Am I my craft? My process? My finished pieces? Or am I what makes my art have life? Or does it define me?
Parts of us shine through what we do. However, it does not define us. We make what we make because we enjoy it. Just because I write murder mysteries doesn't make me a serial killer or Sherlock Holmes. For instance, I absolutely love Sci-FI and Dystopia, yet I'm not locked in to only writing that. I'm going to tell you a story about a hilarious memory I just thought of, I call it "ShipWreck'd."
June. School is finally out. Sun is unbearable. Boredom creeping in. We need something to do. My dad has this wonderful idea, in order to kill this insipid feeling with a boat, not any boat. . . . a canoe. He wanted to go canoeing down the Dowagiac creek. A supposed clean, easy, novice creek and with it plenty of options. One of which was to keep following it until we hit the river after a good five miles or so. We, my nephew and I as the dumb kids we were, definitely wanted to do something dangerous and live a little. HE CAN’T SWIM.
“Ready to head out, Pops?”
No answer.
“Is he still talking with Mom?” Aiden fidgets with his backpack straps.
“I can’t tell who won’t stop talking, pops or Sarah.” I readjust my folded arms and begin to pace.
We wait. We wait. We wait some more. And finally–
“You guys about ready?” Dad finally is finished discussing whatever was so important with my sister.
“YES!” we shout in unison.
We were at an access point off of the Dowagiac Creek, near where my church was at the time. I knew it quite well not because of Sundays, but because it was also my grade school bus stop for quite a few years. There is this intersection where all the roads meet, about a halfway point, we called it “5-mile.” Five miles to everything in every direction. Whichever way you took, you could end up where you wanted to go, might take longer, but there was room for possibility. The opposite route was the pickup spot and the one by Sacred Heart was the dropoff. My sister offered to go to the pickup along with my mom. We unpack, keep valuables in the car, and prepare on our journey. After of course we spend five minutes looking at the animal chart. Did you know mink frogs like moving water? I always thought frogs liked stagnant lake water.
“Here it is,” the guy who sells and rents canoes says (I have no idea what his position would be called. We go with canoe rental man.)
Pops begins to talk to the guy and asks questions but we couldn’t be bothered. I just wanted to get in the water. I am terrified of boats and this was the first chance and opportunity for me to get on a canoe. Before this I never wanted to get on a boat, period. Aiden was just as guilty, he didn’t like them AND couldn’t swim. Quite the combination.
We get into the canoe and push off. So it begins.
What we expected to be a “novice” creek, we were met with nothing but sheer chaos. The man swore they cleaned the creek and river of any and all debris, but yet there was nothing but debris. In fact, not just debris, full sized trees were in the water. Sandbars and extremely shallow water in parts where you had to walk or crawl with the oars over mounds and mounds of branches and tree limbs. Extremely deep and strong rapids that felt like you were floating down the Whitewater Rapids in Tennessee with a raft. A great experience for two kids with no experience and a single man, my father, manning the mariner duty. We eventually come to this massive tree leaning over the water. There was absolutely no way over it, and under it was going to be a pain with how low it was. We had to crawl under it. For those afraid of spiders, this wasn’t a great experience. Luckily I liked spiders because there were webs everywhere. Reminded me of a graveyard, but instead of zombies or ghosts, there were the antlions from Half-Life.
After finally managing the past, we come to extremely deep water. Which isn’t totally unexpected since it turns into the Dowagiac River. The water began to pull us and the canoe was pushed diagonally. We were floating sideways for a bit and for some ungodly reason after we get the boat situated again, Aiden grabbed a branch. Not just any branch, a long branch. Of course we continue forward and he is still holding it. Mind you, Aiden was in the front, I’m in the middle, and Pops is in the back rowing. The tension builds and he lets go. I duck and it hits Dad right in the face like a whip. Wa-push! My dad is a big guy and the weight of one of us falling overboard had the whole canoe going to Davy Jones' Locker. The whole boat spun over and water quickly filled it as it knocked everyone off. I thank God to this day I could swim.
I, after climbing out and surfacing, found footing on a branch underwater. From what I saw when I was under, it was a good fifteen or more feet deep of water. I couldn’t see the bottom, but I could see the shores of the creek go down and down and down. That branch is what made flipping the canoe back over possible. With the help of Dad on the shore and me pushing from underneath it we got it up. The problem was the shoreline was a good six feet up, extremely steep slow that just dropped off. Pops threw Aiden up onto the shore. Then we were able to flip it because Aiden was freaking out (because he couldn’t and still can’t swim.)
The rest of the trip went smoothly and we were able to get to the pickup spot before it became the actual river.
See? Even though I hate writing memoirs, I still can and do enjoy it. So do not bound yourself in something because you don't like it or "it isn't me." How do you know it isn't you unless you try it first?
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