The Upper Basin Chronicles

Chapter 15

When It Runs Off

Laura Paruzzi slid the canoe onto her shoulders, and stepped easily away from the car.

"Can't I help you with that?" offered Alexander.

"You're walking wounded. Just grab the other gear," she responded.

Alexander Murphy's shoulder and right arm still throbbed some. His whole body ached, in fact. Four stitches closed the cut on his left temple. The old boys at the co-op had talked and talked when the wrecker towed his pickup in. "Big wind," and a pained grin was all he had to offer them.

Laura rolled the 17-footer down onto her crouched knees, and slipped it into the water with hardly a ripple.

"You handle that boat pretty well," he said.

"Tool of the trade." She knelt to hold the wood gunwale with one hand and loaded paddles, lifejackets, and her backpack with the other. The Upper Cedar River landing hosted no one else that weekday evening. The water still flowed a bit high from the rain. Laura held the fiberglass canoe off the boat ramp.

Alexander steadied himself with the paddle and stepped into the canoe at the bow seat. He felt pretty good to be with Laura in spite of damage to his truck, his body, and his ego. He knew she would ask him why he'd followed the school bus the day before yesterday.

When they'd talked on the phone later that evening, she'd had chided him some for feeling he had to shepherd them through the storm. She did say she was sorry he got banged up and rolled the pickup for his trouble. Then she'd suggested this little canoe jaunt. "You'll be sore. You can work those muscles, and I'll steer," she laughed when he accepted.

"Let's head upstream, work a bit, and then float back," she said. Laura hopped in and pushed off. The little river ran at them with a fair amount of flow. The bent paddle wobbled in Alexander's hands on the first stroke.

"Try the bent blade reaching forward," she advised. He turned the paddle over, and reddened somewhat out of her view. He had not paddled a canoe for long time.

"Paddles have changed," he said. He liked the way the blade entered the water with little disturbance. He could tell Laura was strong. She matched her stroke to his. The canoe surged against the current with each stroke.

"Ok, we've got this side warm," Laura said. "When I say 'Hut,' finish the stoke and switch sides. We'll give your sore arm a break."

"Hut," she said just at the start of the stoke. They switched sides almost in unison.

"Nice, he said, "that works well. Where does it come from?"

"Oh, those Min-NE-so-tans, I guess," she answered with a mock Scandanavian accent. "It's a racing style I picked up in Winona when I went to Saint Mary's. Called 'sit and switch.'"

"You raced canoes?"

"Hut. Not much. Coon Creek a time or two. Mostly just working out on the river with a few people from the canoe factory," she replied.

After a few more 'Huts,' Alexander said, "Do you see how high the river got with the rain?"

"Yep. It was way up there," Laura answered.

"I've thought about being upside down and out in the creek," he remarked.

"Yeah..., and...hut." They continued upstream.

"I could have drowned. That water was rising fast off those fields. There's not much to hold it this time of year. All tiled, and few grass waterways anymore. Even the contour strips are gone," he said.

"Hut." They paddled on. "I'm glad you survived," Laura said.

"Something's got to change," he said. "I know I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but it's not just the amount of runoff and sediment. It's more. We put all this stuff, atrazine for one, on the land like there's no tomorrow. Then when it runs off, we think that's the end of it. Not so."

"Hut," said Laura.

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Next week... "The Great Uprising," Chapter 16.

The Upper Basin Chronicles, Chapter 15 was written and edited by John Gabbert.

Upper Mississippi Basin Stakeholder Network and The Upper Basin Chronicles © 2002 Saint Mary's University of Minnesota

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The characters presented here are purely fictional, and neither bear resemblance to persons living or dead, nor represent the views or opinions of Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota.