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My uncle David has followed his bliss and made his life at the confluence of the mighty Mississippi and scenic St. Croix rivers. Down there his nickname is “Riv,” from “The River Rat.” His beloved first dog was named Croix.
When my brother and I moved up here some few years ago, my uncle David gifted us two old 10-foot solo wood canoes, flotsam from down on the river. I set about improving – but not perfecting – them in my amateur way. I happily call myself an amateur in many things – excepting maybe three things in which I’m more than an amateur. To be an amateur is to be a trier.
Making the canoe functional – that is, leak-proof, if not totally seaworthy (which they are not – cannot be) – and passably attractive involved a process of a few days. Scraping off the chips, cutting away the blemishes, using wood sealer, Bondo-ing with fiberglass and resin, then sanding with coarse and fine sandpaper, then applying spar varnish in several coats, with fine sanding in between coats. That’s my technique. Experts may have better ways. That’s fine.
James Egan is shown here carrying one of the 10-foot canoes his uncle David gave him. Photo courtesy of James Egan
The elements are hard on wood. I don’t have a garage, or shed big enough, and don’t cover the canoes over the cold fall and winter and cold spring. I turn the canoes over on top of the 12-foot aluminum rowboat and the 17-foot Grummann, and I let the elements have their way with them, which I figure is the way of all things, especially the way of the hulls of small watercraft. And which means that every couple of years I have to go through the process of restoring them again, which it seems to me should also be the way of all things.
I got into an argument once with a gun lover. It was a teleological argument. To be clearer, it was an argument on the purpose of a gun. Sure, I’m an amateur. But I’m a bird hunter, a deer hunter, a duck hunter, a trapper, a trapper of skunks. It always – and I mean since I was four or five or seven – seemed pretty obvious to me what the ultimate purpose of a gun was. Maybe I’d think different if I was a grunt or revolutionary, or a policeman or gangster, or a jeweler or the operator of a corner store, or a suicide. But I don’t think so.
But this guy I had the argument with sure schooled me. He said the purpose of a gun – and I hope I get this right for all the experts out there – is to house the mechanics by which, when the trigger is pulled, the hammer is cocked and then released, striking the firing pin, which strikes the primer, which in turn sets off an explosion, forcing one or more projectiles out through the barrel. Huh. I’d hate to have to listen to him tell me the purpose of his car.
The embarrassing truth is, I haven’t yet, in the five or so years I’ve had it, actually had this precious 10-foot solo canoe in the water. Never paddled it. Never fished in it. Never capsized it with the pups for a summer bathing.
It has had another – if not higher – function for me. To learn once and to practice over the juvenating and rejuvenating of a small wooden craft, the difficult techniques of varnishing and sanding, filling in, patching, Bondo-ing. To care for it in my way. So that when the day comes and I do want to fish alone on small, still, quiet water, I can. Whenever I want, I can.
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