Two Coots in a Canoe

When retired CEO Ramsay Peard, 61, called his old friend David Morine, 59, and asked if he wanted to canoe the Connecticut River,  Morine said he’d do it under one condition: no camping. “We’ll rely on the kindness of strangers.” The result, Two Coots in a Canoe, is the comic misadventures of two old friends as they float down the sunlit waterway. Here's an exclusive extract:

“To hell with common sense. You know what they say, ‘common sense comes from experience, but experience comes from a lack of common sense.’ I like experience, only I didn’t have the guts for this one. If I’d tried and made it, I’d have felt like a million bucks. Now, I just feel like an old fart.”

                                                                        . . .

The Connecticut kept weaving back and forth, and we kept paddling and paddling. At one turn, a forty-foot-long, ten-foot-high metal bulkhead was driven into the bank. Ramsay pulled in just past the bulkhead. While he lit up a Carlton and popped a Bud Light, I got out and climbed to the top of the bulkhead. On the other side, not a hundred yards away, there was the river. Left to its own devices, the Connecticut would have breached that hundred yards, but due to the bulkhead it was forced to stay the course. That meant we were going to have to paddle a mile to the west, make the loop, and paddle a mile back to the east, all for a hundred yards. “Damn,” I said as I climbed back into the canoe and gave Ramsay the bad news. “The maps must be in road miles.”

“Either that, or we’re lost.”

“Lost! How can we be lost? Nobody gets lost on a river. It only goes one way.”

After a while, another yellow-and-black school bus rumbled by, but this one was empty. It had dropped off all its students and was heading back to the barn. We’d been paddling for at least six hours. During that time, we hadn’t seen a soul. Ramsay kept pulling out the Guide and saying Maidstone Bridge had to be around the next bend, but after a half dozen next bends, neither of us believed it. As impossible as it might seem, we were lost.

I’d picked a mountain to try to monitor our progress, but it wasn’t getting any closer. As the river kept weaving, the mountain kept moving slowly back and forth like a cat’s tail. Finally, I saw what looked like a sizable tributary coming in from the left. “Ramsay,” I said, “Give me the map. That river’s got to be on the map.”

Ramsay zipped open his duffel, took out his waterproof bag, and handed me the Guide. I opened it to the map for North Stratford to Guildhall, a span of twenty-three miles. “Ramsay, if I’m reading this map right, that river up ahead is the Upper Ammonoosuc, and that mountain is Cape Horn. If that’s the case, the next takeout is about four miles downriver at Northumberland.”

“Northumberland? Impossible. That’s where we’re stopping tomorrow. Plus, we can’t get there without going under the Maidstone Bridge. It has to be around the next bend.”

Three bends and four miles later, we saw a bridge. “Thank God,” Ramsay said. “I thought we’d never make it.”

“Those look like rapids on the other side of the bridge. Are you sure that’s Maidstone?”

“Has to be. According to the Guide, there’s no rapids after Maidstone. Just give me some speed. Shooting them will be a piece of cake.” With that, Ramsay headed the Mad River right for the center of the bridge.

At that moment, three kids came out of the brush on top of the bank. They were the first people we’d seen on the river. “Hey, is that Maidstone Bridge?” I shouted. They looked at each other, not knowing if they should talk to two coots in a canoe. “Bugsy, ask them what town it is.”

“What town is this?”

“Northumberland,” one of the kids shouted.

“Shit!” Ramsay said, abruptly turning the Mad River towards shore. “Start paddling. If that’s the Northumberland dam, it’s more dangerous than Lyman Falls.” When we reached the shore, there was no place to land. The bank was too steep. Realizing we were in trouble, and probably deciding we were harmless, the three kids scrambled down and held the bow while we climbed out. Once we’d caught our breath, Ramsay said, “Hot damn, you kids saved our asses. Now, could you help us get our bags up the bank?”

