AARDVARK ROW
KATHLEEN SAVILLE: Writing about water and expeditionsAdmiral Byrd’s “Alone” and the explorer
May 2010, Holland, Vermont
I just finished reading famous old Arctic American explorer Richard Byrd’s book entitled Alone. It’s about the 7 months he spent at the southern most camp in Antarctica in 1933. He is an admiral now and has an impressive record of polar exploration under his belt. As the noble explorer he is, Byrd determines that he is the only one who should spent 7 winter months in the Advance Camp collecting meteorological information by himself. There were others who wanted to do the same or share time with him, but he determines that he alone is best for the job. Besides, he tells the readers, he needs time to himself since he has been so busy doing all that it takes to be Admiral Byrd (Ret).
There are several themes running through his narrative that I recognize from my time as an explorer. If, however, I compare my expeditions to his, we might say his had wider reaching objectives like measuring temperatures and noting weather patterns in remote regions of the world like Antarctica or the North Pole. But, I note that the information he collected was useful to the US government and might in fact been collected for that purpose since the US wanted claim on the territories of the Antarctica at this time. So Byrd was in effect furthering hegemonic intentions of America in this part of the world.
Our expeditions were almost purely for the sake of self-exploration. We learned about the world ourselves and not from a National Geographic magazine though we both had grown up with National Geo in the house. Perhaps they helped fuel a desire to explore on our own.
Back to the familiar themes in Byrd’s book. Theme one: Ego. Important because without an ego, you can’t believe that you will survive. That ego is built up with each successful expedition that is carried out. A certain amount of arrogance is also developed and I think, it helps.
Theme two: Presumption. Presumption is about assuming, without a doubt, that other will be so impressed by your expedition that they will do whatever they can to help you. And it works for the most part. I see this in Byrd’s story: many people helped him because of who he was and by association, they were part of the expedition.
Theme three: Assumption. A potential Achilles heel of all explorers. An explorer assumes she or he has the ability to carry out the expedition successfully based on previous expedition success. Assumption on the part of the explorer may lead them to take chances that may not be advisable. This appeared the case with Byrd’s decision to winter at Advance Camp alone. I remember an old sailor chiding us for assuming we could easily row and sail Excalibur amongst the icebergs and unpredictable weather conditions along the northern Labrador coast. We were full of self-assurance and a certain amount of arrogance coming off a high from our successful Atlantic Ocean row and it seemed very apparent to us, we were capable of almost anything with our rowboat. After all, we had defied the odds and proved some people wrong when they said it was impossible to row at sea. The expedition on the northern Labrador coast indeed challenged our navigation and survival skills almost to our limits.
I recognize all these themes running throughout Alone though Byrd does not address them as such. He is self-deprecating and the book is readable because of it. He also has a macho thing going on: a man must do what a man must do despite the odds against survival. Every day is about survival.
I think at one time in the history of exploration, these kinds of stories, those of man pitted against nature, were a sure sell. David versus Goliath. But when I look at the circumstances of Byrd’s difficulties, living alone for 7 months in a badly vented underground cabin in the Antarctic winter, I don’t really admire him. It’s all too obvious he chose his predicament willingly and assumed because of who he was to the world of exploration: Admiral Richard Byrd, conquer of the Poles, he was entirely capable of surviving the dangerous circumstances he put himself into.
And so, I look at our expeditions and I feel the same way sometimes and especially now, with the perspective of time (25 years). When I read about someone else’s expeditions now, the times are different and the tough ass card can’t be played as it once was. In our case, I could play the lost sextant and Polynesian navigation card and show through my writing how brilliant we were to survive it all. Gag. But, that’s not where it’s at now. It seems that instead of showing how tough you are to overcome nature, it’s about showing how vulnerable you are in overcoming nature. But which is more honest?
Tuna Tag: Samoa to Vanuatu
Sharks At Sea
Rowing from Samoa to Vanuatu
Blood erupted near the boat. The tuna fish was being eater alive by the brown shark as Curt pulled it in. He got mad and puller harder. The tuna practically flew out of the water and I put up my arms to protect myself. The 60 pound tuna that landed on deck had been eaten like an apple around its core. The shark raced up to the gunwales and then disappeared. A minute later the boat started rocking violently. The boat’s rudder was being banged around by the shark.
