Occasionally, our canoeing buddies would plan a big trip down some raging river and we’d gear up for that. Eventually, we bought our own canoe and stenciled a customized name on the side, “Crippled Eagle.”
One trip down the Guadalupe stands out. It was during the springtime when there were lots of rain storms. They would come up out of nowhere and suddenly, a flash flood would take everything out on both sides of the river. It was dangerous, of course, but when you’re young, you don’t have enough sense to be afraid of things like that.
There were about 6 canoe teams. We canoed all day till almost dusk before finding a camping spot and pulling the canoes up on the bank. We made a fire and roasted some hamburgers and hot dogs, then pitched our tents. Everyone was so exhausted. Around 9:00 p.m. it started raining. It rained hard for hours. No one was able to sleep. We were all very uneasy about the possibility of a flash flood. Me and Allen were huddled in our sleeping bags inside our little tent but it was leaking like a sieve. Water was just pouring down on us and it was freezing cold.
I kept saying, “Allen, I’m so cold!” and he would say, “I know but what can we do?”
One of the teams decided to try and cross the river, and climb the bank on the other side. Several people had said that there was a big public campsite on the other side of the river if we could just get there. So everyone else waited, quietly praying they would make it across and holler back to let us know that it was safe to come on over.
After half an hour, the team of canoers returned and said they managed to get across the river although there was a great deal of debris in it, but the bank was straight up, muddy and extremely slippery. They said there was no way to climb that bank in pouring rain. Everyone was devastated about this news. I could hear one of the girls in another tent softly crying. We were all certain by now that a flash flood would come any moment and we’d all be washed downriver and drowned. People drown every year on the Guadalupe River.
Me and Allen just kept laying there praying the rain would stop. Instead, it began to thunder; lightning filled the dark sky. The cold rainwater kept pouring down on us and by now we were completely soaked and cold to the bone. It’s the kind of cold that can take days to get warm from.
Finally, I said, “Allen, I know they said it was impossible to climb the bank on the other side of the river, but honestly, I feel like I’m going to die if I don’t get warm soon.”
“Well, what do you want to do, honey?” he replied.
“I think we should at least try to cross the river and get up there to that campsite. Maybe there’s a rest room where it’s dry and we could spend the night there.”
Allen must have been a lot more desperate than he was letting on because he crawled out of his sleeping bag, took me by the hand, and said, “Okay, let’s do this!”
We told our friends that we were leaving and they were all like, “If you make it, let us know, so we can come too.”
Once we stepped into the river, I was stunned by how warm the water was. “Oh my God, Allen! This water is about 20 degrees warmer than the rainwater. I’m just staying here in the river where it’s warm.”
“You can’t stay here, honey!” he yelled over to me. “There’s all kinds of debris in the water. There’s metal, boards, logs … plus there are snakes and God knows what other critters in this water. It ain’t safe!”
As soon as he said “snakes”, I started moving again toward the other bank. Sure enough it was straight up and there was no vegetation growing on it. That bank was solid mud and in this part of Texas, the soil is often very dense and sticky. It’s like several feet of wet earth combined with gallons of Elmer’s glue. It’s very typical to step into mud like this and sink a foot, then need help to get free of it.
Me and Allen were determined though. We’d tasted the warmth of the river and had visions of a warm shelter on the other side … if we could just make it there. We started climbing, just reaching as far into the mud as possible and pulling ourselves up the bank.
We found one little twig growing about halfway up the embankment and struggled to finally reach it, holding on to it for dear life. It must have taken 20 minutes just to reach that twig. After that though, there was nothing at all to grab onto. Still, we kept grabbing at the soggy, sticky, wet mud, digging our fingers into it and trying to hold on for dear life.
After almost an hour of struggling, we at last reached up to grab pavement. It was the pavement of a parking lot adjacent to the campground. Once we crawled up onto the parking area, we just sat there and cried. We were both covered in so much mud so that you couldn’t even recognize us. Even the heavy rain had barely washed any of it off.
The lightning and thunder still roared overhead, so we quickly got to our feet and stumbled around in the dark, searching for this so-called campground where there might be a dry place to spend the night. Before leaving the area, we called back to our canoeing buddies on the other side to let them know we’d made it, hoping they could hear us over the loud clashing of thunder.
We didn’t walk 50 yards before finding a large centrally located tent. It was full of people who were scared of the storm or hadn’t brought adequate camping gear with them. There were propane stoves set up where people were making hot soup and brewing coffee. We both thought we had died and gone to heaven. It was like the most amazing moment to find a dry place and friendly faces, plus warm soup and coffee.
I started crying when a stranger said, “Here, let me get you a dry blanket and some warm soup.”
No one slept at all that night. Later, around five in the morning, some of us settled onto blankets in the floor and lightly slept for a few hours, but most of us just stayed awake till daybreak. When the sun came up over the dense south Texas foliage, we all wandered outside to find that it had stopped raining at some point. The sun was peeking up over a distant tree line. Me and Allen strolled hand-in-hand out into the cool fresh morning air.
“Seems like we survived,” Allen said grinning.
Sighing deeply, I whispered, “I just hope and pray everyone else did as well.”
I learned a very important life lesson on that trip. No matter where you are or what you’re going through, there’s always a way out. It may not appear to be a good or viable option, but it is a way out and you can’t dismiss it without at least trying that route.
The river seemed like our enemy and yet the water there was so warm and inviting and it gave us the courage and strength to move on and try to find a way out of our dire circumstances. Though the great beyond can seem dark and foreboding, though it’s a strange place that holds so many mysteries, though it may seem like a scary place … perhaps there’s light and hope and warmth there.
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