Two Trips

(A talk given at the Buffalo Audubon Society Annual Banquet, May 1, 1996.)

   I know that I am preaching to the converted when I speak to many of you 
of hiking and canoeing. Many readers will have had more experience than I 
engaging in these activities. And all of you know the quiet thrills 
associated with these sports. Walking along a narrow trail through a high 
hardwood forest and emerging onto a sloping daisy-enriched meadow where you 
are confronted with one of those spectacular views of the open country 
beyond: rolling hills, some forested in varying shades of green, others 
cleared for farm fields, chessboard squares of yellow and brown crops, all 
of those colors enriched by a few blue ponds and an even bluer sky around 
the horizon under white cumulus cotton batten.

   Or paddling your canoe a few feet from a shore where beetling granite 
rocks dive straight down into placid water, where cedars cling precariously 
to the vertical faces, all of this and the high pine forest and sky above 
reflected upside down in the mirror before you.

   And you also know of the down side of these activities. Hiking in the 
early morning through a shoulder-high patch of jewelweed and obtaining an 
unwanted but probably much needed shower bath in the process, emerging with 
every inch of your clothing sopping wet and the water oozing in your shoes 
at every step. Or, as bow paddler, ruddering your canoe around another sharp 
turn in a creek only to find the twentieth beaver dam blocking your way. You 
paddle hard to wedge the canoe up onto the pile of sticks and mud and leap 
out to drag it forward over the barrier. But the branch you choose for 
footing is rotten and you are suddenly knee deep in water and slimy silt. As 
you extract yourself to help your partner pull the canoe across, a squadron 
of mosquitoes rises from the marsh grass to entertain you. With the canoe 
finally over, you reboard only to find yourself paddling through soft mud. 
The beavers have stopped all but a trickle of water.

   But even those kinds of experiences are to be savored on reflection. When 
you tell of them ‹‹ or even when you think of them in retrospect ‹‹ you join 
that company of explorers who have suffered hardships but have lived to 
think of these mishaps in self-congratulatory terms. How many times do we 
say or think, "Oh, it wasn't all that bad. Why, I can remember paddling the 
Black River in a hard rain when..." and off you go on a tale of even worse 
horrors.

   But this evening my theme is somewhat different. I will be talking about 
a hike and a canoe trip, but my focus is on my interactions on those 
expeditions with young people. My remarks will still include some bragging 
for after all in each case I did make it, but I hope to concentrate more on 
these children who today have such a bad rap.

   James Russell Lowell speaks to us of "the noisy impertinence of 
childhood, the elbowing self-conceit of youth," and those views ‹ or worse ‹ 
many of us share about modern youngsters. We see them in disorderly groups 
in malls or outside convenience stores, inanely giggling among themselves 
and lowering at passers-by, many of them with plugs in their ears and 
transistor radios in their hands, the sound even audible to us and surely 
terribly damaging to their own ear drums. We see that inevitable gang at the 
edge of the local schoolyard smoking we know not what, their greasy and 
unkempt hair dirtying their necks and shirt collars. We witness their 
apparel, supposed to set them apart, but as like as uniforms: if one pair of 
jeans has a slit across the left knee, all must bear this chevron. We are 
shocked by their tattoos and shudder at their rings piercing various body 
parts. We even read headlines about youth gang shootings and fire bombings, 
about attacks on elderly people whose lives are already constrained by 
deadbolts, burglar alarms, window bars - and fear.

   Well those are not the kids I know. And my faith in young people has 
always been reinforced by being with them on camping trips.

   As it happens, until this past summer it had been many years since I 
camped with youngsters. Over the past thirty years, almost all of my hiking 
has been alone. And my canoeing, mostly in the Minnesota Boundary Waters, 
has been with three other old men. Not since my own children were of camping 
age decades ago had I ventured into the woods with youngsters.

   And in fact rarely do I see teenagers in the woods today. When I visit 
our grandchildren in Colorado and Texas and our grandnieces and nephews in 
Alabama, I find them terribly overscheduled with team activities, mostly 
sports, all highly structured by and for adults and with the children 
serving as regimented robot-like participants. I think that the kids will 
only have fun when they grow up and put their own children through this 
punishment. Whatever happened to tree climbing and make-up games? Whatever 
happened to the Boy Scouts and the Girl Guides? Sadly I suspect that they 
too have turned to organized sports in order to survive.