“Jesus Christ. The bastard. Let’s play tag with it. Like John Fairfax.”
“I don’t know,” I said. It sounded like a dangerous idea. Our boat was only 25 feet long and the shark was about five feet. The area we would be “playing” from was only nine feet of crowded deck space. An imaged of Fairfax’s bitten arm also flashed to mind. A miscalculated grab at the shark with his grappling hook left him with a forearm that looked a lot like our tuna.
I crouched by the bow cabin door while Curt leaned against the stern cabin, looking off the port gunwale. The shark had reappeared beside the boat. He wasn’t going away.
Curt looked over me and I barely nodded my head. It was tempting to see what would happen if we dangled a little bit of the tuna over the side. We started with the innards which were splayed out on the deck. The tuna was a sorry sight though no longer alive. The shark gobbled up the offering.
“Let’s see the knife,” and Curt cut its head off and threaded a one inch braided rope through its gills and mouth. He wiped his bloody hands on his shorts and got ready to swing the head over the gunwale.
“Hold it,” I yelled and dove in the bow cabin searching for the camera. Curt paused and braced himself. Right foot on the edge of the gunwale and left foot wedged under the lip of the deck water pump. I leaned against the bow cabin with the Nikon SLR around my neck, hands at the ready. Ready to take photographs and ready to grab Curt if the shark tugged a little too hard.
In one fluid motion, he lifted his right arm with the tuna head daggling off the end and flung it with a sharp snap of his wrist. Like an old mangled softball. Before the tuna even landed in the water, the shark was reaching for it. Bam! It was a strike and Curt had to grab the rope with both hands to stop it from disappearing over board. The head was tied to a ten-foot piece of rope that we needed to keep.
I started photographing and got caught up with the excitement. “This is crazy. It’s like playing tag with an out of controlled dog,” Curt managed. His arm muscles were straining with the violence of the shark’s reaction. The port gunwale dipped precariously as Curt pushed against it with his foot. He tugged hard on the rope while the shark kept up the pressure. “You wanna try it?” I was tempted. I couldn’t imagine when I would ever have such a chance again. But then, I realized how dangerous this game was.
We were admittedly bored after endless days at sea in the rowboat and looking for something to revive us. The days could be monotonous: Sunrise. Row for 6 hours. Eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Sunset. Do the star sights. Write in our logs. Sleep. The next day, do it all over again. There was a distinct quality of sameness about our existence on the rowboat that made us feel bored at times. Tuna tag was the perfect anecdote. But it was very dangerous.
The shark was still up for the game and Curt was looking at me. I said no. But then I said, “How are we going to get rid of it? That shark’s going to follow us from now on.” I could imagine it just below the surface when I washed dishes or even worse whenever I hung my bottom over the side to pee. Though our last encounter with aggressive sharks was seven months earlier off the South American coast, the memory was still fresh. The fear from the nightly bumping of the hull was still there. I didn’t want to go through that again.
“We have to shoot it,” I said. “It’s not going to go away otherwise.” We both looked at the dark shape swimming just below the surface. The rope was now trailing limply in the water. The tuna head was completely gone. Frayed ends of the rope floated gently beside the boat. And there was blood in the water.
The headless tuna was lying crosswise on the deck and its’ blood dipping slowly into the ocean through the drain hole in the stern rowing station. There was no way we could clean up the deck without dipping a bucket in the sea. But neither of us was particularly anxious to dip anything in the ocean now.
I turned to crawl int the bow cabin, put the camera on the pad by my side and reached around the radio set on the shelf in the bow. At the very bow of the cabin, set in the wall, was a round hatch with a covering. With my arm extended blindly towards the hatch, I hooked my fingers in the depressions and turned it until it opened. I scrounged around, feeling for the plastic bag. The bag with the handgun was wrapped in one of Curt’s old faded bandanas. I pulled it out and unwrapped it carefully. I had only practiced with it once on land. Out here, on the ocean, Curt was the shooter.
