Well, here it is,Saturday the day before Easter. Our family always gets together down in Destin,Florida every Easter. This is the first time in over twenty years that I haven’t been. Maybe since my dads passing last year I just haven’t the urge. I’ll still see everyone Christmas anyway.
Sitting here on the Rio Chama, on such a beautiful night,gives me time to reflect on where I’ve been, and some of the wonderful people I’ve met.
There was Jeff from Wisconsin. I met him down in Arizona at Coronado. He was at the gem show with his girlfriend over in Phoenix . He builds wooden kayaks and plans on building a catamaran. The pictures of his work was incredible.
While here at Rio Chama, I met a nice young couple from Santa Fe. Andy and Heather. One late afternoon, Andy invited me for some fajitas later. I accepted his invitation. He started a fire, and giving time for the coals to settle in, he thought he would try some fishing. He hadn’t caught anything off of the bank, and was wanting to fish the other side of the river. The water was deep with a gentle current from the small release of the damn further up stream. I offered Andy my fishing kayak, and he was very thankful. I brought it down to him, where he loaded up his pole and night crawlers and started to paddle across to the other side. Heather and I started some small talk while keeping the fire going and at the same time keeping an eye on Andy. After awhile, he came paddling back, without any luck fishing. Calling out to me, he said he would take the boat back down to my site. I informed him that it was rather rocky, and the bank was steeper, and it might be easier to put out at his site with a beach type shoreline. He wouldn’t hear of it. He said I was kind enough to loan him the boat, the least he could do was take it down to my campsite. Who was I to argue? He said he’d be right up, have some beers and start the fajitas. Heather and I continued on small talk, when all of the sudden “SPLASH”, followed by an unhappy sounding “Uggh”. I look over and Andy is up to his head in the bone chilling water. Well, all I could do was laugh first, and ask if he was alright, as he crawled up the bank with his teeth chattering like a mouth full of chicklettes. I had to laugh some more. He was downright freezing. He went to his tent to dry off and put on some warm clothes. He never came back out. Heather was a little upset, because she was ready for fajitas. I was too. After several attempts on her part in trying to get him up, it was to no avail. The beers took their toll on Andy. You’d think that the cold dip would have sobered him right up. My invitation for dinner wasn’t going to happen, so I told Heather good night, headed to my campsite, lit a fire and put on a couple of hot dogs. Sure was looking forward to a fajita.
The next morning, Andy is good spirits and tries to apologize. “No need to” I said. He then explains, that upon his insertion into the river he lost his knife from its sheath, and if I would look to see that maybe it was in the kayak. It was not. We scoured the bank and rocks with no luck. Andy was not too happy since it was a sixty dollar knife. I told Andy I had a retractable magnet we could try to use along the bottom of the river bank. The only problem was that the magnet only extended about sixteen inches and the water was at least two feet in depth. After some pondering, I thought I could use my hiking stick, duct tape the magnet to it, and that would give me at least five feet to work with. (It’s always handy to travel with duct tape)
Andy held the magnet to the stick and I wound the tape around them both. I put the magnet end in the water, and started working it slowly,back and forth, around the area Andy took his baptismal plunge. After a short while,I hear a “click”. I pull the stick up and guess what is holding to the magnet? I am proud to say that Andy was reunited with his sixty dollar knife. I like happy endings.
Well,as the fire wanes down, so do my thoughts. Happy Easter all!!
pirateofgold's Blog 