   At any rate, I was pleased, if somewhat threatened, last summer when Dick 
Christensen invited me to join a camping trip with his teenaged 
grandchildren. I say threatened because I was concerned not only about my 
ability to keep up with these youngsters, but also my ability to get along 
with them after all these years. As this talk demonstrates, we professors 
have a very off-putting didactic side to us, but perhaps I could keep my 
mouth shut at least part of the time for a few days.

   And so I joined three of Dick's grandchildren, Laura and Christen 
Besanceney and their friend Molly Morin of Orchard Park, their younger 
cousin Keith Christensen, visiting from Kansas City, and Wayne Gall's son 
Jeffrey from Lancaster on a weekend hike along the Black Forest Trail in 
central Pennsylvania. Laurie, Molly, and Jeff are high school students; 
Keith is now in seventh grade, Chrissie in eighth. Wayne and Dick and I were 
to serve as guides.

   I was impressed by every one of these youngsters. All but Keith carried a 
heavier backpack than I did; Molly's I could hardly lift. On the trail they 
didn't race ahead like I did when I was their age. When I first began hiking 
with my parents my modus operandi was to dash forward until I was exhausted 
and then, seated on a boulder or log at trailside, I would beg each passing 
hiker to carry me.

   Quite the contrary, these boys and girls not only managed their own 
responsibilities, but they also focused much attention on us. They were well 
aware of the declining skills of two of us three oldsters and solicitous of 
our welfare. I especially appreciated that as we made our way along that 
steep and rocky pathway.

   For steep and rocky it was indeed. This was, after all, Pennsylvania. 
Appalachian Trail through hikers call it rocksylvania and they plan on 
wearing out at least one pair of hiking boots traversing the state. The 
rocks stick up in points and gouge into the soles and heels of your feet. 
Now almost a year after that hike I retain a heel bruise that I continue to 
pamper.

   These kids had great eyes. They found all kinds of interesting things 
along the trail, things that I would have missed. Perhaps their best find 
was the big timber rattlesnake that Keith and Laurie pointed out coiled in 
the leaves at the side of the trail.

    Not only were these kids good hikers, but they were great fun. And ‹ 
must I admit it? ‹ they showed us old timers where we were when we misread 
the map. It turned out that we had erred even before we left our cars. We 
failed to make a turn driving in on the forest road, which led us to start 
hiking at the wrong entry point. Because of this we walked the entire first 
morning on the trail, constantly adjusting our thinking to discrepancies in 
what the map tried to tell us. This hill seemed extra long or this view 
seemed somehow wrong ‹‹ shouldn't that hill be in the southwest? ‹‹ but we 
managed to convince ourselves that all was well. Not until we were resting 
and eating our lunches at a trail juncture did Chrissie lean over the 
shoulders of us guides and announce, "I think we're over here," pointing to 
a location several inches on the map and several miles on the trail from 
where we thought we should be. "Why do you think that?" asked her 
grandfather patiently. "Well, I just looked at that sign," she responded, 
pointing to a wooden plaque that we hadn't seen and that, sure enough, 
confirmed her statement.

   Fortunately, we were able to readjust our itinerary to take advantage of 
what an airline pilot would have called our faulty guidance system. It 
meant, however, that we would not set up camp until well after dark.

   By that time I was exhausted, but the girls did most of the work 
organizing camp and cooking supper. After seconds and thirds of their 
spaghetti and a pass at clean up, I joined Dick and Keith in our sleeping 
bags under our tarp.

   It had been a long time since I had slept out like that. For many years 
on outings I have rested zipped up in a tent. But here the evening was 
perfect. Not even any bugs. Tired as I was, I found myself contemplating the 
huge moon through the lovely pines of our campsite. Soon the breathing of my 
bed mates became regular as they drifted off, and from their tent just yards 
away the quiet whispers of the girls faded until they too were asleep. Nor 
was there a sound from the Galls' tent. The campsite was still and so too 
were the woods around us. The soft whistle of a screech owl seemed only to 
accentuate the quiet and the moon's long shadows marched slowly across the 
grass.

