North Woods River Runner: Swampin'

It was the second full day of their Spring Break; Spring Break 2018. Theirs was not one of long distance miles behind a wheel, or whooping it up on a sandy beach somewhere to the south. My son and his college friends wanted an adventure going to the woods. I had the day off due to a late night of parent/teacher conferences the evening before, so it worked out perfectly. After the rain and snowmelt that happened so quickly last week, the lowlands lining the area’s rivers were still under water. It created what I have termed the “Northern Backwater Bayou.”

When my college friends and I were their age, we went tubing on the Mississippi River. It was late March. It was unusually hot. The water was memorably freezing. My roommate had grown up on the banks of “Ol’ Man River” in a really cool setting. His parents were awesome hosts, always accommodating, and loved to have a house full of knucklehead boys; especially ones willing to jump in the river in March. That, however, is a different story now (surprisingly) thirty years old.

March 1988 - Scott, Mike, Brett, Me, And Tim

Today my son, and I, and his friends Sawyer, Adam, and James, hiked as far as we could. When we hit water, we tried skirting around it, backtracked a few times, and then finally shrugged our shoulders and plunged ahead. Within seconds the water seeped into and over our boots and halfway up our calf. If it was an adventure they wanted, it was an adventure they were going to get. We waded until we hit drainage areas coming off from old oxbows left behind from ancient river beds. We were not able to cross these today; at least not without some sort of watercraft like a canoe or kayak. The water was moving and it was deep; and we were still almost a half mile to the actual river itself. We were at a bit of a standstill, but decided to set up camp next to the water’s edge on ground that could only be described as mucky at best. In fact, a day prior it had obviously still been under water. The forest was a battlefield of washed up debris, with piles of sticks and logs stacked against the bases of the trees. Grasses and bushes were all pushed sideways in the same direction as the water slowly receded out of the woods.

Todd, Sawyer, (Kora), Adam, And James

I quickly made a fire while the boys gathered firewood. We cooked up a great brunch, and enjoyed the conversation and joking. After about two hours we broke camp, took a picture, and sloshed back through the water. In some areas we had to break through surface ice. Adventures are not for the faint of heart. After we got back up onto dry ground, we trudged back to my Jeep; our boots now a few pounds heavier. Just before reaching the vehicle I looked into the nearby field and spotted a huge deer shed. It was the biggest shed that I’ve ever found. I had been trying to keep my eyes peeled for such a prize all day as we had been walking along the trails, and I was finally rewarded. This outing adventure was a great start to the boy’s Spring Break. It was a great day for “Swampin’.”

See you along The Way…