A Proper Send-off for a 64 year-old kayak....

In 1947, my father Marsh constructed a wood-framed kayak, then stretched canvas across it, painted it WWII "gun metal gray" and paddled it at Lake George in upstate NY and then took it to lakes in Massachusetts and New Hampshire before hauling it I westward. He got married in '53, and the kayak then rode west atop their '54 Ford Crestline Wagon. The kayak was then paddled in the lakes of New Mexico and Arizona, then brought all the way north to Calgary, Alberta Canada in 1967 for the rivers and mountain lakes there. (There are some pencil notes on the exposed frame, as pictured above, which I will make note of near the end of this entry.)

Fast-forward to 1968: With the canvas tearing, and some of the original structure weakening, I inherited this old venerable kayak, and as a boy scout project, stripped off the old gray canvas and rebuilt the weak struts, and strengthened the frame, and made the footwells more comfortable. I followed with new canvas skin, attached with fresh copper tacks, followed by a new bright yellow coat of marine paint in time for the summer of 69.

 With my father and mother, my refreshed "hand-me-down" kayak topped the 67 Ford station wagon, and later our first family Winnebago Brave, bringing the yellow vessel to countless mountain lakes and rivers of mountainous Alberta and British Columbia. (See photo below... as a young boy in about 1971...)

Fast forward again: With periodic maintenance, I brought the kayak with me to Wyoming, (Lake Marie in the Snowy Range) and then on to the Pioneer and Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho, as I had married, started a family and helped raise two boys. The kayak carried my first Wyoming-born son in my lap during a beautiful sunset on Idaho's Magic Reservoir. Later the yellow kayak was criss-crossing Alturas and Petit Lakes in the Sawtooth Mountains, our family camping backyard for 20 years.

 It wasn't long before young sons Nic and Cale were each out in the lake in front of our family campsite, plying the waters of Petit and Alturas Lakes, in the now 50-year old kayak frame.

 Finally by the end of the 90s, with my boys almost grown into men, my last solitary therapy kayak trips were on Petit and Redfish Lake. By 2002, the kayak had been paddled by 3 generations, survived major canvas tears and even a few hailstorms. The canvas was getting brittle, the frame was weakening, and she was collecting a pint or more of water in the bottom within a half hour of launch.

By the summer of 2003, I took it up to a favorite spot in the mountains north of Ketchum, Idaho, up Eagle Creek, and hid the boat up in the trees on a grassy hillside near the trailhead at Neal Canyon, (after removing the canvas covering). It was the summer to leave Idaho for awhile, (destination Florida). It was unfair to this great kayak to not let it finish it's life out in the northern rockies. But I hadn't the time in 2003 to give it a proper procedural goodbye....

(Above: As first hidden on a wet summer evening in 2003...(Below as found, 8 years later.....)

So, I promised myself that I would return to the site in a few years, in hopes of recovering what was left of the old frame, and to ceremoniously set it ablaze in a proper mountain campfire ring, cold beer in hand, thereby returning it full-cycle to mother earth, with some sort of a parting script to read aloud.

So I returned to Idaho this year, without great expectations of ever finding it, on this adventure to Anchorage. Wonders of all wonders, I was amazed to find it there, unmolested AFTER 7 WINTERS (!). I carefully parted it out for the intended Neal Canyon campfire goodbye. The kayak was now 64 years old.

 As I slowly dismembered the old frame next to my new campfire, with Layli at my side, I was amazed for two reasons: First, that nobody else found the old frame and used it for their own firewood, and secondly, (as I started separating the old frame pieces), I discovered some penciled "assembly notes" made by my now 83-year-old father, on four of the original frame pieces. These pencil marks were made in the late 1940s, when my father was first building this kayak. He was just about to turn 20, just a few years after the end of WW II. What an amazing real-life story for me.

And so, in the crackling blaze, beer in hand,  I returned the kayak frame back to mother earth, on July 27th, 2011. So for those of you who hung in with me on this particular post, thank you, for you probably "get it." And yes, there was a "bear in camp" Jun, 1997, at this site, as recorded on the aspen tree I photographed near the base of the fire ring in which I was saying goodbye in my own way, to a very long-lived kayak.

 I left Idaho for Montana and Canada that day, with a little lump in my throat over a little homemade canvas-covered three-generation kayak. A dream kayak if there ever was one....