   And as I lay there, my thoughts turned to another trip with young people 
so many years ago. How different were those kids and yet how like they were.

   It was back in the 1950s when I was dragooned into taking ten Binghamton 
area high school football players on a canoe trip through Algonquin Park in 
Canada. They were big tough inner city boys and I was frankly intimidated. 
Two were so large that their canoe could carry no packs; even without extra 
weight their boat showed only an inch or two of freeboard.

   I had gone to Johnson City High School as a young math teacher, and my 
assignment included serving as assistant football coach to Ed Butkis. Ed had 
been one of the seven blocks of granite on a famous Fordham football team 
and he was a quite remarkable coach. When I joined his staff, his Tigers had 
not lost a game for three years. I was his third assistant, coach of the 
freshmen.

   As low man on the coaching staff, I was assigned the responsibility of 
closing up the locker room the first week. When I finished dressing and 
approached that room, I was met with a flying body that landed at my feet. A 
250 pounder had literally thrown a 200 pounder out the door. It was a 
defining moment for me. My first thought was to retreat and quit on the 
spot. But instead I temporized. "Come on, boys, clean up and get out of 
here." Remarkably they did so with no rancor whatsoever. What I had thought 
was the beginning of a battle had just been youthful highjinks.

   But that winter after another successful season for the varsity ‹‹ only a 
tie marred their record while my freshmen lost most of our games ‹‹ somehow 
the first string quarterback discovered that I had served a few years 
earlier as a camp guide in Algonquin Park.

   "How about taking us on a canoe trip?" he asked at the close of trig 
class. I demurred, but that first approach led to further visits from him 
and others in ones and twos and threes until finally one spring afternoon a 
delegation of a dozen giants completely filled my classroom.

   Intrigued and intimidated, I agreed to go, at once happy for this excuse 
to return to the North Woods but deeply concerned about how I would get 
along with this gang of Brobdingnagians.

   We were to go for eight days in August and they were to do some 
preparing. They promised to practice canoeing, but it later turned out that 
this meant one trip to a local park where they quickly capsized three 
canoes. I gave them a short list of personal equipment that they should 
bring, and was taken aback when one boy asked if I hadn't forgotten to 
include guns. They each had to pony up $30.00 to pay our costs, a remarkably 
small amount when we think of it today, but a lot of money for these city 
kids whose parents worked in the Endicott Johnson shoe factory back in the 
'50s.

   And so it was that we set out that summer in three cars, the springs of 
each fully compressed with the weight of these kids and the accumulated 
packs and equipment that we had gathered. We would rent canoes in the park.

   On the way north I stopped to buy food for the trip. When three of us 
emerged from the store burdened with crates of supplies, another commented, 
"Chief, you should have just given us a list." It took me a few minutes to 
realize what he meant. He and his pals would have shop-lifted all we needed.

   There was much gleeful singing and kidding on the long drive up through 
Watertown and around the east end of Lake Ontario, but when we finally 
reached the park and rented our four canoes, they were a more subdued group. 
This was something entirely new to them and they clearly were wary of what 
lay ahead.

   Crossing our first lake we saw several canoes approaching. "Do we fight 
them, Chief?" one of the paddlers in another of our boats called across to 
me. When I told them that we would not meet enemies on this trip, the boys 
seemed only partly reassured. But when the oncoming group called out 
greetings to us, a few of them responded glumly.

   Now another problem arose. After their first few shouted obscenities, I 
called my team together for a conference at which I got everyone to agree to 
swear only in Polish or Russian, languages that all of them shared with 
their first generation immigrant parents but with which I was in this case 
happily unfamiliar. My sense of decorum satisfied, we paddled on, the other 
boats weaving back and forth, the untrained paddlers switching sides every 
few strokes.