Again, he braced himself on the deck while I stood by the bow hatch watching. The shark was still there. Curt reached down and fired a couple of shots. They didn’t appear to have any affect. He shot again and the shark faltered and after another two shots, it pointed downward and sank slowly out of sight. Like a submarine going to depth.
Summer 1985
Mississippi Row
Mississippi Rowing
Now and then
September 2005
As I sit in the airport lounge, sipping my Sam Adams draft beer for what is going to be a very long time (I’m heading back to Cairo tonight), I skim the headlines of the day’s New York Times. The big story is the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. There are many sub stories about the flooding of New Orleans, putting up of thousands of people in the Superdome and the disruption of transporting goods on the Mississippi River and through pipelines carrying gasoline and other liquid products.
I read further and learn that the barge system responsible for shipping half of the US’s grain exports is in trouble – its system of towboats and barges disrupted by Katrina.
Half way though the NY Times article, I start reminiscing about my row down the Mississippi in the summer of 1982. With an 18’ rowboat christened “Guinevere” that we built in northern Vermont, Curt and I rowed the entire length of the river from the headwaters at Lake Itasca to Head of the Passes just south of New Orleans.
The day before we finished the summer long row, we had been in New Orleans with our rowboat tied up to a moored barge at a tow company located directly on the river. We had secured Guinevere with spring lines to ensure she floated up and down safely with the ever-present surges in the river level caused by passing barges and ships.
Our new friends, John and Pete, were not so fortunate. After a night of partying in the French Quarter, the four of us returned to the Mississippi to find their canoe crushed as the result of tying their boat too tightly to the moored barge and the shoreline. The nearby mud bank had suddenly collapsed and tossed the canoe hard against the moored barge. Our boat, on the other hand, floated serenely at its mooring just a few feet from theirs. The spring lines, a series of four lines tied at oblique angles to each other, had saved us.
=-=-=-=-=-
The Mississippi was a constant challenge the whole way down to New Orleans. We always had to be aware of what was going on in front of us, behind us and in our immediate area.
The northern most part of the river was full of recreational boaters, fishermen, duck hunters and wild rice harvesters. Our green fiberglass rowboat moved among all without a sound. We covered five to ten miles a day. The only battle we had with the river in the far north was with the mosquitoes and deerflies.
In Minneapolis / St. Paul, the river changed and our easygoing pastoral rowing odyssey was transformed. We rowed through the first lock and dam and experienced its impressive rising and falling of the lock waters as we passed from level to level.
In the middle Mississippi, we locked through 27 dams. We became old pros at the business of locking through. We’d caught the attention of the lockmaster by waving when we were alone or join the queue of waiting powerboats. Our biggest challenge in this stretch was rowing through the choppy waters left by speed crazy powerboats.
The heat was intense on the river in mid July. One day I started crying out of sheer exhaustion as we were trying to stay afloat in a wake left from several barbecue boats that came too close. I didn’t realize though, that I was suffering from a near heat stroke until we pulled over to the riverbank to rest. We sat for a couple of hours under the tent fly that Curt rigged. My body was burning as I dove into the river to cool off.
It was just south of St. Louis, Missouri when the river changed character significantly. The locks and dams finished at St. Louis where the Missouri River joined the Mississippi. Ahead of us was the wide-open Mississippi River of old story lore and evocative songs. “Keeping on rolling, Mississippi dream, won’t you keep on rolling for me……” went through my mind. Images of the Civil War – the Catfish Front – lay in front of us, or really in back of us since we were rowing.
Cedar and cypress trees draped heavily with black Spanish moss lined the banks. The river was wider but it did not mean there was more room for us. The tows and barges were bigger and more plentiful. We saw daily evidence of the power of the river: mud encrusted trees with clearly marked waterlines that were far above our heads; left over from the previous years’ flood. Sand bars were as plentiful as they had been in the middle Mississippi but here on the lower Mississippi, each night, we were careful to pull the boat up far from the river’s edge. With no dams to control the river’s rise, the height of the water seemed unpredictable to us.
