Page 118 - "Mississippi in the 1st Person" - Michael James Stone (Demo/Free)

Lessons learned on the Mississippi River are at the least dramatic, at the most costly, and can
prove deadly. I had taken off my PFD, personal flotation device, assuming I was getting ready

to walk on the beaver dam and bank thinking I needed my hands freer than the constraints this
jacket presented.

WRONG.

Don’t know if it was the only hole in front of the dam but I do know the water was cold, the

water deep, and I was still going down before I started swimming up. Breaking surface in great
surprise I looped my arm over the kayak tube and started scissor kicking to get away from the

run off and obvious hole I found in front of the dam.

Not two feet farther up stream my feet were on ground, albeit underwater, but still aground. I
looked around almost expecting to see a beaver, and I am sure I knew what his response would

be to my antics.

This was not the first time I had taken something for granted and learned too late you just can’t
do that. Not when you are the only one around. Solos Safety means safety always and all

ways.

Getting back in the boat all I could think of was every time I got gear or clothes or water shoes
dry, before long they would be wet again.

I had multiple back ups but switch enough times and sure enough I would have to spend a day
letting the sun dry them out, if I had sun. Getting wet was easy, getting dry another proposi-

tion, and I still didn’t understand dew point.

Paddling back to the dam this time I tied to the dam at the opposite end of the overflow. I
walked on the Beaver Dam carefully to where I would need to run the kayaks thru the over-

flow. Mini spears were everywhere but my concern was just the little section of overflow.

This one area had a mishmash of interwoven logs underwater sticking branches up like a
spiked pit you see on TV to kill someone if they fall in.

Looked like the Beaver had that in mind. And not one them just simply lifted out.

Yeah maybe this wasn’t leave it as you found it, or the beauty of the natural, but I made sure no
sharp up stuck branches were going to stab my boat. I could see off to my right the flow of the

river as starting to go around the damn, but that at this shallow and at this time of year was just
a marshy mudders hell I didn’t even think to try to paddle or walk on.

It took a lot longer than it sounds because beaver dams on the Miss aren’t just some trees
branches tossed together. These suckers had to have been woven in there. Water current,

weather and I likely the first to get here this year, I left it natural, but I left it doable.

But it did take time.