   And here came our first big test. I had worked out our itinerary 
carefully so that we would paddle several miles before tackling our only 
quite straightforward carry for that first day. We had made our way from 
Canoe Lake through Joe, Tepee, and Littledoe Lakes and made the lift into 
Blackbear. Now we grounded our canoes at the beginning of the half mile 
portage into Ink Lake. I helped each of the ten boys to load up at this 
first overland test, telling each one that he should carry only what he 
could and rest whenever he felt so inclined. When all had set out down the 
trail, I clumsily flipped my canoe onto my head and started off after them.

    This, I knew, would be a test of me as well as them. Although I was 
younger then, I was not in good shape. And here I was with these still 
younger giants, setting off into the wilderness. Could I keep up? My answer 
came quickly. Within the first tenth of a mile I passed every one of them. 
They were sitting or lying along the trail, already resting, their loads 
unceremoniously dumped beside them. Carrying a canoe or a heavy pack made 
demands on different and unprepared muscles.

   These tough youngsters had suddenly transformed into the new kids on the 
block. Their brash and threatening city demeanor disappeared and they had to 
start from scratch just like any other first timer. Seeing me march past 
them, they began to pick up their equipment to move on. And by the time I 
doubled back to pick up additional packs, several were hurrying to catch up 
with me. By the end of that first portage they were well on their way to 
becoming trippers: that is, they were competing to carry the most, the 
furthest, and the fastest. This competition of a new and unexpected type had 
subordinated each of them to our team.

   We spent the first night in the island cabin on McIntosh Lake where 
artist Tom Thompson was said to have lived for several summers. It has since 
burned down. There we discovered that the biggest pot that one of the boys 
had brought for cooking was in reality an insulated wash tub: after hours of 
trying we found we couldn't boil water in it.

   And early the next morning two of the boys got up before I awoke, took 
out one of the canoes to fish, capsized and lost all of the trip fishing 
gear. A great start.

   But in a way it helped. I could call for discipline with an object lesson 
at hand. We spent most of that day practicing canoeing, first learning 
strokes and then how to stay with and rescue overturned boats. The boys 
picked up these skills quickly and at the same time had great fun splashing 
around in the freezing water. A day that had started so badly turned around.

   After that day of instruction we set off again on our trip. The route was 
a familiar one: down McIntosh Creek and across Grassy Bay and White Lake 
into Big Trout Lake. A loop up through Burntroot Lake and Lake LaMuir and 
back to Big Trout. Then back down to the outfitters through the Otterslides, 
Burnt Island, and the Joes. To many of you our itinerary will be familiar.

   The boys carried heavier and heavier loads and soon we were singling 
across the portages. They quickly learned to set up tents at campsites and 
to share in the fire-making and cooking tasks.

   But there was one litany that was to last through the entire trip. I wore 
an old chief petty officer's black shirt that I had retained from the navy, 
and the boys referred to me as Chief for the full outing. All day long it 
was chief this, chief that. "Hey, Chief!" sometimes meant "What is this?" or 
"I saw it first!" as when pointing to a merganser family paddling along the 
shore or a diving beaver slapping its tail ahead of us or a yodeling loon 
flying overhead or just a frog peering up out of the water. The boys wanted 
to bash the frogs with their paddles until I suggested what good mosquito 
eaters they are. As in those old fairy tales, the frogs immediately turned 
into princes.

   Other times a whispered "Hey, Chief!" meant "Wow!" as when we paddled out 
into a pond of white and yellow lily pads or around a bend to come upon a 
deer standing belly deep in the water. And still other times it signaled 
"Help!" as the strangled "Hey, Chief!" of a bow paddler who was leaning back 
almost into the lap of the paddler behind him to get away from a dragonfly 
perched on the stem of his canoe.

   As we were finishing an evening meal, a "Hey, Chief!" called everyone's 
attention to the jug-o-rum call of a bullfrog. I carefully explained that 
what they were hearing was the feeding cry of a hungry boa constrictor, a 
response that drew general laughter but that, I also noticed, pulled several 
of the boys closer to the campfire.

   There was an interesting aspect of this familiarity. "Chief," it turned 
out later, was reserved for this trip. Back at school in classes and even on 
the football field I was again "Mr. Rising." They had evidently made this 
pact among themselves and I regarded it as a remarkably thoughtful sign of 
their appreciation.