One night we camped on a sand island in a tight bend on the river. The Corp of Engineers chart indicated that the Louisiana State Penitentiary was right across the river from our campsite. The notice to mariners also noted the possibility of alligators anywhere along the river’s edge – sand bars not withstanding. That evening as we lay in the sweltering heat of our tent, a tremendous thunderstorm with vivid lightening broke out. The rain fly on our old North Face tent began flapping madly. Nearby, barges waiting to negotiate the bend by Raccourci Cut-Off gunned their 5000 horsepower engines on and off in an effort to maintain their positions along the river bank.
The next day as we rowed south; huge towboats pushing 40 twenty-foot barges passed by as we dipped our oars in the muddy Mississippi. Bargemen from St. Louis had warned us never to be upstream and directly in front of a barge. A small boat could be sucked in and down the entire length of 40 barges, they said. The idea so horrified us that we always gave tows with barges an extra wide berth.
By the time we reached Baton Rouge we were beginning to question the advisability of swimming in the Mississippi River even after the long sweaty days at the oars. The air was hot and sultry as ever but the river was now an alleyway filled with chemical and gasoline discharge ports. Menacing guard towers overlooked most of the discharge ports.
We rowed by the impressive cut-off to the Achafalaya River and were once again impressed by the US Corp of Engineers efforts to suppress and divert the power of the Mississippi. And once again we gave a wide berth to the cut-off, imagining what could happen if we got too close to the lock that led to the Achafalya. In my mind’s eye I could see the cut-off like a giant whirlpool with grasping fingers, reaching out for our tiny rowboat. We would be helpless in the grip of the Mississippi’s powerful force as it slammed up against the Achafalya dam.
Perhaps it was not likely but looking across the river that day, over to the mammoth lock that guarded the division between the Mississippi and Achafalya Rivers, the river seemed very powerful and our efforts to row it were miniscule and almost laughable.
-=-=-=-=-=
The morning after we found John and Pete’s canoe crushed by the river, we left New Orleans in our bid to complete the row down the Mississippi. John and Pete, at our suggestion, called a local outfitter and secured the loan of a canoe so they could complete their paddle down the river.
Not far from of New Orleans, the landscape turned wild and we were looking at bayou: Houses on stilts, pirogues zooming past us and salt in the air. The day we reached the Head of the Passes, the traffic was heavy on the river. Ships, tows, barges, tugs, and pirogues jostled for space as they either headed inland or out to sea to avoid the beginnings of Hurricane Alicia in the Gulf. Within a couple of hours, we came to Mile 0 and ended our row there.
The river had changed so much from the northern forestland of Lake Itasca to a Corp of Engineers lock and dam controlled river to St. Louis where the dams fell away and the full power of the Mississippi was unleashed.
We developed a lasting respect for the river’s unbending power and energy. Every day as we rowed along the muddy banks, we saw evidence of its strength. Sometimes we’d hear the sounds of a deep thud and plop and look over to see a section of bank sliding into the river. Nowhere was this so evident as at Natchez, Mississippi. We stopped there one day and tied up to a solitary barge. In front of us, the broken uneven riverbank extended upward like a ravaged muddy face. Most of Natchez, with only a couple of its original streets left, was set way back from the river now. It had given up years ago trying to compete with the Mississippi.
April 6, 2010
Holland, Vermont
Pink Boat in the Barn
NOTE: The Pink Boat in the Barn is written about the time when we built our ocean rowboat Excalibur in a barn in southern New England. Since most of our money went towards the boat project, we had very little left over for living expenses. Tony’s barn where we built Excalibur, became more than just a boat building space.
“The Pink Boat in the Barn”
December 1980
The old cow barn in Touisett, Rhode Island where we built Excalibur was dilapidated from years of nonuse and lack of upkeep. The ceiling of the long cedar shingled structure was covered with moldy building boards that were loosely nailed to the ceiling joists. Frayed wires poked through ceiling holes, some extending down with a low wattage light bulb dangling off the end. We replaced the ones hanging directly over Excalibur with clean, 100-watt bulbs and suddenly the barn looked worse.
On either side of the boat were poop-covered remnants of wooden stalls that cows had once lived in. Tony, the owner of the barn, still kept hay at the far end next to the bunny hutch. Tony’s barn – boat building space cost us 100 bucks a month, a sum we could barely put together after daily expenditures on fiberglass and marine plywood for the deck and hatches, stainless steel bolts and nuts, and various other marine sundry. To build a boat and have some sort of living expenses, we needed to find sponsors and live frugally. Over the year, Tony’s barn became more than just boat building space for us.
