Diana

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Diana Christopulos (relaxing on a sandy beach on the Brazos River) started her canoeing career in the lakes region of upstate New York. She learned white water rafting techniques on the Green-Colorado Rivers. She has a successful management consulting practice, Christopulos Custom Management Systems.

HERE ARE DIANA'S WORDS OF WISDOM ABOUT OUR CANOE CAMPING TRIPS:

Food and Cooking
Campsites
Clothing & Hygiene
The Company We Keep
Boats & Paddling
A Poem

I thought it would be good to tell about how we canoe camp in the early 21st century. This is how Mark and I do it, with trips lasting one to twelve days. First of all, we don't normally buy any supplies along the way, since most of the rivers are too remote to make it practical. In fact, that is the whole point.

FOOD AND COOKING

River cooking can be as simple or as luxurious as you like. Unlike backpackers, we carry folding chairs and a roll-up table on all of our trips. Sometimes we carry dutch ovens and tiki torches and coolers with fresh meat, cold beer and other goodies. We have been known to cook on two-burner propane stoves, over open fires, and in pits filled with hot lava rocks. Most of the time, though, we keep it simple, using a single burner stove (white gas or alcohol) and unrefrigerated foods. The size of your boat and your willingness to load and unload a lot of stuff are the key variables.

We bring enough water for daily drinking purposes, using 2 to 3 gallon containers. This depends on the time of the year - less than half a gallon per person per day in cooler weather and up to a gallon per person per day in major summer heat. We often boil river water for our breakfast and dinner cooking after settling the silt out with alum, if needed, as it was on the Green River in Utah). Some rivers have good springs or side streams with clearer water, some of it directly drinkable. I continue to drink the spring water without treating, as I have done for over 30 years with no ill effects.

For breakfast we boil up about 2 quarts of water for instant oatmeal or grits and coffee, maybe with a little cheese or raisins. I can be lazy in the morning, so Mark usually pours the hot water into a thermos, allowing me to have a later breakfast. My treat: real home-ground coffee through a filter.

Lunch is a camper's buffet often including crackers, protein in a can (chicken, tuna, pate, fish fillets, smoked oysters, etc.), dried fruit, peanuts, M & Ms, cheese and granola bars.

Before dinner we usually have wine - jug wines in soft 5-liter containers.

Dinner is usually pretty simple, except on special occasions. We buy Lipton's pastas or rice and mix with canned meat: red beans and rice with ham, garlic egg noodles with tuna, Spanish rice with chicken.   You get the picture. That's it! We wash off the dishes in river water and dry them with a bandana.

Sometimes we have fancy food on special weekend trips. Our traditions have included a King Kamehameha's Birthday feast in early June and a Bastille Day party around July 14. These events feature things like roasting pork loins luau style (in a pit with lava rocks), shaved ice, and elaborate desserts. Imagine 14-40 people doing these things on a gigantic sandbar, usually on the Red River. Our old friend Hans Weichsel used to bring an entire smoked turkey or something equally exotic for virtually any celebration.

CAMPSITES

We almost always camp in undeveloped places - sand bars, gravel bars, other nice banks. They cost nothing, and you don't have to worry about noisy neighbors unless the red tail hawks are in mating season. There is a whole art to finding good campsites. Good sandbars often occur on the inside of a bend, where the slower water drops particles. It is more complicated in higher water, when the sandbars are covered (that's why they remain sandbars - they get flooded often enough to remove most of the vegetation). Some things we look for in a campsite:

Good landing for the boats - calm water, not muddy, no sudden drop-offs.

High enough to be safe if the river rises.

"Escape route" to get out in case of flood. Western river runners and people who canoe below big dams are especially sensitive on this point, as rivers can rise 20 feet or more very quickly from a dam release or a flash flood more than 50 miles away. This can happen in completely clear weather.

Enough nice flat spots for a group kitchen and tent sites.

In hot weather: afternoon shade.

In cold weather: morning sun.

In windy or stormy weather: trees or other shelter, so you can camp on the lee side of the bad weather.

Great views from camp.

On regulated rivers, where a portable toilet is required, room for the toilet downwind from camp AND great views from the throne (the Green River is a champ in this regard).

So you can see why some trip leaders avoid the burden of picking a site, since someone is sure to gripe. Also, some people have other criteria:

·          Short carry from boats to campsite (this is often in conflict with other criteria shown above, especially good views, high water concerns and best shelter from wind, rain, sun, etc.)

·          No steep climbs (also often in conflict with others above).

Anyway, we generally pitch a tent. Inside we lay out Thermarest closed-cell foam pads that are quite luxurious plus sleeping bag and pillow.

