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309 Part Three, Day 1 L.N.V.A. CANAL River Mile 37.4 The morning after the storm, the canal was smooth and lovely, reflecting the still-green trees and the few maples and Chinese tallows which had begun to turn color. The bends are small compared to those of the Neches, and only the first few have sandbars. The canal was constructed in 1925 and, though it is artificial, it follows a series of sloughs and cypress swamps, so retains a natural configuration. One particular cypress swamp on the right is broad and deep and one can paddle about and explore it to some extent. I wanted to save my paddling arm for Cook’s Lake, however, so I passed it by. One bend is especially wide where a slough from the interior of the island enters the canal and becomes like a lake. Daddy and I once came here fishing , and witnessed a sad sight. A mother with her two teenage children, a boy and a girl, had come to picnic and swim. The young people were splashing about in the shallow water near the shore when the girl slipped off into a deep hole. She couldn’t swim, so the brother jumped in to help and was dragged under also. The mother was almost drowned trying to save them, but managed to struggle to shore and go for help. Divers found the bodies while we were there and brought them to shore. Their limbs were frozen in that last moment when the muscles relaxed in unconsciousness and they drifted downward. The air in their lungs, mixed with blood and mucus, oozed out and formed exotic pink foam flowers about their mouths. The mother Part Three Day 2 310 Reflections on the Neches was a pitiable object. I always feel a chill when passing this point, so I was glad to continue down the canal. But this was a beautiful day—quite a few degrees cooler than the day before, thanks to the dry norther which had roared through the night before, and everything was fine, but for some unexplainable reason, I felt a sudden necessity to cut my voyage short and leave the water. There was an exit point a short distance ahead and some cabins where one could possibly find a telephone. I chose one where children were playing about the yard, pulled up to the high bank, tied up my boat, and clambered up by roots and toeholds. My daughter was surprised to get my call and, in the absence of a real reason, I used the excuse that my arthritic shoulder was bothering me, which it was, but not enough to prevent my continuing if I had really wanted to. Since she didn’t know where the little road left the blacktopped Cook’s Lake Road, I arranged to walk to Cook’s Lake Road and meet her there. She misunderstood and waited three hours at a point a mile down the road from where I was standing waiting. She finally went home, I hitched a ride to Burges’ store on the Eastex Freeway and called her to pick me up there, which she did. I used to question these sudden urges to change plans and try to reason them out, but do no longer. There was a reason why I should not continue down the canal to the bayou and thence back to the river. That night, safe at home with aspirin and Pepto-Bismal handy, I developed stomach pains, nausea , and vomiting and continued quite miserably ill for two or three days. I wasn’t sick enough to be totally incapacitated, but that long, hard paddle, most of it against the tide, in such a sorry condition would have been quite an ordeal. I think I would just have put up my tent, crawled into my sleeping bag and waited for the park rangers to make their routine patrols, find me, and haul me home. It’s amazing what wonderful, happy times I can have on the river in between these ignominious starts and finishings. Since I have covered the canal, the bayou, and Cook’s Lake so many times, I will continue to describe them and my experiences there to enlighten my readers. CYPRESS ISLAND River Mile 30 to 37.5 Cypress Island is the eastern three-fourths of the Beaumont Unit of the Big Thicket National Preserve. It was formed when the Lower Neches Valley Authority dredged a canal...

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