In midsummer we got lucky when friends from the Narragansett Boat Club told us about fellow club members, who were looking for house sitters for their c1700 Historic Registry home in southeastern Massachusetts. We stayed there for 2 months. After working with fiberglass all day, we took long hot showers and relaxed on the back patio with our horded cans of Budweiser. From the Ethan Allen four post bed in the early mornings, we could see mist covered green fields outlined with split rail fences. From another window we could see the owner’s charming 18th century garage / horse barn with its white clabber board sliding and barn doors fronted by black wrought iron door handles. I couldn’t imagine any horse ever messing up that barn.
After the summer, we were back to the Tony’s barn living and working full time. For a brief time, we lived in our 1978 brown Pinto wagon that we parked in an old unused cornfield behind the barn. It was late November by then so the ground was hard and the car had no trouble driving over the frozen corn stalks to our spot. We set up our sleeping bags in the back of the Pinto and continued to plan the ocean row as we drifted off to sleep.
We didn’t always have to sleep in the car, however. There were times when we scraped a few dollars together so we could stay in a motel somewhere along Route 6 in Massachusetts. Once I suggested we stop at a motel I knew was managed by an in-law to a cousin. I figured they would give us a break on the rate since we were distantly related. They didn’t go for it and refused to take our $25. They wanted $35 so we drove off.
As the weather become colder, Curt, in his orange down vest and down pants from his climbing days, worked with the single-minded dedication of someone driven to succeed at all costs. In my multi-layered turtlenecks with sweatshirts and cords, I alternated between boat building and typing out letters to potential sponsors from the front seat of the Pinto. Many evenings we would walk out of the barn to be greeted by the constellation of Orion in the clear winter sky.
After a short hiatus, at a relative’s empty house in Sakonnet, Rhode Island, we moved into the bow cabin of the boat thought it was still unfinished. Living in Excalibur, which was set in a boat cradle on the filthy cement walkway, was an experience. Though Tony had long been out of farming, he still kept a few chickens and rabbits around. It was in that barn that I learned that roosters crowed at all hours of the day and night and not just at daybreak. There wasn’t anything barnyard charming about those roosters.
One day, wanting to take a break from boat building and typing letters, I followed two around the yard, watching with increasing fascination as one rooster chased the other. I knew one was the father of the other since I had observed their short life span from chick to full-grown rooster over the months. The younger rooster was chasing the older one, his father and it wasn’t for fun. At times the younger one would catch up to the father and furiously peck at his head that was rapidly becoming bloody. Finally the father escaped into part of a darkened outbuilding where rooster the younger couldn’t find him. I found him though and kneed down to peer under the farm machinery to see the old rooster hiding and panting heavily in fear from his frantic near escape. I realized that the son was in the process of taking over as the new alpha rooster of the barnyard. The old rooster I was looking at knew this and as much as one can sense fear from a simple creature like a chicken, I could tell he knew his days were limited.
In late February 1981, the boat was finished. The day we left the barn, Tony and his wife and son came out to say goodbye and wish us well. Tony told us he had seen us when we were building the boat and he wanted to see us when we got back. He had repeated this several times over the year and it now felt like a good luck mantra. We were ready to load the boat onto a freighter and set off for Casablanca, Morocco, the starting point of the Atlantic row.
Cairo 12/11/09
A Writer at the Gihon River
Writer at the Gihon River
January 2010
This is the second time I have seen the long tailed weasel as I try to get down to work this morning. The river is presenting him with a challenge and a wonderful source of distraction for me as the ice is in the process of breaking up.
Last night in the gentle dusky light of the early evening, I heard clunking ice sounds outside my window. The water was in motion. It was no longer limited to a narrow irregularly shaped opening down the center. The ice was singing as it resettled and expanded itself within the narrow confines of the Gihon. The night air outside my window was cold and smelled earthy. The wet dirt smell at this time of year was tantalizing.
