Paddling with small children – You can get a lot of mileage from a short trip

My tent is nearly 30 years old. How do I know this? I first used it on a canoe trip with my 3-year-old daughter. It was a learning experience for both of us.

The tent served us well on that trip. We camped on an island on the Walhonding River between Mohawk Dam and Six Mile Dam and got absolutely dumped on. It started pouring early in the evening and didn’t let up till the middle of the night. We ended up eating cold spaghetti out of a can inside the tent. Ramona loved it.

So did I. Not exactly a hearty camp meal, but it served as a reminder of the joy of novel experiences.

There would be plenty of that on our little overnight outing.

Her mom asked what clothes she should pack for the trip.

“A few dresses,” I told her.

“Dresses?”

“Yes,” I said. “It’ll make life much easier when she has to pee.”

We were city folks and Ramona had not yet learned the art of peeing in the woods. It was a novel experience for her. The novelty didn’t wear off till weeks after the canoe trip. It’s a good thing we had a privacy fence in the back yard.

This novel experience led to another adventure during our trip. Ramona asked me to pull off the river so she could go. As I back-paddled into a landing, a small bass — spooked by the paddle — jumped out of the water. The canoe rotated while the bass was in midair and it landed on the floor in front of my daughter.

The canoe trip was a learning experience for me as well. It taught me how to tailor outdoor experiences for young children.

First and foremost, you have to account for their short attention span. Not much of a leap for me; I never developed much of an attention span myself. I instinctively knew to keep the trip short — about 10 miles in two days.

Once on the river, I let her set the pace. If she wanted to stop and root around in the shallows for crawdads, that’s what we did.

My nephew and his wife recently came down to the Mohican area with their three young children to camp and spend time on the river. In lieu of canoeing, they wisely opted to take a rafting trip with one of the local liveries. Inflatable rafts offer a more kid-friendly environment. The down side is, rafts are not built for speed. They ended up spending more time on the river than the kids could tolerate.

(By the way, three years ago their oldest daughter served as the poster child for the Friends of the Mohican River Watershed’s first annual litter sweep. This year’s river cleanup will be Sept. 18.)

In my daughter’s case, I learned early on to accommodate youngsters with other diversions while on the river. I stocked the floor of the canoe with “balooking stones.” That’s the name we gave them because of the sound they make when you toss them into the river. Of course, we had to stop often to replenish our supply of stones, which allowed for more crawdad hunting.

Kids are good at finding their own diversions as well — things like splashing their siblings or whacking dad with a canoe paddle. By the way, that old tent of mine still works fine. Maybe I can interest the grandkids in a canned spaghetti supper on the river.

This originally was published as an outdoors column in the Ashland Times-Gazette and elsewhere.

Filming Forest Bathing – Lights, Camera, Forget the Action

Night settles in at my Mohican River campsite.

Camping is forest bathing on steroids.

As a rule, I avoid trendy terms like “forest bathing.” But I’ve got to admit there’s something to it.

For those unfamiliar with the term, it simply means immersing yourself in the forest — mind, body and spirit. In other words, “getting lost in the woods.”

The term originated in Japan. Except they pronounce it differently; they call it “shinrin-yoku.” Which is Japanese for “getting lost in the woods.” And, instead of walking off into the woods, they plant bamboo, sit in one spot, and wait 15 minutes for a forest to grow around them.

Unlike regular bathing, forest bathing can be done fully or partially clothed. There are times and conditions in which it might be clothing optional. Mosquito season is not one of them. Or in places where there a lot of stinging nettles. Or at a public campground.

Forest bathing is a form of meditation. As with most meditation, the idea is to try to be present — to focus your mind on the here and now. That’s not to be confused with being old, where your mind focuses on the now and what. Now what did I come in here for?

But seriously, on my last canoe trip I experienced a new level of being present — during the time spent on the river and especially during my time in camp. I remained keenly focused on the experience. My mind seldom wandered to places it tends to go on camping trips — trivial things like why I shouldn’t wear open-toed sandals at the campsite, where I packed the first aid kit, and where I parked my truck so I can drive to the hospital for a tetanus shot after the trip.

On both nights I pitched camp quickly, ate supper, then positioned myself to do one of my favorite things in the world — sit and watch daylight morph into darkness.

If you want to master meditation or forest bathing, it helps to be easily amused.

On the first night, I set up a cellphone camera on a tripod in front of my folding chair. It was a site with a particularly picturesque view of the river. Every 10 minutes or so, I shot 30 seconds of video – with the gently flowing river in the foreground and setting sun through the trees in the background.

I’m hoping to edit that together so I can share the experience. That way readers can experience a few moments of forest bathing. Without the mosquitoes. For the record, I was fully clothed while shooting the video.