CLOTHING AND HYGIENE

We bring clothes for a wide range of conditions - often 30° to 90° - including rain suit, wool hat, fingerless gloves but also nylon shorts, long pants and various types of jackets. I always have at least three types of footwear - tough river sandals (Tevas), neoprene booties (like a wet suit) for cooler weather, and black rubber boots for really cold weather. I also take hiking shoes or boots on some trips. The Wisconsin is the only river that is really great for going barefoot. They have a regulation against bringing glass on the river, and they enforce it! Also, they have no cactus.

We stay clean by one or more of the following methods:

Swimming in the river, often floating down a stretch in our life jackets. It is refreshing, and removes dust and sweat!

Bandana and hot water from cooking.

On longer trips (over 4 days), we take a solar shower. Mine holds 5 gallons. You fill it with river water and lay it on the ground. The bottom side is made of black plastic; the upper is clear. The water can get very hot on a warm, sunny day. When it is ready, you hang it from a tree, open the nozzle and enjoy. We had three such showers on the 12-day Green River trip in Utah. Yahoo!

We also bring clothes lines and collapsible buckets for washing clothes.

Most Western rivers require you to bring a toilet for carrying out solid waste, a subject I won't dwell on, except to say it is WEIGHTY. Otherwise you dig a cat hole, and do your business. Peeing is utterly free. Very nice. After some especially cold, buggy, rainy trips I have taken to using a watertight pee pot in the tent at night. For women, this requires significant agility. Mark just rolls over on his side and goes. Ah, but that's no way to stay fit! The rugged outdoors woman can rise from a dead sleep in pitch dark, find the pot, unscrew the top, squat, aim, and replace the lid (no spills!) without even remembering it. Then empty in the morning, rinse with river water, and start over again. Where to find such a device? . . . A recent trip to the grocery store produced the cheapest alternative yet - the clear plastic container for Texmati rice. It is EXACTLY the same in all dimensions as the model several of us have purchased at places like the Container Store and just as well sealed. I field-tested this model on a recent two-week trip to Arizona and Utah and found two advantages over the old model. First, you get a full container of rice along with your pot (this should be emptied before use....). And second, your pot now announces the nutritional value of its contents! This somehow made me feel even more productive than usual. Check it out!

THE COMPANY WE KEEP

We usually do our trips in the company of one or more friends. There's great pleasure in sitting around camp watching the sun set, the stars, satellites, meteors, etc. and listening to the critters. People play the harmonica. We sing old songs like, "My Darling Clementine" and "Shortnin' Bread." We tell stories and drink wine. Sometimes we have talent night or another special event.

We see or hear many different kinds of animals:

A really big scorpion (6" or so) at Turk's Head on the Green in Utah

Bald eagles in many places

Sandhill cranes in the Okeefenokee Swamp and on the Texas coast.

Otters in the Sabine River

Alligators on all the coastal rivers and swamps

Great blue herons, barred owls, coyotes and vultures almost everywhere

White pelicans - Wyoming and Montana in the summer, Texas in the winter

Huge alligator gar on the Red River

Mule deer on the North Platte and other Western rivers.

White-tailed deer everywhere else

Javelinas, wild burros and stray Mexican stock on the Big Bend sections of the Rio Grande

Bighorn sheep on the upper Missouri in Montana.

I could go on. . . The fact is that you still get very many fine sights and sounds if you can get away from the road, cars, houses, malls, airports, etc. So that's why we go.

BOATS AND PADDLING

We used to have a lot of them, but we sold most when we moved to Virginia, as we almost always take the 16 foot Royalex plastic Penobscot (Old Town). I use a wooden light weight bent shaft paddle in the bow; Mark uses a straight shaft paddle on most trips. I have learned to use my back for bow paddling, and it works so well that I don't want to be bothered with perfecting the stern. I like to daydream and be fairly lazy about the boat.

And that's the way it is, paddling down the river.

By the way, if you've read this far, you simply must read the poem I wrote about a hair-raising trip we did a few years ago on the lower Mississippi River between Greenville and Vicksburg, Mississippi – about 100 river miles:

Butterflies in January
by Diana Christopulos

Turn to face the towboat
And its half-mile of haystacks,
Big as a Grand Canyon rapid
But silent.
Surreal, too distant to hear
With no canyon walls for echoing,
Only the levees away somewhere
Beyond the willow forests on both sides,
A twisted ribbon of new wilderness,
Hidden shoulders of a liquid highway.

Think about the beavers
Who don't care about the traffic,
Just the feast of new growth from old clearcuts.
And the other beavers, The Corps,
Busy making the river Go Straight
(no psychedelic meandering allowed!)
With hardhats barges chains rocks buzzsaws dozers and machetes
Building dikes revetments markers lights and signs
The result coming at us now
Six by six is thirty six barges lashed together diesel-driven.

Here comes the side wake
Lifts us a foot or two
At first, then more,
Settling down after three four five minutes
Lap lap lap.

We are
Bicycles on the interstate
Snowballs in Panama
Butterflies in January
Canoes on the lower Mississippi River.