Quicksand, Yellow-Headed Blackbirds, and Carp-Bonking:
Canoeing the Potholes Reservoir.

Seattle doesn't seem to be having a summer in this last year of the second millenium. It's cold, it rains like it's winter, it's crummy. When you have a nice new canoe, paddling around in the gloom isn't anyone's idea of fun. It's technically summer. Time to go where it's sunny. So we headed to Potholes State Park near Moses Lake, Washington. If Yakima can call itself "The Palm Springs of Washington," Moses Lake can call itself "The Las Vegas (Without the Gambling and Hookers) of Washington." It's that dry and warm.

We didn't exactly pack light, because we didn't have to. The canoe, a 17-1/2' Tripper, holds 1100 pounds and still leaves 8" of freeboard. Not that we planned to find out first hand. We took a couple coolers, camping gear, cooking gear, a change of clothes, tequila, limes, and... uhh... water.

We loaded the new boat for the first time... tied the load in as best we could, and started paddling amid the jet-skis and bass boats. The yellow-headed blackbirds screeched at each other from the trees like juvenile delinquents, and the carp milled in the shallows, tail-edges out of the water, like politicians at a rally. Our amateur paddling skills took us through the reeds and into stands of bullrushes. We poled over sandbars, ate lunch, contemplated installing cup holders for next trip.

We scouted out a few campsites in the dunes and sandy islands of the lake, and finally settled on our own private desert island with a high bluff on one end. A folding lawn chair sat empty, smack in the middle of the island, facing the sunset, waiting for someone to sit in it and enjoy. It was covered in rust. Coyote tracks and trails of dripped water meandered up the beach. There was just enough breeze, steady and not too hard, to blow any small bugs away.

We unloaded the boat, dragged it up the beach, and made a few trips to the top of the hill with the gear. We squabbled over real estate, my tent taking up more space than Tory's bivy bag. Even in the nicest of camping weather, I like my tent. It's a pretty space, affords a bit of privacy, and it repels the breeze and bugs. Tory opted for some kind of Mountain Man arrangement with a coffin-like camoflage bag on a tarp. It didn't look half bad, even if a bit of nocturnal tossing and turning might land him down the side of the dune and into the lagoon with the muskrats.

There was no coordinated menu; we just brought whatever we felt like eating. We cut up limes for the tequila, made some mashed potatoes, hummus, chili, baked some biscuits... and oops. The stove stopped working and we still wanted tea to go with our cookies. So we collected driftwood from the beach, dug a little pit in the sand and made a fire.

We drank our tea looking at the red coals, listening to the coyotes howling and barking in the distance. Time to turn in...

Next morning we ate leftover hummus, leftover chili, leftover cookies and some lemonade. We each bragged about how fast we could break camp, then did nothing about it. What's the hurry? I could pack the tent, sleeping bag, thermarest and the other gear and be in the boat in ten minutes. Oh, yeah? Moss would grow on you by comparison. I once packed my gear and ate a bowl of granola while outrunning a moose.

The final things packed, we pushed off from the island and set out to find a waterfall Tory knew to be nearby. We got to a place where a river ran into a lake canal, and were stopped by a small drop. This is the waterfall? We could hear another bigger one roaring a distance away. We pulled the boat up on the bank, Tory got out and grew shorter and shorter. He pried himself out of the mud and got back in the boat. "Quicksand."

Wow! I want to experience quicksand! So I got out of the boat, slowly sank into the mud, didn't like it at all, and got back in the boat. It was thick enough to scamper across in a sloppy fashion, not the watery kind of quicksand that we saw on 60's tv westerns where the bad guy would throw the good guys into quicksand then walk away to leave them to sink to their death (and as I recall, the bad guy usually met the same fate, only fatally, nothing but an outstretched arm sticking out of the muck).

We hiked around in the thicket of Russian Olive and other brushy cover. Tory pointed at a tree a distance away. It was the only tree moving, waving around in an unnatural way. Pretty soon a large two-point buck came out of the trees and bounded across the river, obviously not daunted by quicksand and Russian Olive.

It was time to make our way back from the wilds to the very nice park with its manicured green lawns and comfortable shower rooms. People with jet-skis looked (I like to think, admiringly) at our canoe and smiled. Maybe they just couldn't figure out why we didn't motor around like everyone else. But there's nothing like paddling to get back to nature and rediscover the misery of aching muscles and sunburned feet, and bonk the occasional carp on the head.

We did some macrame to put the boat back on the truck. Straps hold the boat to the rack, and the painters hold down the bow and stern ends. We each took an end. My knots were much better than Tory's but because he didn't recognize my very impressive (and freshly invented) Strom triple-hitch, he undid my tie-down and performed his predictable and boring bowlines. Oh, well. His boat. Hmph.

Mid-June, the earliest cherries are on the farmer's stands. There were Vaughn, Bing and Rainier varieties already so we loaded up on bags of fresh fruit and spit cherry pits happily out the open windows all the way back to Yakima. By the time I made it to Cle Elum on my way back to Seattle, it was already cold and wet again, and our trip to the desert island receded to a dream-like memory. That's what the rain will do; sog out a good weekend in a matter of hours. Nothing to do but go back again soon.