   But they didn't forget the trip. They would come up to me at a school 
basketball game or prom dragging along their dates, always one of those 
spectacularly beautiful Virna Lisis for whom the school was famous. They 
would introduce the young woman, but then turn immediately to reminisce. 
"Remember, Mr. Rising, when I fell off that rock and dumped the food pack 
into the creek." The future model would have to stand by, hipshot and bored 
to tears, as her escort chattered on about old times.

   Out of the many wonderful experiences of that trip I can only sort out a 
few. One evening we were camped on a lovely point on White Trout Lake. Each 
night the two boys who paddled with me that day slept out with me under a 
tarp. The others slept in tents. You set up a tarp by rolling a canoe on its 
side and staking a square canvas sheet over the boat, holding it up off the 
ground with paddles or sticks at the outer corners. Then you sleep with your 
head toward the canoe, the canvas forming a ceiling over you with the other 
three sides of your room open. Our campsite was on a bluff and the open side 
of our shelter faced the lake.

   That night the boys got me to tell ghost stories and as the evening 
progressed several of them brought their sleeping bags out to join us under 
the tarp. Instead of three of us, we ended the evening with six squeezed 
into that narrow space. The others had wisely, as it turned out, retreated 
to their own shelters.

   I recall falling asleep to that calming sound of small waves lapping 
against the shore a few feet away. But hours later I was rudely awakened by 
a richer noise. The waves were already whitecaps growling against our beach 
and the wind was billowing up and snapping the tarp. One of the boys had 
also awakened and he and I crawled out of our sleeping bags, made our way 
barefoot down to the shore, carried up another canoe, and fixed it against 
the wind at the foot of our tarp. Now two sides of our room were closed and 
the wind was blocked.

   Just in time. The wind brought in a pelting rain, but we were snug in our 
protected environment, I especially, because in the process of crowding my 
sleeping bag had gravitated to the exact center of the tarp.

   Back to a sound sleep. I didn't waken until daylight. The storm had 
passed, the rain had stopped, and the sun was already up. But something else 
had also changed. Our roof was sagging and the bulge took it down to within 
inches of my stomach. It was a bathtub full of water. Drops were forming at 
its low point and every few seconds one would plop down on my sleeping bag.

   Something had to be done and I did it. Without thinking of the 
consequences, I pushed up on the tarp with my knee. The result was not quite 
what I expected. Of course the water sloshed out the sides, but I had 
forgotten that we had extra roomers. Our outermost visitors came flowing out 
of their sleeping bags as this Niagara of water flooded them.

   Fortunately it was a warm sunny morning and the sleeping bags soon dried 
out. But for those few moments I am certain that two campers were prepared 
to maroon me in the Algonquin forests.

   Of course the fishermen in the group weren't able to enjoy that sport 
except for a few forlorn attempts with string and bare fishhooks, but our 
loss of equipment led to the most charming incident of the entire trip. One 
evening a canoe approached our campsite after we had returned to Big Trout 
and it turned out that the husband and wife in it were from Fredonia. I 
visited with them for a few minutes and, when they learned that we had lost 
our fishing equipment, they volunteered to supply us with a couple of their 
own catch the next morning.

   Behind me my football players were taking this all in, and no sooner had 
the couple left but they began to scoff to each other at this offer. "That's 
the last we'll see of them," expressed the general attitude. These boys 
retained that city veneer of defensiveness that doesn't allow an individual 
to do a favor for anyone. To their minds that kind of behavior would display 
weakness and would invite being taken advantage of. It's us - or often even 
just me! - against the world. Keep the guns loaded, the moat wide, and the 
drawbridge up.

   The next morning as we were finishing camp chores and packing up for our 
day's paddle, the couple reappeared, all loaded up for their own trip back 
down the Otterslides. On the top of their packs was a roll of newspaper 
which they handed off to me. I unfolded the package to display three giant 
lake trout, each cleaned and ready for cooking. They must have been 40 
inchers, beautiful fish, their pink and white meat gleaming in the morning 
sun.

