A Brush With Death

I was about to open this blog with a "What up blogspot?"...yeah, then I realized that I'd sound like that kid in Chapel that seemed like a huge tool when he said, "What up N-Dubya-C?" during announcements.

So I'll just open with a humble DP-ish "Hey guys". It's an honor and privilege to be here with you all. I'm so thankful for all the little things in life like sharing my thoughts and reactions with you all.

As I promised, I will be sharing with you guys about something that happened to me. (Usually this follows the phrase, "It's great to be in your beautiful country") Atta Kid Cooooach. Today, I'll be sharing about my adventure, my bromance, and my quest to earn enough man cards back to be at even par. (See previous posting).

The intention of the trip was for a spontaneous, adventurous, manly trip of the summer to make up for 9 months of separation between two bros. The plan was to canoe up the Red Cedar River in Wisconsin for a day and then float back down and get some fishing in the next day. We intended to spend the night camping on a sandbar and just have a good time.

So we hustled for a canoe (thanks D-Swin), and did an ametuer job of securing it in the bed of my dad's pickup truck. The truck wasn't made for transporting canoes, so it hung off the back a good 4 feet or so. We attempted to strap it in and prayed that it would hold. Fortunately, it did just that. After a day of planning and packing, we were all ready to go embark on this journey.

We got to the river and realized that our canoe and gear was pretty heavy. We had no intentions of doing any portaging. It was just Gilby and myself, two division three basketball players. We're not savage beasts like Bear Grylls. We may have overestimated our phisical fitness and unrealistically planned to canoe up river. (By we, I mean me.) Yep. I'm a chickenhead for that one.

So we entered the water and paddled upstream with fresh bodies and inspired intensity. After 45 minutes, I looked back and saw our entry point about 200 yards behind us. We were going nowhere fast. As perfect timing would have it, just as we were ready to give up, it began to downpour on us despite being fairly sunny out. Yaap...that made the decision easy to just paddle down river and make it a two day fishing trip. We could figure out ride arrangements to get us back to our vehicle later. With Walt not in mind, we were living in the moment. After about 45 seconds we had floated back passed our drop in point. The time flew by as I was receiving an "I told ya so" speech from my main man and power stroker from the front of the canoe.

The Red Cedar River flows in a southwestern direction. Eventually if dumps into the Mighty Mississippi. We feared that we might canoe too far and eventually be paddling through oil down in the gulf. (Too soon?) So with little to no considerations of the consequences of our actions, we began to paddle down stream. Shortly into the trip, we were getting rained on. Great start pause not. As afternoon faded into evening we began strategizing a place for us to camp for the night. We paddled slowly down the stream throwing out occasional fishing lines in hopes of landing a fish for supper. We caught fish at the rate that Reep grows facial hair. We didn't catch any. (Sorry Reep, but the attempted moustache in 'Tina was awful.)

We were losing daylight as we zig-zagged down the river, so we decided it was time to pick a spot to stay. There was a 30% chance of rain in the forecast so we thought it'd be smart to be in the woods somewhere where we'd get a little cover. Sure enough, as the darker clouds rolled in, we pull up to a gem of a camping spot. It was a nice, open grassy area with an apparent exiting place for our canoe. What a blessing right?!

We set up camp. I pitched the tent, and Gilby made a fire circle of rocks and sand. (Only YOU can prevent forest fires!) After we were set up, we gathered a bunch of wet wood from the rain and began to attempt to build an all natural fire. After a few fails we started to impatient. Gilby was making thin strips of wood using his fillet knife (the only and most vital tool we had with us). For the first time in my life, I wished I had been a boyscout. That wish was soon taken back as I realized simply watching some discovery channel would teach many of the same lessons and avoid those weird looking outfits. (No offense to any boy scouts who read Wetberg). If there are any who are, you're probably a crappy boyscout. Why would you be online reading blogs, when you could be out building fires and tying knots.

Eventually, we got a fire started and celebrated by sharing half a package of hot dogs. After eating, we threw in our lines and after a few minutes, I caught a couple fish. One was a smallmouth bass that was legit to keep. So I put it on a stringer and left it in the water for later. Mother-nature had different plans for us that night. Casting and reeling for a couple hours as the sun went down was too soft of a night. Time to get WET! Literally. That 30% chance of rain we saw may have been a misprint of 30% chance of flash flooding as we will get poured on hard for a couple hours. As we were getting soaked, we got all our food and supplies into the tent and decided to call it an early night. The tent started leaking on us and we were wet from getting cleaned up so it wasn't the most comfortable place to be in. Rain was seeping through the top of the tent, but don't worry, we had a good thick tarp on the bottom to collect all that water. No moisture was about to seep through the bottom. So we had a puddle in our tent. No big deal...we just formed barriers for the water by lifting parts of the tarp. We now had a big puddle and us sleeping in an L shape in the tent. We were pushed up against the tent walls. It couldn't be bad. At least we weren't getting more wet!

As we settled in and got comfortable (no homo), wetness became the least of our concerns. Just as I was about to enter a slumber, I felt an animal walking on the outside of our tent. It rubbed up against the tent with my high shoulder touching the other side of the tent. Yep, I was grazed by a hungry wild animal. Naturally, I jump up and start yelling and clapping as loud as possible. I was laying on my side and felt the side/bottom of the beast's torso.

