A day after a long, dreary, soaking Saturday in the Ozarks, we (David, Bryon, & Todd) decided to do a little “Recon Float” on the Finley River to familiarize ourselves with the area, clear out any major obstructions, and save us some safety/rescue work for the upcoming JRBP River Rescue (the exact same stretch, 6 days prior to the event).
So we met on Sunday at 10 a.m. for the first time face to face at the mill put-in and setup shuttle to take out at the gated Ozark waste water treatment plant . We scouted and analyzed the river each and every turn we cornered ourselves with, armed with a toothy camping handsaw and a chain saw, ready to knockout any unsuspecting or potentially hazardous strainers and or log jams block the rivers flow.
The first hour or so included only a few minor adjustments and alterations to the main channels and realization that these were probably the lesser importance of worry for the following week and continued on probing our surroundings as well as admiring the healthy population of smallmouth bass. Despite nearly stepping on a medium dinner plate sized snapping turtle and the heavy lifting aided by the stream flow and the logs buoyancy, so far so good…
Into the second hour we begin to face a little more work for the flow, the chainsaw is a soon praised necessity and is used prevalently through the majority of the day. As we pass through an intermittent pool, we all take notice to the sound of the arcing click of an electric fence and soon following, the modest cry of a newborn lamb (it still had a bloody umbilical cord attached). I noticed the unnaturally white silhouette against the dirt bank and pointed it out to the crew. The poor little lamb was stranded and exhausted on the steep dirt bank of the river and was crying out for it’s mother. We all gathered around and took a curious and heartfelt account of the lamb’s predicament. We shouted for help to no avail from the suspecting farm up the hill from the river bank, so I decided to do some investigating. Above the bank was a fence line that I followed up the hill to discover a more flat pasture of cows and a mother sheep with her black and white baby. I quickly descended the hill and was handed the indigent snowy lamb, who was surprisingly docile, and returned it to its alarmed and curious mother immediately.
In the the third hour we received the bulk of the trip’s workload in 4-5 back to back clearings. One incident of unnecessary chainsaw work led to the testing “let’s see if we can lift it first” method, most of which we could. When chainsaws were limited, the trusty camp saw was there to improvise a solution (such as the two necessary underwater cuttings). What would have been a multitude of wolf spider home portages have now become a series of cooperative shoots and passages. After all of the drudgery, the river became more straight and had begun expanding in width, permitting a leisurely like float for the remainder until we reached the take-out (around 2:40 p.m.) safe, sound, and exhausted.
I thought I would share this story with you all because it was a friendly reminder that when you’re paddling an unfamiliar river with unacquainted paddlers, the journey will take you (and those with you) on memorable, positive experiences that will flow through your heart & soul, which will hopefully leave you yearning for more like it.
-David Jackson
Comments on this entry are closed.