To view the video, click on this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQIfUPWtL2U

This originally was published as one of my weekly outdoors columns in the Ashland Times-Gazette and elsewhere.

Itineraries come in handy for canoe trips – if you need to start a fire

Todd Crocker mans his t-shirt shop on the Mohican River.

Canoe trips tend to take on a life of their own. To me, an itinerary is a suggestion.

Such was the case with the latest trip. On the morning of the day I was to start, my waking thought was “The Bridge.” Which meant I’d put in at the covered bridge in Mohican State Park and start the trip by floating under the new cable footbridge downstream.

I dropped my truck off at Mohawk Dam. My friend, Annette, drove me, my canoe and 8,000 pounds of gear to the covered bridge. The river was too shallow to put in there. She drove down to the end of the primitive campground. It was clear I’d have to get out and wade a few times, but it was deep enough to start from there.

I approached a man fly fishing nearby and asked whether it would disturb him if I put my canoe in there. He said it wouldn’t. As Annette and I started unloading the car, he probably had second thoughts. When I go canoeing, I pack for comfort — folding chair, tripod grill, several gallons of water, and a cooler full of food and beer. Not necessarily in that order. Loading the canoe is a ritual that can take 20 minutes or more. Especially when you’re cramming all that stuff into a solo boat.

I had to get out and wade four times before I made it to the swinging bridge. Open less than a month, the bridge is already a hit with tourist. There were at least a dozen people there when I floated by. There was also a steady stream of people on the trails along the river. With all those spectators you just hope you don’t find yourself in an awkward maneuver — like getting hung up on a boulder in the middle of a rapid or flipping your canoe altogether.

I lucked out and managed not to embarrass myself.

Clear Fork widens and deepens as it nears the confluence with Black Fork, where the Mohican River proper begins. That’s where you start to encounter canoes, kayaks and rafts from the liveries. Add to that flotillas of revelers in private watercraft, including inner tubes and plastic rafts destined to become river trash — deflated, shredded and tangled in snags along the banks. (The inner tubes and rafts mostly. Some of the revelers don’t fair too well either.)

It was a Friday and the river was relatively uncrowded. It was early in the day and the boaters had not yet reached that state of liquid nirvana that renders them annoying to others.

Downstream I encountered a first — for me anyway — a man hawking T-shirts from a deck along the river. I struck up a conversation with the proprietor, Todd Crocker. Seems he’s been in business about four years.

Like me, Todd discovered the joys of the Mohican River in his younger years — and came back for more. Todd told me he used to joke that, after he retired, he’d end up selling t-shirts from a hut on a beach. Not a hut, not exactly a beach, but here he is.

Like our canoe trips, we never quite know where our journeys will take us. That’s how some of us like it.

To be continued.

This originally was published in the Ashland Times-Gazette.

There’s something to be said for postponing dessert

The breathtaking scene outside was too hard to resist.

We gathered with friends Saturday evening at their family farm in Richland County. It had been overcast all day and unseasonably cool. Which seemed fitting — like the long cold absence dictated by the pandemic.

What had been the norm for so many years now seemed surreal. A small gathering over dinner, sans masks. Serving up second helpings of steak, grilled russet potatoes, salad, and stories. Jack surprised us with one we hadn’t heard before.

Through the window — not one of those modern double-pane windows, but one with small panels of wavy glass — I watched a groundhog grazing in the distance. It scampered away when two wild turkeys strutted up the lane. Then a cat appeared in the foreground, hunkering down in a stalking position, nervously flicking its striped, yellow tail.

I called the scene to everyone’s attention.

The turkeys were in no danger; they were a good hundred yards away. They continued to forage nonchalantly. Suddenly, the cat seemed to realize that these birds were much bigger than he thought. He turned and bolted toward the house, drawing a chuckle from his human spectators.

We carried on with our post-dinner conversation — talk of photography, writing, and the evolution of electric vehicles for better or worse. It occurred to me that, a century earlier in that same house, they probably had similar conversations about horseless carriages.

Suddenly, the treetops across the hayfield lit up in gold and green against the darkening gray sky. Rays of sun — God beams, if you will — had broken through the clouds on the western horizon.

Awed, we postponed dessert, scrambled to find our jackets, and headed outside. Five adults and one cat migrated down the lane, across a hayfield and down to the pond. (I’m told it’s the biggest one in Richland County.)

As we descended a hill to the pond, Canada geese near the opposite shore noisily took wing, glowing specks in the golden sunlight. Overhead, a great blue heron soared with minimal movement of its huge wings, its elegant plumage illuminated from below by the setting sun.

It was a glorious ending to what had been a long dreary day — with a glimmer of hope for a better tomorrow.

After we had our fill, we headed back to the farmhouse for a second helping of dessert.

This originally was published as one of my weekly outdoors columns in the Ashland Times-Gazette and elsewhere.