This morning however, there is no gentle rippling of a coldwater river but a lumpy ice jam. Grey spikes of chunky ice and striped tree branches protrude from the river’s surface in all directions. Under the nearby bridge, is a 20-foot opening in the ice. The dark brown water must be going under the ice jam but there is no obvious movement yet. I’m hoping to see some and perhaps a little violence of colliding misshapen blocks of ice. With luck, it could spew upward and spill over the banks directly below my window.
Twice this morning, I have seen the long sleek body of the weasel as he runs along the river’s edge. First one way on the far bank and then the other way on my side. He must have crossed over the bridge. Or maybe he skittered across the ice jam when I wasn’t looking.
Long tailed weasels, mustala frenata, live everywhere in Vermont including woodlands, areas between field and forests and open fields. They are happy almost anywhere as long as they have a water source nearby. This past week’s thaw has invited him out into the open and along the river’s edge. According to the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Factsheet, weasels do most of their hunting during the night when perhaps this one began his search.
The ice jam and the weasel distract me from my task of writing a series of reflective essays on my ocean rowing. So now, I want to see the river ice suddenly heave upwards and shake the foundations of Maverick Studios. I want to see the weasel run back and forth on the ice jam until challenged by one that breaks from the rest and he is forced to jump in and swim for it. Or, maybe he’ll merely drift down river on a floe and hop off when he reaches shore. Nothing like this has happened so far.
I’ll try to tear my eyes away from the scene outside my window. But first one last look around.
12:35 pm
Update:
The 20 foot gap under the bridge has filled in and there is no longer any open water. The sky is full of drifting snowflakes and the temperature is getting colder. It’s as if winter is pulling itself back from going towards spring. At least I can see a little open water at the river’s edge.
Chesuncook Lake, USA
Chesuncook Lake, Maine, USA
Late summer 1979
The notes floated over the placid lake, gently settling in the darkness around us. I sat back and felt myself relax the muscle tensions built up over a day of rowing on the Penobscot River. Curt paused and then continued playing Mozart’s horn concerto # 3, fingering the keys with great familiarity. One by one the notes built to a crescendo and then they were finished. Silence followed, filling the space of sound as each notes faded one by one.
We looked at each other and smiled. There couldn’t be anything more perfect than an evening on the shores of Chesuncook Lake; at a tent campsite listening to Curt’s Mozart horn concertos on his French horn. All these years later, I wonder how many people that summer in their cabins on the shores of Chesuncook Lake, a remote lake in northern Maine, heard his impromptu concert. How many people wondered where such beautiful music came from as it drifted about in the night air.
Written 2009
Nile River, Egypt
A Row on the Nile
2007
I joined the Egyptian Rowing Club last month. At least once a week I leave work and go to the Club for a row.
The ERC situated along the Cornice in Doqqi, is one of many rowing clubs on the Nile. To the northwest by five miles, is the Giza plateau where the Old Kingdom pyramids of Cheops, Kufu, Khefren and their assorted mustabas are located. I’m not rowing exactly in the shadow of the great pyramids but they aren’t far away.
The taxi to ERC goes along the Nile on the island of Gezira where I work. We pass the great mosque in Midan Kit Kat on the Giza side. Many of the old, atmospheric houseboats described by Naguib Mafous in his Egyptian novels, still line the shore. Sometimes I row up to them, as they are only a short distance of a mile or so from the club.
The club consists of two buildings: a modern glossy marble edifice with an open dining terrace and in a garage like area where some of the rowing shells are stored. Other shells are in the blue and white wooden houseboat attached to the marble building by pylons.
When I come in the boat club, I head for the houseboat looking for Magdy, one of the boat club safragis. I check with Magdy that a boat is available and that he can help me get on the water. Mohamed, the keeper of the keys, unlocks the women’s locker room where I change.
When I come out, Magdy is taking the rowing ‘canoe’ off the stretchers for me with a helper. I carry my own oars down to the dock. Initially I didn’t like the idea of someone carrying my boat and holding it while I got in. But I’ve changed, am I getting philosophical or just going with the culture? Besides, the boat is a very heavy wooden lapstraked shell and the dock is high above the Nile.
The current flows north at a fairly steady pace. One could just sit and steer the rowboat easily and arrive to Midan Kit Kat not too long after someone who is rowing. I have to keep this in mind because the row back to the ERC can be long and arduous against the current.