To us the bank looked like Mt. Everest, but the kids, boys in their early teens, had no trouble. They grabbed our duffels and like little Tenzing Norgays scooted to the top. Unfortunately, Ramsay and I were no Edmund Hillarys. When we tried to pull the Mad River up onto the bank, we promptly fell in the mud. “We’re never going to get this canoe up there,” Ramsay said. “We’ll be lucky to get ourselves up. Leave it here. We’ll worry about it later.”

“Where?” I said, looking around for something to tie the Mad River onto. There was nothing. The bank was all mud. The best we could do was wrap the bow line around a little bush. That done, we crawled on our hands and knees up the bank. Once on top, I dug out three dollar bills and gave each kid one. A small price for saving us, but then again, I’m not known as a big tipper. When Ramsay asked where he could find a phone, one of the kids said he lived just down the street and volunteered his house. While Ramsay went off with the kids to call Scot Williamson, I sat with the gear. I was looking forward to meeting Scot. I’d seen Ramsay’s card on Scot and it said he worked for the Wildlife Management Institute, a conservation organization headquartered in Washington. I’d done some deals with WMI while I was at the Conservancy and liked the people. They were committed to saving wildlife habitats, so I figured Scot could bring us up to date on conservation efforts along the river. Ramsay came back with the kid’s father in tow. The father worked the second shift at the James River Paper Mill in Groveton. He had a few minutes to kill before he had to go and was using them to bend Ramsay’s ear about the river. He couldn’t believe we’d paddled from North Stratford to Guildhall in one day. “With all those bends,” he said, “that’s a hell of a long way.”

“How long?” I said.

“At least twenty-three miles, maybe more, and let me tell you, you were smart not to run that dam. Most people who try it, even the good ones, get busted up, some of ’em pretty bad.”  We were still chatting with the father when Scot Williamson drove up. Scot was a big, outdoorsy type with broad shoulders bulging under a plaid work shirt. After a crushing handshake, he took a quick inventory of our equipment. “Where’s your canoe?”

We pointed down to the river.

“That current’s pretty strong,” he said. “We better bring it up.”

Before we could tell Scot we’d tried and fallen on our faces, he slid down the bank, grabbed the bow of the Mad River, with one hand, and pulled it up. We liked Scot immediately. On the way to Scot’s house, he stopped to show us the Maidstone Bridge. It turned out to be the rusted metal trusses and rotting planks I thought were a deserted railroad bridge.

“Damn,” I said, “we were here three hours ago.”

“I guess I should have told you the bridge was closed,” Scot said, “but I figured you’d see it on your maps.”

“I pack the maps in my bag to keep them dry,” Ramsay said. “Once we’re on the river, we could be in Montana for all we know.”

“Here’s what you need,” Scot said, removing a couple of slim, green pamphlets from the glove compartment of his pickup. “You can keep these right in your life vests.” The pamphlet, entitled Boating on the Connecticut River in Vermont and New Hampshire, was published by the Connecticut River Joint Commissions, an advisory body created by the states of New Hampshire and Vermont to help guide growth and protect the resources of the Connecticut River Valley.

Like CRWC’s The Complete Boating Guide to the Connecticut River, the Joint Commissions’ pamphlet contained a series of maps buffered by a running narrative, only the Joint Commissions’ narrative was not as detailed as CRWC’s. The pamphlet just covered Vermont and New Hampshire, which is why it was small enough to slip into a life vest. “Scot,” I said, studying the series of bends we’d just traversed, “we saw some real expensive bulkheading on one of these turns. Why would anybody spend all that money to keep the river from breaching? Why not let it follow its natural course?”

“Property taxes,” Scot said. “The river’s the boundary between New Hampshire and Vermont. If a piece of land moves from one state to the other it’s going to be reassessed, and that could mean higher taxes; so if a farmer sees the river’s getting ready to breach, he might figure in the long run it’d be cheaper to put in a bulkhead.”

I was glad I asked. I wouldn’t have thought of that in a hundred years.

Used with permission of Lyons Press / ©2009 by David E. Morine and Paul H. Flint

http://www.amazon.com/Two-Coots-Canoe-Unusual-Friendship/dp/0762754591