North Woods River Runner: A Couple Of Friends

It was the winter solstice of 2025. It was brisk. It was cloudless. It was a day of blue skies. It was also a day with good friends. I’ve known Scott and Justin seemingly forever. They’re now both principals in their respective schools, but before that we taught together in the Prairie Hill School District. Scott joined the staff in 2002 and Justin in 2011. By that time I had a decade or two under my belt.

Over the years we’ve traipsed together through snow and over ice. We’ve marched in swampy muck. We’ve paddled down snaking rivers and across ripple surfaced lakes. We’ve run together on black topped paths, along wooded trails, and in various races and marathons. We’ve fished and we’ve cooked meals over a small open fire in remote areas. In other words, I’m not sure I could come up with a sound number for the amount of times that the three of us have gotten together or headed out on an adventure. It’s been a healthy plethora!

But it had been a while since our last get-together, so it made sense to reassemble over Winter Break. Beyond “when” we went, “where” we went, and “what” we did, I found that it was more about “how” the trip transpired. While enjoying the company, I found myself analyzing our time and the way we were interacting. It wasn’t a formal case study or anything like that. It bordered more on an out-of-body reflection. We talked of course. Each of us inadvertently shared what had been going on in our lives since the last time—all while we drove and hiked.

Once we had arrived at our familiar destination, deep in the woods and along moving water, we each went to work. I found our efforts both interesting as well as refreshing. When the time comes that I can no longer do such things, or am scattered to the four winds, they’ll easily know what to do to carry on with another generation of friends. They don’t know all of my secret spots, but they know enough of them, and that’s all that really matters.

We set about finding dead wood, small twigs, and dried grass as tinder. We did that automatically with hardly a word. After we had brought our offerings to the river bank, we coaxed the fire into existence and cooked our food. During the process there were times when it was actually quiet. It wasn’t awkward. It felt natural. We knew how this was all going to play out, so it didn’t need anything additional. It simply felt good to mumble a few things and then stare into the flames while we waited for the food to finish cooking. And while that was happening we each did a task that needed to be done. It happened intrinsically because we’ve done this a hundred times together. We know the next step is going to either be stirring ingredients, adding salt and pepper, putting some sticks on the fire, leveling the frying pan, or nestling the pot of water closer to the coals. While eating, we remembered other such times when we had done this very same type of thing with funny or unusual sidebar events that happened simultaneously.

In the end we hiked and we ate. But through it all we also did what simply needed to be done while enjoying the process of being together. Friendships look different depending on a host of variables. For Scott, Justin, and me it started a long time ago in a school building where as staff members we weren’t just colleagues, we became friends that shared common interests. It’s the kind of situation that not only makes a staff stronger, it allows friendships to transcend time. I suppose the connection that the three of us have is unique and a little out of the ordinary when it comes to the activities that bring us together, but it works, and we enjoy it.

See you along The Way…