Lower Big Walnut Creek and Eel River July 2, 2005

I went with Dean on a kayaking trip Saturday. We put in on Big Walnut at the Dick Huffman Bridge (Dean likes to call it the Pinkney Street Bridge because, I think, of old disputes with a Huffman descendant over recreational access to the river). We took out at the bridge where IN 42 crosses the Eel River.

It's a trip I've made before but nothing changes more, trip to trip, than a moving stream. It's not just that I see it differently; it has changed. Dead trees have been moved by big water, live trees have been blown in during storms or pushed in as the ground they sit on washes down stream, silt varies and sometimes there are large grain pebbles covering the bottom but sometimes the pebbles are covered with silt, the amount of water released from the dam increases or not. The color, level, speed and temperature of the streams is different each time. The man made objects, bridges and the occasional boat ramp are the constants year to year.

The nature of the watershed into Cagles Mill Lake, Mill Creek, Big Walnut Creek and Eel River is largely agricultural. The resulting streams are not clear. Agricultural runoff overloads streams with nutrients and the recent warm weather and the water exhibits a green turbidity indicating algae bloom. I would like to test the oxygen level of these waters.

It is, nonetheless, a thrill to balance on 31 inches of plastic and float for a few hours down shaded streams with a friend. There is plenty of water and few hazards. It was so easy that it lulled me to sleep. I was up late the night before and was not mentally sharp. Sometimes my mind would tell me to back paddle left when a clear thinker would back paddle right and I would put myself into current which took me on an unintended line. Luckily, the current was not very strong and I was usually able to correct myself or the water level was high and even a bad line through a run still got me through.
In mid-afternoon, we rounded a bend to see a row of partially submerged stumps bank to bank with spaces between and downed trees hiding low behind them. All this wood was without bark or leaf and shined white where it projected above the green water resembling a graveyard. The ugliest wooden thing I encounter on a creek is a giant uprooted tree with exposed roots pointed upstream. I avoid that grotesque form of nature and even look away from it. This current hazard, instead, drew my eyes to it and I tried to make sense of what I saw.

When I returned to Indiana and the streams that drain her 3 summers ago, I wondered about the floating and jammed lumber. If they grew too near the banks that they eventually fell in, how did they grow so large?

I still wonder where each downed tree grew and could make no good sense of the wood coming toward me -- actually I advanced on it at stream speed -- and needed to find a way through it.

I saw that Dean picked the gap between the 1st and 2nd stump from the right bank. Off tackle, if you will, and when he had cleared the upright stump and was halfway past the horizontal defender "straight-armed" it with a quick push with his left paddle head. A sandy beach downstream looked like a curved end zone where I hoped I would soon rest and look back and see only trees and water and not all the crazy images my mind was made of it.

Back paddle for alignment and go with the flow between end and tackle. The current was tricky and began to take me into the tree that stretched not quite horizontal and more into the gap than I estimated. No wonder Dean straight armed it but when I jabbed it with my paddle, it slipped my jab and pulled the left side of my kayak up onto its side (seemed to anyway) and my balance was lost and I was upside down in cool pea soup. My Chevy truck hat seemed to dissolve in the concoction and no one has seen it since. No touch down, no end zone dance, no favorite hat. But nothing else was lost. It was, in fact, refreshing and I was more alert as a result. I stayed awake for the rest of the trip.