All my years of rowing in college, at the Narragansett Boat Club and on the Atlantic and Pacific oceans come back to me as I row alongside the banks of the Nile. Despite all the miles I’ve rowed alone on this river, I still like rowing with a partner better. The current whips under the bridges as I head toward Midan Kit Kat. Occasionally a kissy noise reaches me from the railings of bridges I row under. I don’t have to look to know who and why.
Clumps of water lilies float by the boat. A working felucca crosses the river ahead of me, ferrying people from Gezira Island to the Giza side. I row on; entranced by the smooth motion of the oars as I push them forward and with a flick of the wrists, drop the oar blades in the water. Since I’m going with current, the pull through is easy and the oar handles are back in my lap ready to be pushed away over and over. The waves are minimal, barely a ripple to contend with. Then 25 minutes later, I reach Midan Kit Kat and turn around to start back to the ERC. But off the port oar is a strange black fuzzy thing in the water. I paddle closer and on closer inspection I see it is a man’s wig! A toupee, perhaps? I can imagine the circumstances of its arrival into the Nile. A man walking with his wife or girlfriend along the Nile on a hot summer’s eve. A sudden gust of wind lifts up the toupee and he is cooler than he wants to be on top.
When I get back to the boat club, hot and tired, Magdy and his assistant are waiting to grab my starboard oar. I undo the port oarlock, put my right foot on the footrest and lift myself up and out of the boat. How many times have I done that over the years?
I carry my oars into the boathouse while Magdy follows with the canoe.
June 2007 Cairo, Egypt
Hinbon River, Laos
Hinbon River, Laos 2006
I arrived in Vientiane for my kayak trip and went to the guesthouse that I had stayed in previously. I loved the place because it reminded me of another era, overly romanticized in my mind for sure, of French colonial architecture in Southeast Asian style. Two stories, wrap around wide balcony, banana and palm trees overhanging the house, their branches reaching beneath the roof eaves. In the evenings the sound of cicada filled the warm fragrant air. Geckos of all sizes furtively ran about on the ceilings of the balcony, darting in all directions. In the evenings and very early morning the sound of monks chanting at the nearby Buddhist temples drifted over the small area of the city of Vientiane where I was staying.
The night before leaving on the paddle, I laid in the double bed, the wooden ceiling fan revolving gently above me with the mosquito net gently wafting in the warm air. I felt transported to one of those black and white movies from the 1950s that were set in French colonial Asia. Despite the fact my room didn’t have the French doors the scenario was complete. Heavy rain and the scent of tropical vegetation mingled with smoke from cooking fires seeped between the louvered shutters covering the windows. It was a pity that I had to get up in the morning and set out for my birthday celebration river trip.
It turned out that I was the only one on the Hinbon River trip with a guide who looked to be 17 or 18. I worried briefly, for a few short minutes and then I realized that it was going to be a better trip than I initially thought. Who wanted to socialize with foreigners when it was Laos I came to see? I felt excited.
After an hour of waiting for the 4X4 to arrive with driver, the guide K who had been assembling the food, camping equipment and boats in the dark in the abandoned looking travel outfitters office, said we were now ready to leave. When the driver came, everything was quickly packed and we left Vientiane at 6:30 am. We drove through empty streets lined with old faded looking buildings. Some of them looked decidedly moldy from years of monsoon rains. Vientiane looked tired and peaceful at the same time. We passed a few gold and red temples and saw monks queuing with their rice bowls ready to make their rounds.
The drive to Khamoune province was long. We drove south on the two lane paved national highway through fields of dried vegetation. The three young men accompanying me on this drive were the driver, a friend of the driver and my guide. They were polite and made an effort to include me in their conversations. In reality, only 2 of them spoke English but the driver looked as though he was following along as the other two practiced their English with me over lunch at a small open-air restaurant. We all had noodle soup while the men had a side of fried chicken. Avian flu or bird flu was the big talk in Egypt at that time and before I left Cairo, I had made an effort to know what was the situation on bird flu in Laos. I seriously reconsidered whether I should go on the trip at all since undoubtedly I would be around poultry in the villages where we would be staying. Both the Lao government website and CDC website did not indicate the presence of bird flu so I decided it was probably safe to go despite the fact the neighboring countries of Thailand and Cambodia had reported large outbreaks. Of course, I could hardly imagine a poor country like Laos and one whose government is communist ruled, would readily admit to having bird flu much less say if anyone had died of it. I knew I was taking a chance but that added to the adventurous aspect of this 50th birthday paddle.
