I remember being quite surprised. Looking back on it I definitely shouldn’t have been, but it was summer and I was a whole eleven years old and all but invincible. I remember thinking our first day was quite sunny, so why shouldn’t the entire weekend be similar?

My troop and I had been anticipating this camp out for weeks. The plan was to spend an entire weekend canoeing a section of the Platte River in northern Nebraska. It was very exciting for a young guy like myself. I bought brand new waterproof gear in preparation for the excursion, and I made sure to pack light and tight just like how I was taught. The only flaw in my otherwise perfect packing job was my complete neglect of the local weather forecast for that weekend. Needless to say, that was my first mistake. If I had checked the weather, I most likely would have opted for a better poncho and more Ziploc bags.

When we rolled up to the drop point, we had a few decisions to make. We had to pick our canoe buddies, disperse the personal gear and food, and figure out whether we wanted to take the parachute or individual tents. We once again opted for the parachute (see “Winter of the Bird”), this time without the wood stove. Little did we know that this was our second mistake. Our scoutmaster, a down to earth gruff yet heavy guy, opted to put it in his single canoe if we dispersed his portion of the food throughout the remaining six boats. It seemed to be a fair bargain, so we repacked and shoved off.

Problems began to present themselves immediately. For those who may be unaware, the Platte river barely classifies as a river. It is better described as a river bed that, through a series of intertwined streams and creeks, alludes to a river. This is why it is a favorite migration stopping point for freshwater fowl such as whooping cranes and herons. It also means that it is terrible for canoeing.

Now, my boat was probably the lightest on the river that day, and if not, it was definitely in the top two or three. I was barely five feet tall and no more than one hundred and ten pounds. My buddy in the bow of the boat was even smaller. His name was also Nick, and he was even shorter than me. He couldn’t have weighed any more than ninety-five pounds at the time. I remember him being chubby around the cheeks with nice hair, and he was definitely the heartthrob of elementary school. We did everything together in scouts, whether it was sleeping, cooking, or getting in trouble. However, despite our short statures and relatively light boat, we began to scrape sand bars not ten seconds after we put in the water. The other members of our outing were not doing any better.

Much of those first two hours on the river were spent outside of the canoes pushing them off sandbars and messing around in the water. Eventually, we found a good place to take a break and sat down to make some decisions about where we would make camp for the night. One option was to find a clearing on the bank, but none were visible and we decided that we didn’t have the remaining daylight to look for one. Our second option was to find a large, dry sandbar to set up shop. We unanimously voted for the latter, as an ideal spot rose above the water about one hundred yards upstream. This was mistake number three.

We soon made our way over and found it to be much larger than we had anticipated. A huge, surprisingly dry tree had fallen onto the strip for a seemingly endless supply of firewood, and the middle was more than wide enough for the parachute. We set up fairly quickly, and while we did struggle with staking the parachute down, we eventually decided to anchor them with small sticks and logs. With this, we made our fourth and final mistake.

That night we cooked dinner and made an enormous bonfire with logs taken from the stray tree, courtesy of Mr. Fresian. Mr. Fresian was an assistant scoutmaster, who was one sociopath gene away from being an arsonist. The man loved building fires and had a plethora of ways to do so, none of which were very efficient. On this occasion, however, his pyromania paid off as the night continued. Many of us turned in early that night in anticipation of an early rise and a long day the following morning.

In the early hours of the following day, it began to sprinkle. Rain was a normal summer occurrence and wasn’t anything concerning, so we compressed and huddled a little tighter under the parachute.

Then the rain picked up. I pulled out my poncho from my bucket and used it as a blanket to cover my sleeping bag.

Then the wind came. It began to blow quite hard, and our mistakes of the previous day came back to haunt us with a vengeance. First, the sand under the center pole began to give way. Then the tension that held the steaks in the soft ground began to pull in an unequal fashion, and soon many had been uprooted. Eventually, the structure came crashing down, knocking a boy on the head and leaving us exposed to the torrential downpour that now ensued.

The rain and the little flooding that occurred made for a very unpleasant night. I got very little sleep, and at one point got out of my bag to sit by the fire and warm up. To his credit, Mr. Fresian kept it ablaze all night to let us warm up if we needed it. By morning, not a single item of gear was dry. As the sun rose, many of the boys were already awake or dozing off by the fire like myself. Nick was incredibly still sound asleep.

At breakfast, we all had our stories to tell about the night. The boy who was hit in the head by the parachute pole had a welt but otherwise was fine, and we decided to cancel the remainder of the trip due to our soaked and unusable gear. As we packed up camp, everyone was wringing out something. Shirts, socks, and sleeping bags were all slightly larger and dripping with rainwater. I remember that Nick’s bag was so saturated that we spent a good fifteen minutes wringing it out. When all was packed up, we once again began pushing our canoes downstream to a bridge that was part of the main road. We soon retrieved our cars and went home.

I often look back at cases like this and am amazed. There was no sense of agitation amongst the scouts, nor anger or panic. We were all simply dazed. Surprised, but constantly looking forward and finding ways to remedy and make the best of the situation. In a way, this analytical search for solutions is the most primitive form of improvisation and has served me well since. I’ve done everything from using medical scissors as chopsticks to using frisbees as plates, to using rope in every imaginable and unimaginable application, and I’ve never made these mistakes again.

Though, in all fairness, checking the weather beforehand will go a long way.

-Nickel