I can be cold and I can be wet, but not both.
This dreary weather is cramping my hunting and fishing activities, and it doesn't look like conditions will soon improve.
The first casualty was an annual float fishing trip on the Buffalo River that was supposed to take place Sunday through Tuesday. We planned the trip in early summer, and a newcomer to our group talked about it like a kid before Christmas.
The weather forecast made us all justifiable leery.
Exhibit A was a summer float in 2013 when a flash storm arrived shortly after our flotilla launched at Spring Creek Recreation Area. The sky went from clear to ominous within about 30 minutes. Lightning zapped the surrounding hillsides, and the clouds released a torrent.
Bill Eldridge, Matthew Eldridge and Ed Kubler reached the gravel bar and erected their tents before the storm. My sons arrived too late and crawled beneath an overturned canoe for shelter. Rusty Pruitt and I dawdled and rode it out on the water. We were drenched, a frequent condition.
Another storm creamed us on our final night and spawned tornadoes nearby. The wind blew so hard in the predawn that it flattened our tents almost into our faces. Fortunately, the rainflies held and the stakes remained anchored. We put up our gear wet and finished the trip in the rain. We looked like wet cats when we landed at Rush.
We were wet but not cold, so it was tolerable, largely because I caught one of my biggest smallmouth bass that morning.
Exhibit B was our Buffalo float in June.
We enjoyed fine weather the first two days, but the final morning was rainy. We hunched around the smoking remains of a pitiful campfire like a herd of cows except for Ray Tucker, who was late taking down his tent. It was sunny and warm again when we arrived at Rush.
Again, we were wet, but not cold, so it was OK.
Exhibit C was a trip Tucker, Pruitt and I took on the Caddo River two years ago. A thunderstorm blasted us, and I attempted to bail water from the canoe with a plastic sandwich bag. I will never live it down.
Pruitt, notably, wore rain gear. Tucker and I were wet but not cold.
It happened again a few weeks ago. Tucker and I were in different canoes, and again a torrent was unleashed upon the Caddo River.
Tucker wore rain gear for a change. I was the last optimistic holdout, but my misguided optimism is exhausted. If it can rain, it will rain. Rain gear is now in my canoe kit whether rain is in the forecast or not.
Let's not forget Exhibit D, the ill-fated Spring Break float on the Buffalo in 2014 with my three sons and one of their friends. The boys tumped their canoe on a beautiful first day and soaked their tents, clothes and sleeping bags. Only my son Matthew's gear was dry. He had a one-person tent, but all four of them crammed into it and huddled under one dry sleeping bag. That was the last go-round for that poor tent.
The weather turned wet and cold the next two days, but the last night was the worst. We camped on a high bank as a severe thunderstorm boiled up in the distance. The boys were having a grand time around the campfire, and they ignored me when I told them to lash down their tent.
I slept wonderfully amid thunder, lightning, wind and rain.
I rose in the morning to find the boys' rainfly in a tree. The boys were wringing wet and clustered like a litter of puppies in that tiny tent. They were wet and cold.
At Pruitt, they sprinted up the hill to the restroom and clustered under the electric hand dryer for warmth.
My oldest son refuses to float with us again.
So here we are in the coldest, wettest October I remember. We were wise to cancel our float trip because it rained two of our three allotted days. Rain gear or not, we would have been wet and cold.
Exhibit E is our trip in January on the White River when we fished for two days in the snow. What a great one that was. We were not wet, but when the fishing is that good, cold doesn't matter.
Sports on 10/18/2018