Of Woods and Waters: A Kentucky Outdoors Reader

An Excerpt from Rivers of Kentucky (2001)

DAVID DICK AND EULALIE C. DICK An Excerpt from Rivers ofKentucky (2001) THERE ARE TWO THINGS as good as food. One is making love, the other is canoeing on Licking. The three combined make an afternoon in June seem like heaven on earth, mindful that around each bend there can be a message from hell, when gravity and flow get together on the proposition. All the food on the most sumptuous of Tom Jones table spreads, all the love in the most feathery of beds, or buck naked beneath the pawpaw trees, cannot match the thrill of floating from slack water into rapids on Middle Fork of Licking. We turn onto MouthofCedar Road and put in downstream from the mouth of Cedar Creek southwest of Mt. Olivet, eight of us in four canoes. Michael and Miranda lead the way, followed by Barry and Lalie, William and Ravy, and Bill and David. In each canoe, more experienced river rats paddle aft of the unschooled , untried first-timers, fine-tuning the direction of the needle bow with pinpoint precision, canoes being as willowy and vain as they are vulnerable. The authors of Rivers of Kentucky and their daughter ride separately on the slicing edge where the water curls back with a pleasant, deceptively innocent, rippling sound. Bringing up the rear, seventy-year-old David and eightysix -year-old Bill are wise and noble, somber chieftains content to allow younger braves to read the river. With each sound of approaching rapids, Michael, Barry, and Willie stand upright, perfectly balanced in the cool breeze. They calmly study the unpredictable current ahead, looking for 63 the deepest "V" on the water's surface, deciding whether to take the port or starboard side, lay in close to the bank or shoot down the middle where rocks the size of cannonballs lie beneath the surface. Submerged boulders, slick as deer gut on a doorknob, are primed to capsize canoes and disgorge their human contents, young or old, fed or unfed, loved or unloved. The slippery, larger rocks usually don't move. They wait for the moment when the bow of the canoe strikes, lifts, and pivots. The current is constant , pressure insistent. No two rapids, as no two days, are alike. The fallen tree trunk that was not here yesterday could be a threat today, could be swept away tomorrow. Even a slender limb of a fallen silver maple or sycamore acts like a lowered limbo bar. Miranda, Lalie, and Ravy drop their heads as Michael, Barry, and Willie maneuver their canoes through the narrow passage. They come about in the new slack water and look back to watch Bill and David make their approach. David's hand goes up to take the small limb and push it up as he ducks under, as if he were on a riding mower on a lazy Sunday afternoon. This limb on this day does not move. The canoe responds by tipping, water pouring in, David and Bill pouring out. They are like pieces of moon sliding beyond the horizon. Not a pretty sight. Feet seek the bottom of the shallow rapids. Lungs hold on tightly, windpipes automatically slam to the off-position. Knees strike rocks worn as smooth as the Western Wall by millions of kisses. When faces reappear they are drawn, peevish, wrinkled with amazement. Hands claw for the nearest thing to cling to. Swimming is a redundancy. The upside-down canoe is jammed. David's new tape recorder squeaks pitifully as it drowns, the elements of oral history as lost as baby ducks fluttering and failing to follow their warning mother. The reporter's notebook is waterlogged, pages melded, words wiped away as if nothing had ever been written. Wrist watch ticking? It is. John Cameron Swayze'd be proud. (Old-time newsman who saw nothing wrong with selling waterproof watches at the same time he was commentating .) Billfold in hip pocket? Yes. Hen and Rooster whittler 's knife? Yes, but rust is on the way and fused blades can't be far behind. And how is Bill? He's standing in the rapids, water dripping from his face, wondering how in hell he ever got hooked up with a feller who doesn't know a canoe from a riding mower. For a moment the octogenarian seems dazed, but then he speaks, clearly: "I'm all right. A little excitement is good!" Bill is the...