By LaNae Abnet
April 7, 2015
This morning I woke up in a warm bed with a full-size pillow I didn’t have to share. I slept great at our friends’ home in Linn Grove. How long before I will indulge again in these luxuries I previously viewed as necessities?
I love camping. Most people perceive our adventure as a four-month kayaking trip with camping almost every night. I describe it as a four-month camping trip with kayaking from campsite to campsite. It’s simply a matter of perspective.
For a year before the journey, I dehydrated and vacuumed-sealed 720 meals — including desserts — for the trip. On this day, after a non-dehydrated breakfast, we pulled our kayaks, Work and Pray, to the Wabash. Before pushing off, I said my daily before-launch prayer …
“Keep us upright and safe.”
After paddling 15 miles, we arrived in Bluffton. The Parlor City and Wells County are familiar to us. In 2004 I was a student math teacher at Norwell High School, also serving as a substitute there, until I started teaching full time in Fort Wayne. My husband John and I also frequently travel to Bluffton to shop (often at Lowe’s) and I drive there every three weeks for a hair appointment. However, since we trekked four days this time and not the usual 30 minutes, we felt we were entering a foreign land.
We landed on the bank, put the wheels on Work and Pray, and pulled them up the hill (everything is uphill from the river), past a parking lot, down the hill, to a grassy area on the banks of the Wabash behind Kehoe Park’s pavilion. Last week John had called the Parks Department to gain permission to camp there.
Tent set up and gear secured in preparation for the forecasted rain, we ate a late lunch in the tent. Each morning after a dehydrated breakfast, I prepare our lunches of peanut butter wraps, homemade granola bars, and homemade fruit roll-ups. I then place our lunches into a small mesh bag in our cockpits.
After lunch we packed our iPads, phone, a dromedary (a water bag made with a Cordura nylon shell), and the Sherpa. The Sherpa is the battery pack we use to charge our phone and iPads. We can then recharge the Sherpa using either electricity or our solar panel. Cool, huh? Necessary items gathered, we hiked across the bridge to Hardee’s.
Even though we have lived outside of society for only four days, I felt homeless. In a way, I guess we are, since we carry our possessions with us every morning to a new location for the night.
After we charged our electronics, we hiked back to our current dwelling by the river. I heard the rustle of paper from the other side of the tent. John held up a small paper bag. “Look what someone left us in our vestibule.” (Our rainfly creates an area outside each entrance, which we call our vestibule.) “Welcome to Bluffton” was handwritten on the side of the gift. I wish we had been there to greet our visitors and accept our present in person. How did they know we are here?
“What’s inside?”
Anxious as a kid on Christmas morning, I watched John pull the articles out one at a time. A bottle of water, lemonade packet, homemade energy balls, granola bar, orange, and Little Debbie coffee cake. Who left this for us and why? Do they always have welcome bags on hand? If so, whom do they give them to?
But why, you ask, did we travel to Bluffton on the Wabash River in two kayaks? On April 1, 2015, John and I walked (without our kayaks) 18 miles along the Wabash River from its source in a turkey farmer’s field to Fort Recovery, Ohio, where we launched our kayaks two days later. We paddled the remaining 485 miles and under every bridge on this historic river to the Ohio River. We then traveled 133 miles on the Ohio to the Mississippi River. Read about this first part of our trip in “Paddling Edna (Part One)”.
In “Paddling Edna (Part Two) Into the Sea,” which will be released this spring, you can read about the remainder of our trip as we traveled the 971 miles of the lower Mississippi River from just below Cairo, Ill,, to the Gulf of Mexico.
Here’s the Thing: Even though Bluffton is now a familiar place to us, when we entered the city limits on April 7, 2015, we felt like strangers. Yet, someone went out of their way to welcome us. They didn’t offer their gift in person. They received no thanks. But their generosity made an impression.
Who are your kayakers? Whose life can you touch without receiving thanks in return? What’s in your bag?
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jlabnet@gmail.com
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Editor’s Note: This is one of a series of articles written by a group of retired and current teachers — LaNae Abnet, Ken Ballinger, Billy Kreigh, Kathy Schwartz, Anna Spalding. Their intent is to spur discussions at the dinner table and elsewhere. You may also voice your thoughts and reactions via The News-Banner’s letters to editor.