We realized that in our rush for cover, we had all our food in our tent. We had a half-open package of hot dogs. I can take the blame for being the chickenhead on that one. Of course the carnivorous wild animal that brushed my shoulder was looking for an easy meal of free raw meat. Who wouldn't? What if this creature just wanted 4 or 5 hot dogs for an appetizer? Would it go for our granola bars next, or would it go for the gold and devour a couple of 6'4" division III basketball players? I strategically decided to make the animal choose one or the other. The food immediately went into a tree about 50 feet from our tent. Good choice to leave the tent minutes after having my core stroked by a wild beast? Probably not, but in an effort to regain a man-card, I didn't back down.

As we settled back into our soaking wet tent, we sat in silence as we heard a collection of animals tromping around as if they were forming a pack to attack our wolf-pack of two. We sat in fear for a couple hours with the dull fillet knife clenched in my hand.

Eventually, I settled into a light sleep, but my partner Gilby wasn't so fortunate. After a short hour or two of sleep, I was nudged by a fear-stricken best friend. There had been a horrible screeching noise. Something had just died. The beasts were on the attack! This did not help our comfort level. I was praying...hard. After hearing the ear-piercing screech, it was followed by some thumping sounds and some tearing noises. Was this a small bear, a wolf, a fox, a wild dog? We didn't know and didn't want to find out. These noises were followed by a thrashing from the river. Great...The attacker had now gone for my 14" small mouth bass that was stuck to my stringer. By now we're soaking wet, scared to death, and in no position of control. All we could do was wait it out and pray we weren't fourth-meal for some savage beast. (We later found out from a fellow Jimmy Johns worker that Bobcats are very prevalent along the Red Cedar River, and it most likely caught, killed, and ate a rabbit.)

After some inconsistent, light sleep, morning finally came. We were still alive. Praise the Lord! We stepped outside the tent and observed round footprints in the mud with the area of a Red Bull Can. (Bobcat). Also we saw many deer tracks which accounted for the crashing we thought might be bears or Lord knows what else. We began to set of a quite legitimate camp site as the sun rose. We had a clothesline, got a fire going despite the inch plus of rain, and made ourselves some breakfast. I checked the river, and the fish was still there. It must have just been having a bad dream and decided to flop around vigorously in the middle of the night. I really appreciate that. So, I filleted my fish and ate it for breakfast by cooking it over the fire on a flat river rock. (resourceful AND manly!) Nice me.

We kept the fire going and decided to do a little more fishing as our stuff began to dry out. About 10:00 a.m. a couple on the golf cart pulls up as I'm fishing and Gilby is tending to the fire:

Angry Land Owner: "What're you doing?!"
Gilby: "Uhhh..."
A.L.O.: "Yeah, Uh is right! You can't be here! This is private property! We saw the smoke and thought our whole forest was on fire!"
Gilby: "Oh okay, I'm sorry. We'll pack up and leave right now."
A.L.O #2: "How long have you guys been here?!"
(I would've loved to say we were there for like 3 weeks, but I was too flattered by the backhanded compliment of our nice camp. Plus, we were avoiding confrontation.) We said, "just the night. We'll be gone before you know it."
A.L.O.: "Yeah you will!" (duh...that's what we just said...chickenhead.) We'll be back to check on you soon. You'd better be gone!"

We didn't attempt to create a conflict by explaining ourselves, but I feel like I could've guilt tripped these selfish land-owners and made them feel like total idiots. As we packed up and left the logic of it all fell into place.

Wow...forgive us for stopping to get some cover in the midst of a severe thunderstorm. Also, how could there possibly be a forest fire hours after getting over an inch of rain? We could barely start a fire by trying as hard as we could. We even cheated and used some newspaper that we managed to keep relatively dry! This angry couple needed to get off our junk.

However, we avoided the conflict and left the scene with our tails between our legs.

We paddled a while down the stream to avoid Satan's relatives, (the landowners) made arrangements to be picked up that night, and spent the day floating down the river, stopping for some fishing in the beautiful weather. We had limited success. We caught fish like my former roommate, grows a moustache: sporatically, but over time, we totaled a few fish. By the end of the day we had 12 together-a nice round dozen.

Finally we were picked up by my life-saver brother and I was transported back to the truck to return to the river and pick up the canoe. Gilby stayed at the river in hopes of catching me in fish count. As I neared the takeout point with the truck, I received a text from Gilby saying he had snapped his pole, but not to worry, his line was still all in tact and his Rapala was safe.

We packed everything up and reflected on our eventful, unbelievable adventure. We roughed it for two days, survived a torrential downpour, had a brush with death, nearly got fined for trespassing, learned how to canoe, and caught a few fish. Most importantly, the trip served it's mission. We were just two guys and we were having a good time (**having a good time, having a good time). We got to catch up after being separated for most of the school year. Through all the ups and the downs, the triumphs of catching fish and setting up camp, and the low moments writhing in fear while soaking wet in pitch blackness, we made great memories and flared our bromance to the next level.

We needed a couple days apart because we were flirting with the level of Navy buddies that tattoo each others' names on their backsides. Now we're just back to being best friends, and rolling as a wolf-pack of two.

If you read this with any doubt, I will swear on my life that this is all truth. Also, if you don't think this is a big deal, think about where you are: You're probably sitting at a computer at your house next to a golf course. What happened on that memorable night was incredible. It's taken a couple weeks to find the strength to share this with Wetberg nation, but here it is.

This is what's happenin' in Wetberg's World:

Until next time, stay wet my brethren.

-Wetberg

**http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nt2OVAgkHBc (This will bring a joke to full circle from a couple paragraphs ago)