   I wish you had been there to witness my campers' response. The boys were 
clustered behind me. This was clearly quite outside their experience. 
Someone not in their immediate family doing something like this was 
unprecedented. The quality of their appreciation was quite remarkable. Each 
one of them said thank you in his own special way, most quite openly, but 
several could muster only a whisper. At that moment I felt a surge of 
affection for those big powerful young men who were indeed just as human as 
the rest of us.

   The rest of our voyage was a lark. The boys had become genuine trippers 
and they adopted an entirely new demeanor. They enjoyed themselves to be 
sure and the kidding and teasing never stopped, but their attitude toward 
outsiders had turned 180°. Perhaps the best example of this took place on 
our last day. We were singling across trails of course, but as usual I 
brought up the rear. I still wanted to be assured that we didn't leave 
anything else behind. Much to my surprise, before I had gone more than a 
quarter of the way across the portage, here came the first of my team 
carrying canoes and packs back across the trail. They had met a boy scout 
troop, children just two or three years younger then themselves and just 
beginning their outing. The scouts were terribly disorganized and faced some 
real problems down the line. The youngsters had big plastic bags loaded with 
candy bars and comic books tied to their waists and some of them had been 
trying to manhandle canoes across this tough trail, three boys trying to 
carry each boat like a pail. One of the scouts was black with mud: rounding 
a bend his own unwieldy canoe had pushed him off the trail into the muck.

   My boys were highly amused by this and they laughed at the incident all 
the way home, but they never showed their amusement to the scouts. Instead 
they simply took charge and helped them across that trail ‹‹ their leaders 
as well as the youngsters. They weren't teaching, they were merely helping, 
but there was a great deal of learning going on. The scouts saw how canoes 
and packs were supposed to be carried, but even more important how you 
didn't wait to be asked to do something, how you looked for a job to do and 
did it. I am sure that those boys' next portage was better organized.

   And deep in their psyches I am convinced that my football players were 
paying back something for the generous portions of those three big fish that 
we had savored over our campfire the previous evening.

   There were also little things that impressed me about these boys. For 
example, late one afternoon I joined one of them who was sitting on a 
boulder overlooking a small pond. The campsite was prepared and we had a few 
minutes before supper. This was the biggest of the giants and the only one 
whose name I still recall. I would later follow Frank Lakata's four year 
career playing center on the Duke University basketball team. Neither of us 
said anything for a few minutes. We just sat there looking at the still 
water reflecting the series of darkening greens of the forest beyond. 
Finally Frank turned to me and said, "I'm going to come back here." I didn't 
have to answer.

   As some of you know, my professional life - as opposed to my avocational 
life associated with nature - has been spent with children and their 
teachers. I have been richly rewarded by those associations, but never more 
than I have been repaid by the memories provided me by those two trips.

   Just the other day we tested hundreds of sixth graders who were competing 
for entrance to our University at Buffalo Gifted Math Program. As I looked 
over those kids busily working at their tests, I saw once again the same 
kind of fundamental goodness in kids that I have seen through fifty years of 
teaching.

   Things are different today, yes. They are, we must recognize, much 
tougher now than they were when many of us were youngsters. Whereas we 
sneaked off into the woods to smoke vines or lighted firecrackers on 
Independence Day, today's teenagers and even younger children are forced to 
make decisions about drugs and sex that are life defining and life 
threatening. But we elders seem only to view kids critically. We fail to 
realize that our degenerating attitudes toward young people is not a 
function of fundamental changes in them but is instead a function of our own 
aging.

   We owe these modern kids the best chance we can give them. And I am 
delighted to see that Dick Christensen and Wayne Gall are carrying on a 
family camping tradition that my own parents honored by taking my brother 
Vern and me into the Adirondack forests. Programs like Outward Bound prove 
over and over the same theorems I learned from my football team and these 
more recent kids. In particular we establish the tremendous reserves of 
goodness that is packaged in each young person.

   I worry in this regard about our local natural history organizations like 
Audubon and the Buffalo Ornithological Society and the Niagara Frontier 
Botanical Society. We're not adding enough young people to our rosters and 
the overall membership age increases another year each year. I consider this 
a very serious problem.

   But no matter how that and other problems are resolved, I remain 
convinced that we are blessed with our children. And I am also convinced 
that they will prevail.