Times A-Changing

We don't need to be at the airport until 2:20 Friday instead of 1:20. Probably shouldn't have even said anything to improve the chances of Tim being on time.

So what that means is if you are riding out with the group, we will leave from Barton Ave. no later than 2:00. Plan accordingly. If you are meeting us at the farm that afternoon, copy and print the directions posted here on April 1. You should probably do that even if you think you're riding out with someone...

Water level is officially a problem. It is right at 5-feet now which is floatable but on the high side. Unfortunately it rained today and there is more rain coming. So be like Mike. Don't forget to pack your Youth Size Extra-small poncho and thin white t-shirt.






With the rivers rising, there is a real possibility we will also be changing our destination plans and do some flatwater canoeing on this trip. Nothing wrong with that. One of the prettiest lakes in Tennessee, Dale Hollow, is just north of Livingston.

It has primitive campsites that can only be reached by water. We are not giving up on the Sequatchie, but we've reserved the primitive site called "Jackson Creek Island" (#30 on the map) just in case.



Dale Hollow is the lake where the world record smallmouth bass was caught. You may want to think hard about a fishing license this year. Dale Hollow may also have Candirus. How else can you explain the last paragraph in: "WARNING: Primitive Camping not for Everyone"? Good thing Josh has been working on some new techniques in the off-season.

If some of you object and say we are not the Rebel Lakes Canoe Club, remember that Dale Hollow Lake isn't really a lake, it's a reservoir, which means it's really a river. Or used to be. In fact, it was once two rivers (the Wolf and the Obey).

Goodbye to a River, pages 8-9

While all the rivers may continue to flow to the sea, those who represent us in such matters will at least slow down the process by transforming them from rivers into bead strings of placid reservoirs behind concrete dams . . .

Bitterness? No, ma'am . . . In this region, scorched to begin with, alternating between floods and droughts, its absorbent cities quarupling their censuses every few years, electrical power and flood control and moisture conservation and water skiing are praiseworthy projects. More than that, they are essential. We river-minded ones can't say much against them - nor, probably, should we want to. Nor, mostly, do we . . .

But if you are built like me, neither the certainty of change, nor the need for it, nor any wry philosophy will keep you from feeling a certain enrgaged awe when you hear that a river that you've known always, and that all men of that place have known always back into the red dawn of men, will shortly not exist. When someone official dreams up a dam, it generally goes in. Dams are ipso facto good all by themselves, like mothers and flags. Maybe you save a Dinosaur Monument from time to time, but in-between such salvations you lose ten Brazoses. . .

It was not my fight. I knew, though, that it might be years again before I got back with time enough on my hands to make the trip, and what I wanted to do was to wrap it up, the river, before what I had known ended up down yonder under all the Criss-Crafts and the tinkle of portable radios.