The Trail's Our Thing

And then smack! our family is in, and we didn’t fall out. We all begin to paddle, moving with the current down the Sorgue. It’s an eight kilometer trip, and we’re told it will take two hours.

But five minutes down the river, our trip isn’t going well. Our paddling isn’t working. We’re heading toward the river bank, not down the river.

“Paddle on the right, Mommy! No, no, not you Daddy! You paddle on the left!” Kelly shouts.

Charley has a double paddle with paddlers on both sides. He tells us that I should paddle on the right and Kelly should paddle on the left. He will steer and use his special paddle to make us go in the right direction.

“Daddy will be our captain,” I tell Kelly. “Just let Daddy tell us what to do.”

I’m sitting in the front of the canoe with my legs out in front of me. I can’t see what’s happening behind me, but we haven’t gone far when I realize Charley is having major problems. His body and the required position for canoe paddling don’t seem to match. He needs some sort of back rest. There’s something about the way his body is constructed… his posture. He can’t sit cross-legged and never likes to sit on the floor. Now as we’re moving with the current down the River Sorgue—and will be for the next hour and fifty minutes—we realize our captain also can’t sit in a canoe.

Although I can’t see him from my position in the front, I ask enough questions to realize that Charley is practically laying down in the canoe… while not totally prone, perhaps at a 160 degree angle. No wonder we are having problems.

“One, two, three! One, two, three!” Kelly shouts, trying to get a rhythm going in our paddling. Why are we getting tangled up in these messy river plants over here instead of gliding down the smooth part of the river like that family over there?

Fifteen minutes into the trip and something’s happening up in front of us. The canoes are backing up at a dam and people are getting out while a young man shoves their canoes down the dam. I feel the current pulling our canoe toward another leg of the river and a huge steel bridge of some sort marked “Danger. Électricité.” Not much translating required.

“We need to go over there!” I shriek, waving my paddle at the young man at the dam. We paddle frantically… left, right, backwards, away from the electricity. Thankfully Charley is very strong, even when he is laying down in a canoe. Somehow we line up with the others and manage to step out of our canoe. The water is freezing. We step down the slippery steps of the dam and then back in our canoe.

And off we go again.

I wonder if other paddlers can hear our family’s dialogue as we yappity-yap our way down the Sorgue.

“Paddle right! No, paddle left! No, don’t paddle!”

“Do something, Charley! We’re about to run into these tree limbs! The tree limb is about to hit me in the face!!!”

“Why doesn’t this stupid canoe have a back rest?”

Kelly speaks up from the middle: “I thought this was supposed to be fun…”

It is fun in a way. I want it to be fun. It’s a beautiful day and the sun feels good. The river is pretty, clear in most places, with some interesting old mills and houses on either side. We see occasional swimmers and people fishing, a couple of frolicking dogs. We’re experiencing a different aspect of Provence here on this little river.

Old mills on the Sorgue at Fontaine de Vaucluse

We pull over to the side to adjust the bidon to provide a bit of a back support for Charley. I ask to look at the map. Charley pulls the soggy map from the pocket of his shorts, along with the car key.

“Hmmmm, not a very good place for that,” he says. Instead he puts it in the secret pocket on the inside crown of his Tilley hat.

Now I have something else to worry about in addition to tipping over, never making it to L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, and serious family warfare. What if Charley’s Tilley hat blows off with the key velcroed to the inside? What if the hat’s knocked off by a limb? Does a Tilley hat float? Does it float faster than a canoe? The extra car key is locked in the house, but our key to the house is locked in the car. Do we even know the last name of the housekeeper?

“Hold onto your hat!” I yell, as a gust of wind sweeps by. “Shouldn’t you put the string of your hat around your chin? Please don’t lose your hat!”

We bicker and banter our way down the river some more, stopping again for another dam crossing. I slosh through the ice-cold water in my black Clark sandals. It was either these or my hiking boots. I hope my sandals recover. I hope my family recovers!

“I don’t think it’s much further,” I shout back to Charley. I wish I could see him in the back, laying back and paddling, trying to steer. He puts forth a massive effort of paddling and steering, and amazingly we glide straight down the river.

“Why can’t I use the double paddle?” Kelly asks. “Why can’t I sit in the back and steer? Daddy, could I splash you? Would anyone like to splash me?? This isn’t fun!!”

She can’t use the double paddle or sit in the back and steer. And no, we don’t want to splash her or be splashed. We’re just making our way down the river, wondering if we somehow missed the exit for L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue.

We make good time, despite our problems, and arrive at the take-out point in L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in about an hour and a half. We paddle our canoe up to the bank. Other people are stepping out of their canoes onto a wide railroad tie. Expecting another series of steps like we had at the two dams, I hop out of our canoe to help pull it up to the side…. only to find myself in water up above my waist. Ice cold water! There aren’t any steps. I haul myself up onto the gravel bank, no longer caring if anyone is watching me. Who cares about a middle-aged American woman anyway?

Kelly and Charley are finally laughing. Look at Mommy!

We take the canoe bus back to Fontaine de Vaucluse. Charley had put the strap of his Tilley hat around his chin, and he didn’t lose his hat or the car key. We have drinks and a snack at the buvette back at the Kayak Vert center. American country music—probably from Nashville—is playing in the background.

It’s been an hour since we finished our trip down the River Sorgue. And looking back, we realize that yes, we really did have fun.

Kelly and I would both like to do the trip again.

But next time Charley will just meet us in L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue with the towels!

Together in happier times (photo by Dennis Martin)

Note: Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), our canoe trip down the Sorgue is not recorded photographically since I elected not to put my digital camera in the plastic bidon (gas can). Just use your imagination!