TRAILER
Up a Creek
WELL, I CAN’T SAY I WASN’T WARNED. Repeatedly. Most oſten by my father. “Son, if you ______ [insert whatever
dumbass scheme I had in mind], you’re going to find yourself up a creek without a paddle.” And sure ‘nuff, it finally happened. Like
this: Bobby helps us liſt the kayaks off the
skiff, then heads off into the night to fish under lights at the western end of the channel. Danny dons his headlamp and begins rigging his boat. I dig around for my headlamp. And dig
some more. No headlamp. Finally, I decide to hell with it, the
moon’s bright enough. So long as I have my navigation light, I’ll be fine. In the light of that big ol’ moon, I
reach into the bow hatch and pull out my disassembled paddle and move the two pieces together to slot one inside the other. “Clack!” Not slotting. I look a little more
closely. Male end… male end. Angler Edition Slice paddle… regular Slice paddle. Damnit. I dig around in the bow hatch some more. “Hey, Danny. Bring your light over here.” Danny walks over and we peer into the
hatch. I reach back under the deck as far as I can and paw around blindly. Still nothing. We shine the light along the beach and up and down the shore. “Tese things float, don’t they?” I ask
Danny, and then toss one useless half into the water to test the theory. Yep, they float. I splash through the
water and retrieve half a paddle. We scan the nearby surface, slack between tides. Nothing bobbing there. Finally, I tell Danny to go ahead, go on
up the creek we’d been all set to explore. Aſter a few desultory casts around the creek
50 … KAYAK ANGLER summer/fall 2008
MY DAD WARNED ME, BUT I NEVER THOUGHT IT WOULD HAPPEN FOR REAL BY AARON REED
mouth, I try to make myself comfortable against a crumbling dirt bluff. Danny paddles back down the creek and
across the channel. My phone rings: “If there is any way you
can get over here, I’d get here right now. Te trout are going crazy under the lights!” I dig through my bag for the roll of duct
tape I usually carry. A real friend, I grunt under my breath, would have towed me across the channel to where the fish are biting. No duct tape. I’m freezing. Jacket’s in the
dry bag on Bobby’s boat. Still wet from my wade earlier in the
day, I begin looking for something with which to start a small fire. Tat cactus over there, it looks pretty dry. Hmm, here’s a piece of cardboard. I check my navel for lint. Ten I remember: I have chemical hand-
warmers in my tackle bag. I usually carry them in case of jellyfish stings and stingray strikes, but this is beginning to feel like an emergency. I have two. I break ‘em open and by moonlight try to decipher the directions. I shake them. I knead them. Eventually
they begin to heat up. I drop one in my right breast pocket and one in my leſt and pull my waders as high as they can go. Finally, Danny paddles back to the
mouth of the creek followed by Bobby in the big boat. We load up and head back down the channel, the now-40-mile-per- hour breeze cutting through me like a knife. I’m freezing. Except for my areolae, which have begun to smoke under the onslaught of chemical heat. Back at the dock, a thorough search of
the boat and both trucks reveals nothing. Te following discussion ensues: Me: “Danny, you’ve been around every time I’ve taken my paddle out of the boat.
Did I lose my mind and chuck it into the brush and then forget about it?” Danny: “No, I think I would have
remembered that.” Me: “And, at some point, I would have
had to actually take out my backup paddle too, and I haven’t touched my backup paddle since we got here.” Silence, as we ponder the implications. Danny: “But we were parked right in
front of the hotel room. And do you think a thief actually re-latched the hatch aſter taking a paddle?” Me: “Te thing that gets me, if someone’s
going to steal a paddle from me he might as well make sure he has the right pieces. Now some jackass has two pieces he can’t use, and I have two pieces I can’t use. What a waste.” Later, as we transfer kayaks from Danny’s
truck to mine, I say, “Hey, let’s just shake these suckers one more time, just in case.” I’m not really expecting anything, but
as we set the bow on the ground and I liſt the stern and begin violently exercising the boat, something slides to the front of the hull with a “thunk!” Half a paddle. Danny gets down on his hands and knees
and sticks his head in the bow hatch. “Yep, there’s another one up there.” I feel like an idiot for sitting on the edge
of the ship channel for nearly three hours, freezing my cojones off and crisping my nips, but I’ve just saved nearly $300. And it occurs to me that I still haven’t really been up a creek without a paddle. I just thought I was.
AARON REED works as a news editor for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and is the author of the forthcoming Falcon Guide to Paddling Texas.
ILLUSTRATION: LORENZO DEL BIANCO
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