June 2006

Rivers and Rain

            I have a new sweatshirt that says, “Missouri” across the front, with the words, “Current River” underneath.  I got it on vacation when two friends and I went to the Ozark Riverways to get in some good canoeing this Spring.  We had previously been to the Adirondacks to canoe in the wilderness areas there.  We had been to Canada and the UP in Michigan.  But we had never been that far West or South.  I like the sweatshirt, except for one thing — it is a reminder that I never put a paddle in the Current River.  I wanted to; I planned to, but I did not.  With canoes tied on the top of our vehicles we drove for many hours.  We figured that we would miss the crowds and the bugs by going in early Spring.  We did, but we did not miss the Spring rains. 

            The first night was great.  We had a nice fire and crawled into our tents in anticipation of scenic days and meals beside our campfire in the Ozark wilderness.  But the rains that had been hanging out in Texas came our way.  It began raining in the middle of the night.  The next morning it was miserable, and we decided to scout the put-ins and take-outs, plotting our course while waiting to get on the river until the next morning.  It rained off and on most of the day.  That night the heavens opened and it began raining so hard that I thought, “Oh good, it is raining so hard it will be over quickly.”  Wrong!  It stormed furiously all night.  At one point I opened the tent and shined my flashlight out to see if the water was covering the ground, but I couldn’t see much.  I didn’t sleep well because of the noise of the storm, and when morning came, the water from the ground had found its way into my tent.  We were about to eat breakfast when the ranger came by and said that the campground was being evacuated immediately because of the danger of flooding, and the river was “closed.”  After we rolled up our sopping wet equipment and slammed it into the vehicles, we went to look at the river.  It was raging, rising just inches from the bottom of the bridge on which we were standing.  Logs were being pushed down the river by the powerful current and water cut into the banks.

            As we stood there looking at the swollen river with all the dangers brewing in it, we realized that if we had started on the river the first day instead of waiting, we would have been stranded — or worse.  We probably would have had to walk out of the wilderness area dragging all our gear, if we survived. 

            We wondered out loud about how many things God spares us from in life, and how one day in heaven we will be made aware of all that God, in his mercy, has saved us from.  Out of all that does happen to us, there are innumerable other things from which we have been spared.  It was terrible to not be able to canoe after we had planned the trip for so many months, but it could have been so much worse.  Such is the stuff of life. 

Wet, but grateful,

Rod