At the end of a very long day of driving, we pulled off the highway and drove onto a rutted dirt road, past wooden bamboo houses on stilts. We were getting closer to where we would spend our first night before beginning the river paddle the next day. Soon we drove into a rural village scattering chickens as we bumped along. We stopped in front of a large bamboo thatched house on stilts. The group of women and children sitting on the stairs chatting stopped when we pulled up and looked at us with curiosity. This was where K and I were going to spend the night. It was the house of the village chief.
We had arrived at 4 in the afternoon and night wasn’t for what felt like a long time. If I had wanted to experience rural Lao life, I had arrived in the thick of it. Since it was so hot and humid, one of the first things I did was change out of the pants I had worn from Vientiane and put on a sarong. Everyone, men and women in the village wore them. Mine of South Pacific style with breadfruit trees and huts in bright red and yellow colors contrasted with theirs of the typical stripped Lao – Humong dark colors.
I spent the remains of the afternoon in the house, with the male village leader who seemed to spend most of his time lying on a mat receiving visitors. I wrote in my diary and read a little. Finally I got tired of sitting on the floor, there were no chairs, and not being able to speak to anyone, I decided to ask my guide to take me for a walk through the village. The whole village consisted of about 15 stilted houses with lots of animals running around including suspicious looking chickens.
Throughout the entire trip I saw chickens that I was sure were diseased as many of them were missing feathers on their heads if not entire bodies. Since there was nothing I could do about their presence in my vicinity, I made a concerted effort not to go near them. The funny thing was that quite often in nearly every house I stayed, chickens would climb up the ladders leading to the open veranda space where I sat and sleep and walk right by me.
In the early evening, since there was no running water in the house, I asked my guide to show me the way down to the river to bath. It was still very hot and muggy and I was dying to clean myself up from the days’ travel. Also I had observed, from my perch at the headman’s house, women and men walking by with towels draped over their arms and bars of soap in plastic bags. They were going somewhere for a bath. I imagined they were going to a village washhouse but when I asked my K, he said it was to the river they went to bath. In remaining twilight, we walked through the village and down a narrow path through the cornfield to the river.
At the bank of the river in the dwindling daylight, K easily made his way over protruding tree roots growing at the river’s edge. I hesitated as I could tell the soil was claylike and probably slippery. Desire to cool off overcame caution and I slithered my way down to the river to bath in my sarong like the girl who had come with us. Afterwards like the girl, I changed into clean sarong. I found throughout my entire river trip, though none of the villages had running water, grid electricity and in some cases no roads to the outside, everyone was practically religious about their personal hygiene; making it a ritual to go down to the river in the evening to bath. On the way back to the village, I looked up and saw a shooting star. I called out to K and together we watched star’s trail glitter over the soft blackness of the night sky.
Feeling cooler and cleaner and pleasantly full from a dinner of noodles and vegetables, I laid down on my mat behind the sheet the headman’s wife set up for me. The mat was surrounded by a mosquito net that kept the mosquitoes out but trapped the heat in. The family slept behind a palm-thatched wall fitted with a door. Village chickens settling in for the night, clucked outside in the quiet that fell over the night while dogs let out an occasional bark. After a while, I fell asleep half listening to the sounds of K’s voice as he conversed quietly with the headman’s oldest daughter.
The next morning we started early, after a light breakfast. The headman’s son backed the tractor trailer out from under the house that would carry us, our gear and kayaks to the Hinbon River’s edge a couple of mile away. The tractor was like no other vehicle I had ever seen. Two long bars extended from the single front wheel towards the driver while we sat in the small trailer pen. The whole get-up had a look that reminded me of a Lao farmer gone Harley Davidson motorcycle rad. We passed water buffalos cooling off in the early morning temperatures in rice patties.
