Canoeing and kayaking have become such popular activities that on some rivers it is almost impossible to find water you can call your own. That fact has unhappy implications for those of us who got into the sport as a way to find places nobody else knows about. But face it, you can't keep a good thing to yourself. Visit any better-than-average American river on a summer weekend and you'd better plan on sharing it.
We think of crowded water as a recent phenomenon, but for several decades at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, canoeing in wood-and-canvas boats was a tremendously popular social activity. The image of the lone wilderness paddler had romantic appeal but was clearly not something most urban dwellers wanted to experience.
Judging by old photos of nattily dressed canoeists cramming the water around Belle Isle in Detroit, the Charles River in Boston, Central Park in New York, and other capitals of pre-Depression culture, canoeing was a great way to meet people, find relief from summer heat, and have good clean fun in a healthy environment.
Those are still fine reasons to get out paddling, though I admit this with reservations. When rivers and lakes become too popular they suffer from litter, erosion, and habitat destruction. It's the usual story. Many of my fly fishing friends, who are not gracious about sharing the water, harbor a grudge against paddlers and refer to the weekend crowds as the "aluminum hatch."
It's an apt name, especially on rivers that support thriving commercial canoeing industries. Some liveries fill the rivers by promoting a theme-park canoeing experience. In the mornings, livery employees dump 20 or 30 aluminum canoes at a time at access sites beside the river, fill the canoes with people who have never canoed before, and push them out into the current.
The people, because they are in an unfamiliar environment, cling together for security, rather the way you would cling to fellow passengers if your ship went down during a cross-Atlantic cruise. After awhile the livery employees haul their trailers a few miles downstream and wait for clusters of canoes to show up.
Sometimes the canoes arrive without the people, and sometimes the people arrive without the canoes. Or the canoes and people arrive together but the canoes are dented and swamped and the people are wet, sunburned, and exhausted. The livery employees arrange the canoeists in line, charge them extra for broken and lost equipment, then drive them away to make room for the next batch of customers.
The crazy thing is, it can be fun. This seems to contradict my nature--I usually go to great lengths to avoid people when I'm on the water--but there are days when I enjoy elbowing into a crowd of cheerful, boisterous paddlers. I'll even accept a cold drink when it's offered, or when I find one bobbing in the water.
After years of experience I can always spot full cans of beer and soda as they ride downstream in a river. Like icebergs, they float seven-eighths submerged. I've grown resolved to collecting a small load of cans, broken styrofoam coolers, and other debris during every trip, but I'm encouraged to note that more and more commercial liveries routinely organize river clean-ups at the end of the season. I'm also encouraged by how many paddlers understand basic river etiquette. Even on the most crowded water, good fellowship abounds.
During summer weekends on some of the popular rivers near my home I can expect to bump gunwales with hundreds of rental canoes and pass through bank-to-bank rafts of inner-tubes carrying sunburned but happy river enthusiasts. The key thing to remember, I remind myself, is that those people are enthusiasts. They might someday raise their voices in defense of rivers.
I do most of my serious paddling and fishing Monday through Friday, when I can count on having the water mostly to myself. On weekends, of course, my favorite rivers and lakes are no longer my own. I can live with that. If I go out on a Saturday or Sunday it is to mix with people, to have fun, to share a little of the world with kindred spirits. In these crowded times it's our good fortune that some crowds are better than others.
Copyright (c) 1997 Jerry Dennis. All rights reserved. Contributing editor Jerry Dennis lives in Traverse City, Michigan. His new book, The Bird in the Waterfall: A Natural History of Oceans, Rivers, and Lakes, is available from HarperCollins Publishers.