Dave Richey OUTDOORS

It was mid-April, many years ago. My father was paddling stern and I was in the bow as we canoed the Rifle River down through the Pipeline Stretch. The river was in flood stage, and we really had no business being on the water. I’d paddled a canoe a good bit and knew what had to be done. Dad, a good canoe hand, was steady in the stern with a  paddle. We had a third person, a teen-age friend of my age, and he was sitting in the middle of the canoe. We stopped for a quick break, visited with nature, had a sandwich, stretched our legs and prepared to cast off.

Shortly after this photo I was in quicksand up to my belly.

We were just upstream from a fallen tree with open water at the far end of the tree, and both bow man and the stern paddler would have to dig hard, move water with the paddle to cross the river upstream from the tree. My friend wanted to paddle, and I reluctantly agreed.

“This is a bad spot,” my Dad told us. “This is no place to just dip the paddle in the water. Put the paddle in up to the handle, and pull hard. Pull the canoe with each hard stroke. Understand me?”

My buddy nodded but he really didn’t understand. We were 10 feet from the river bank, and Dad was paddling hard. My buddy was dip-dip-dipping, and we brushed up against the upstream side of the tree. It threw Dad into the water close to the bank. My friend went into the drink near the end of the tree.

Me, sitting in the middle, was swept under the tree with the canoe. The canoe took me to the bottom, and then disappeared. I was standing on the river bottom in 10 feet of water, and was in a little box with logs on all four sides and above me.

I was underwater for between one and two minutes before I dug my way through the logs and came up between my buddy’s feet on top of the log jam. I dreamt about that escapade and had bad dreams about it for several years. That was the first time I was exposed  to outdoor dangers but it wasn’t the last.

This was how my canoeing dream always began.

The next time was on Bond Falls Flowage near Paulding, Michigan. We’d been fishing for some of the giant pike found there at the time, and as a side trip we went to see the Little Falls, a small waterfalls visible only during extremely low-water conditions. The electric company had drawn down the flowage to provide electricity to people in the western Upper Peninsula, and we grounded the boat near the falls.

I was in the bow with a rope and jumped off, and landed in quicksand. Down I went to my knees, and by the time I could comprehend what was happening, I was up to my belly. I remembered that it’s possible to swim out of quicksand but one has to lay down flat on it and start swimming with your arms.

It was working but my two friends were tinkering with the motor. I asked them to grab an oar or stout branch, watch their footing and pulled me out. That was a close call, and I suffered a severe skin rash over 95 percent of my body from the quicksand.

That was close call No. 2. A few years later while hunting European Hares and cottontails in southwestern Ontario, the hounds had taken a long-legged hare out of hearing on a windy day. I stood, leaning against a dead elm tree, and suddenly I felt as if someone was pulling me and whispering in my ear: “Move quickly away from the tree.”

I moved and 10 seconds later the entire top of that elm tree fell right where I’d be standing. Coincidence? I don’t think so. That was my third encounter with a possible tragic outdoor death.

Divine intervention of quick action on a hunch?

Sometime after that I fell off the third-story fire escape of a northern Ontario hotel while shooting photos of a sunrise. Somehow, again without  conscious thought, I managed to grab the fire escape support on the way down. The fall stretched my spine, and I slammed sideways into a brick wall 40 feet above a paved parking lot. I managed to hang on even though it had broke my back, ruptured a disc and hurt me bad.

I hung on to the support with both hands, shook my head to clear the cobwebs, and climbed hand-over-hand 10 feet back up to the platform and pulled myself to safety. I later had back  surgery and eventually missed 1 ½  years of work during a painful recovery.

Ah, then there was a dog attack by three vicious canines along Cheboygan County’s Sturgeon River, surviving that big storm on Lake Michigan in 1968 while riding out 10-15-foot waves in a 12-foot car-top boat and a tiny outboard motor. Another time I was shot in the hand and wrist with bird shot by a rabbit hunter in our group. All of these examples could have been deadly accidents but were not.

The gist of tonight’s blog is that if a person actively spends enough time in the outdoors, there is a remote possibility of some danger. For me, after all of these experiences and many others with bears and other problems, I’ve learned to trust my instincts. If something tells me to move, I move and don’t sit around and try to analyze the reasons why.

These survival instincts are more honed in some people than others, and I have always trusted my gut feelings. I lived  one year in Chicago while going to college in the late 1950s, and saw three people get killed by other people. A group of thugs jumped me and two classmates, and I was the only one to get hit. Again, I ducked when it was necessary and received only a glancing blow from a huge right fist to the head. They killed an elderly man 30 seconds after I got away.

Some might consider these stories figments of my active imagination but they are not. All are true, and I survived each one because I trusted myself and my instincts. Call it street smarts, instinct, gut feelings or whatever.

When something whispers in your ear or your guts tell you to move fast, pay attention and act immediately. Ignore them, and try to analyze what may be wrong, and the consequences can be deadly.

Trust your instincts. They will seldom lead you astray.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors