What's life without water, mudcats and hohos?

COLUMN BY MATT PRANGER

Previous columns

What's life without water, mudcats and hohos?

posted 05/12/01
I’ve never been comfortable away from water. Except for a year in the arid Conejo Valley northwest of Los Angeles (just so I could legitimately say, "I Hate L.A."), I’ve always lived near a navigable body of water. Whether the mocha-hued, sweeping granddaddy of U.S. rivers, a plunging icy Alaskan fjord, a regional branch meandering through cornfields or emerald straits swirling around islands, water has defined my geographical and recreational realm.

I was reared by a colossal catfish on the banks of a small, deserted island in the Mississippi River between Iowa and Illinois. I fell from a flatboat during a family outing and was swallowed by a benevolent behemoth named Maddie the Mudcat. She would slither up the beach during the night into a campground, snag a cooler with her whiskers and return to my tot-size isle. Life out of the main stream was fine until I developed an addiction to Big Red soda pop and HoHo's. Fed up with my fructose fits, Maddie gulped me down again, swam to the riverfront park and spat me out at my father's feet.

OK, my parents have photos to prove I endured a normal childhood, but I did spend many hours on the Old Man’s main channel and his backwaters with my Old Man. The Growler would spend most of a day patiently fishing holes and snags whether the crappie, bluegill or sunfish were nibbling or not. As an active pre-teen and teen, I could not fathom this practice that often netted only a bottom-sucking carp. Why would anyone spend hours and hours in a tranquil cove, sipping beer and just waiting for a bobber to pop up and down? I preferred to be:

Floating a pirated raft (a rotting telephone pole sawed in two and lashed together) through the dangerous waters of Mill Creek. Maybe Mill Creek was not dangerous, but in retrospect at hazardous -- as in "hazardous" waste pumped out from nearby factories.
Paddling a 26-foot cedar Boy Scouts canoe around Beaver Island with five other determined fools.
Learning if you overload a 12-foot skiff with a sputtering 5-horsepower engine an eddy can nearly capture it.
Water-skiing five miles without a break in the twilight, pointing out logs and other hazards to Herkie, who could barely see the tow-rope handle in his hands.
Canoeing beneath limestone cliffs bordering the Grant River in southwest Wisconsin for physical education credit in college and deserving every minute of that one credit hour. I endured a day-long deluge and a voluntary dunking (I dove into the cool water to salvage the instructors’ gear after they tipped).
Drifting in inner tubes on the Iowa River through the University of Iowa campus, where I should have been in a geology class covering the formation of rivers.

After college, my water connection intensified as I worked a couple seasons along Alaska's coastline from Prince William Sound to Bristol Bay on a salmon processing ship. Mundane months packaging fish were broken by hair-straightening gales and peaceful pauses in coves between nearly perpendicular peaks.

Then I moved to a county with more shoreline than any other in the United States. And except for a few much-too-brief-but- wonderful experiences -- learning to sail during Sailing Foundation classes on Percich Lake, watching Fourth of July fireworks from a converted Navy launch, bounding over San Juan Channel beneath the schooner Adventuress's bountiful sails, cruising to Lopez Village on what once was the Buchart family's party yacht -- most of my water recreation has been limited to playing Scrabble on the ferries. I even traveled back to the Midwest one summer to canoe the Boundary Waters of Minnesota and Ontario.

In recent years, after working way too many 14-hour days off the water, I appreciate The Growler's inclination to sitting and waiting, not really caring if nothing bites but the mosquitoes. I'm determined to idle away weekends on gentle waves in this mariners’ paradise. I am going to buy or build my own craft, whether a kayak, a rowboat or a sweet little sloop. Even if it means finding an old phone pole and playing Huck Finn in a back bay or buying an inner tube and bobbing on the breeze at Egg Lake. Heck, I won't even bother the fish with pesky hooks: I’ll pack extra HoHo’s and Big Red for them.

news@sanjuanislander.com

ABOUT US | ADVERTISING INFO | CONTACT INFORMATION |