Maybe someday I’ll be the type of person who doesn’t pack my gear at the last possible moment, and I’ll get the maps together well in advance of my trip. This was not that day. Steve is also not that person. We may have thrown every item of camping gear we own into the back of his FourRunner “Latoya” and decided we’d figure it out when we got to the headwaters. We definitely spent the night in his office frantically printing out maps. On the bright side, our package of gear from Outdoor Research also showed up at the eleventh hour so at least we’re sponsored by people who understand how we roll.
The four AM departure was a little rough. Vermont was pouring rain and unsettlingly cold, and as soon as we pulled onto the road a VERY large spider dropped out of the sun visor onto Steve’s face. (We handled this in a very manly fashion that absolutely didn’t involve any screaming, flailing, or nearly driving off the road.) Fortunately the rain cleared as the sun came up, and by the time we crossed into New York we were several cups of coffee and breakfast sandwiches in and delightedly having a Weird Al singalong.
My champion roommate Ilana met us in Hancock NY where the East and West Branch of the Delaware meet to bring us to the put-in. We found a garage right by the confluence that was willing to let us leave the car there for two weeks, re-packed our gear in the parking lot, and transferred everything to Ilana’s car for the shuttle to the start of the East Branch. The novelty of gear weight not mattering hasn’t worn off for me; I brought my bomb-proof three-person tent just because I could. Heck yeah.
We ended up putting in off of Briggs Road in Roxbury, a few hundred yards from a sign that proudly stated “You can get by… or you can LIVE LIFE”. Ilana gleefully took pictures of us like we were on our way to our first day of school, I managed to get into the canoe without dumping it immediately, and we were off!
…For about five minutes. And so began the pattern of paddle, run aground, exit boat, walk boat, reload, paddle, find a beaver dam, exit boat, swim to dam, climb over dam, drag boat over dam, reload, paddle, repeat. The sun was out, the water was warm, Steve seemed relieved that I have no qualms about getting neck-deep in a beaver swamp, and the scenery was pastoral and generally lovely.
We came around a corner at one point and nearly ran into a cow standing chest-deep in the river. We backpaddled in an eddy until she sloshed her way to shore, then endured the stares of the rest of the herd as we navigated the oxbows through the pasture. A sharp turn and a quick current then led to the unpleasant discovery that sometimes farmers in upstate New York string barbed wire across rivers that run through their pastures to keep the cows wandering away downstream.
I screamed a string of warning profanities at Steve and flattened myself into the canoe with my paddle in front of my face since there was no stopping the boat. All the skin was ripped off my knuckles and my paddle blade sustained a nasty gash; Steve threw himself sideways, got two holes in his shirt, and somehow managed not to dump the boat OR run us aground.
We decided that was a good time to quit for the day and made camp by the side of a railroad bed at the edge of a pasture. Steve was feeling pretty proud of himself for packing two cold beers with which to celebrate our first day on the river, and a chilly Natty Daddy definitely soothed my anxiety about my lack of paddling experience.
What did NOT soothe my anxiety was the fact that we forgot the maps for the East Branch under the seat of Ilana’s car. Fortunately we both found this wildly hilarious and immediately adopted an attitude of “fuck it, we’re going down river, it’ll be fiiiiiiine”.
