary log and stop us. Luckily I was able to push us to shore before that was necessary. Almost completely exhausted, we right the canoe, gather our things and slowly head back out. The final tally of things lost was:

• My Steelers Super Bowl XL hat
• My backup pair of glasses
• One oar
• 30 pounds of really cool rocks we had gathered

We make it back to the truck about 20 minutes later, and I happily change into the dry set of clothes I brought and offer Mark a dry shirt that happened to be in the back. The next day we found the place where we picked up our cool rocks – with the help of Google Maps – and were able to replace them with even cooler ones since we had time to look around.

I’ll not be revisiting the Delaware River on a canoe again.