The following is what you might call a two part saga, you will laugh, you will cry, you will face your inner most fears, well... Maybe not, but hopefully you will at least read it :). I have spent the last few hours writing out this story in all its glory, just to come to the conclusion that an abridged version is in order. (You can just send me a blank check and I'll get the full 5 volume set out to you as soon as they are completed :) Now, first I want to ask you a question. Where do you feel safe regardless of circumstances, where can you meet the largest of life's challenges and feel the confidence that you can and will survive them? Well, this dramatic story will take its commencement deep in the Raquette River wilderness of the Adirondacks, and before 48 hours passes, you will find us in another wilderness much more savage, dangerous, and untamed than any other I have had occasion to wander.... The city of Manhattan. We barely escaped neither with our skins nor wallets. So as I forementioned, this story took nearly 48 hours to play out, I herein conspire to do my honest best to take less than that to tell it. We will just have to see how it goes...

    Now, this wasn't the first time that Keith and I had been canoeing together. In fact, I really should have known better. Our first year at Cherokee we took a day off  to paddle all 3 of the Saranac lakes and back. Now this could be a long drawn out story of its own, so I will just hit the highlights. We shove off about 9pm post-camp worship and after about 3 hours of "following stars" in a "straight line" we find ourselves right back just outside Gilplin bay! Actually it was more like this "Hey Keith, I hate to say this but is that big shadow on the island the Eagle island boat house?" from the shore a womans voice echo's over the dark waters, "yup." My dream of trans-Atlantic primitive navigation implodes and we pick an older looking star that seems more reliable and set in its ways, follow it south, sleep on an island covered with delicious blueberries, the next morn we portage about 3000 lbs of food over to Middle Saranac, paddle so hard that wakes are thrown over the sides of passing motorboats, wake up the kid who was supposed to be operating the lock on the beautiful meandering river between Middle and Lower Saranac, wait for him to find enough clothes to leave his cabin, reach the town of Saranac Lake, do a U-turn and do it all over again with no rest - a very strong wind pushing against us - and a strict deadline. Keith as is customary, had to appear in court at 5:00 for a traffic ticket. So we drove the canoe up on shore, "paddled up the hill to the cafeteria," and he is in his rusty ole Ranger at 4:00 speeding away on his way to traffic court. So basically it took us 16 hours plus the 3 hr. late-night scenic route, and minus sleep time. I later had someone who knew nothing of this heroic-tale brag about doing the trip in something like 2 days. I left that one alone, he was happy. :)   OK THEN, so the point being that we should not be allowed to canoe together. Which is a rule of thumb that I have grown comfortable with. I'm sorry folks, so lets make that a 3 part saga...

   Neither Keith nor I worked at Camp this particular year of 07, so Keith called me up one day and told me that I WAS going with him to Camp meeting, Camp Cherokee, Canoeing the Raquette river and then we would jump in a train and go visit NY City for an afternoon. The first two sounded doable, the third kinda iffy-ish with our combined backgrounds, and the last one kinda made my skin crawl, but somehow along the way I found myself reserving a train ticket from Albany to NYC and driving a huge white "boat" of a car out to Union Springs to meet Mr. Textor.  So, after this and that happened, we eventually found ourselves pushing one of the Camp's aluminum canoes out into the clear water of Long Lake, and heading north. All was peaceful until CA-BLEWWWWY! thunder and lighning. "So um Keith, I was thinking... Um, we are in this aluminum canoe and all, and I think I remember learning something in school about water and metals and such, and Um..." "NO!" he yells above the sounds of pouring rain and the ominous booms, "We have 10 miles until the north shore of the lake, we need to make good time tonight!" "Ok." I whimper. ;) Well, I suppose I'll admit I'm doing my best to incriminate him in your minds, but that was the jist of the conversation anyways ;) lol.  We actually did survive that part of the journey as you might of guessed, and we arrived at the north shore by the outlet into Raquette river just as it began to darken. The banks were a mix match of swamp and boulders, certainly nothing you could land your canoe on or sleep on. So we located a small island covered in waist high grass' and a few shrubby looking trees and unloaded our gear. By now we are in complete darkness with no flashlight, and no shelter. I being barefoot, started slowly shuffling around the island and picking up any sticks that I could feel with my toes.  We soon had a pile of sticks, dug my flint and steel set out of my bag and to both of our amazement's managed to spark a fire very quickly and easily despite the pouring rain and having to do everything completely by feel. (we don't ever seem to remember flashlights.) So now with a roaring fire we started to once again entertain the thought of actually living through the cold night. I had a 8'x8' piece of Oilcloth, basically an old style waterproof tarp used by French Canadian Voyagers to wrap up their tradegoods and supplies as they paddled from village to village, we dumped out its contents and made a simple leanto between two bushes beside the fire. Now we were warm and sorta dry, if you don't count the wet ground :).  More firewood was felt for, and we climbed into our blankets to spend actually a quite comfortable night all in all. Although, at one point in the night I did get up and get a log to lay between Keith and I. He was just getting a little too close for comfort, lol. My cousin Chad and I have come close to freezing to death more times than I care to recall, but we both agreed during these times "my body heat is MY body heat!" Not real logical, and going against everything you will ever read in the Boy Scout Manuel, but there are some things more uncomfortable than being cold ;)
.
    The sky began to brighten, the mosquito's woke up and started looking to see what was for breakfast. Seeing Keith was still asleep and unaware of my plotting, I reached over and stole his grandma's crocheted blanket to improvise over my face as a mosquito net. He surely wouldn't miss it! ;) After that early morning "just lay there and think about getting up stage" passed, I sat up and looked outside our leanto just in time to see a big mature bald eagle fly over us no more than 30 ft up. That got the day started off right! I woke up Keith just in time to not see it, and we packed up thankful for the good change in the weather.

And that completes Day 1 of the Exciting Adventures of Keith and Teddy, tune in again next time to find out will they survive the Raquette river? Will they learn to love the softer side of NYC? And more! ( cut to music...)