Fencerows: Runoff Creek Regatta
Cheering on the regatta.
By John Luthens
The tradition started long ago. My brother and I whittled our boats and kept our senses tuned to the weather. We watched the last snow bank melt; we listened for the sump pump in the basement to start running and scented the spring breeze for the wet and rich earth smells. Finally, when the water began seeping from the bogs and the snowmelt water crested, the boats were given a final inspection and we slid on our winter boots one last time.
The boats were carefully constructed from Popsicle sticks and scraps of wood with hollow core paper-towel rolls for pontoon floats. They would be discarded and forgotten soon enough, after the drainage ditches ran dry in the hot summer and the attention span of young minds tore on to other adventures.
But the possibilities were endless on the runoff creeks of spring. We’d line up the regatta of boats and let the currents take them were they would: under log jams and through root tangles, down riffles and over sandy bottoms.
We were wet and muddy in no time, cheering belly-down in the damp earth and balancing across logs to poke at boats that ran aground. Some boats sunk, never to be seen again. Our boots shipped water over the tops as we ran the banks and followed the currents of springtime.
Sometimes we’d get sidetracked, finding the first snake of the year, kneeling to look at the first flowers poking through the wet leaves. We looked carefully for these flowers, hoping to pick enough to bring home to our mother. We knew that after we squished home, wet and covered in mud, the flowers were our only chance at avoiding her wrath.
You could make the case that we learned about the hydrodynamics of water, how currents move and backwaters swirl, how logs pull an object under, and how some brush piles shouldn’t even be messed with, less you lose a finely-crafted boat. When you fish moving water with floating flies, there are lessons to be learned.
That would be a lie. We were just kids, breathing in the spring and having the time of our lives.
Time moves on. My brother and his family live in Colorado, where the snow melt from the mountains doesn’t fool around and the drainage ditches run rampant. I know he still builds his fleet, though, hauling his kids through muck and mire. I do the same here in Wisconsin.
The runoff creek regatta goes on. Half a country and a continental divide didn’t stop it. Growing older couldn’t stop it either. He simply needs to use more paper towels than I do. He needs to build bigger pontoons.