The thing about water- part 4

      The thing about water, is, some creatures can live both in, and near, the water. They normally breathe air with their lungs, and have to surface regularly when active. But in the winter, they can bury up in the mud on the bottom, get real still, and take in enough oxygen through their thin skins to live. Such is the bullfrog, which is in the process of disappearing from this earth as we speak. The numbers have dropped alarmingly during my lifetime.

      One time my friend Bob and I decided to try our hand at catching bullfrogs on the middle fork of the upper White River near Fayetteville. It had rained quite a bit, but it looked doable on the wide stretch of the river where we put in.

      The thing about water is, it can flow slowly in a wide eddy, even when up. When a narrow chute comes up, it can pick up the pace drastically. We were down half a mile before such a chute came up, far enough to be beyond the point of no return. We came around a bend, and our lights picked up a log, stretching all the way across, at water level. Too late. We hit it, the boat turned sideways, we took on water on the backside, and our boat was swamped, held tightly against the log in swift current. I looked down the river. Our gear was headed to Beaver Lake, accompanied by our lights, their beams swinging back and forth in the sky, like searchlights at an airport.

      We tied the boat to the log, (I don't know why, it was going nowhere anyway.) I floated downstream, gathering up what gear I could find. When I got back, Bob had salvaged what he could. He was now walking across the log, toward the bank, gear in hand. He had my large landing net in one hand, which should not have been in the boat at all on a frog hunt. Anyhow, Bob slipped slightly at mid stream, slowly sat down on the log, then ever so slowly was pulled off, and under, the log by the current. When he surfaced downstream, he yelled, “My glasses! I've lost my glasses!”

      You must understand. Bob's glasses looked like coke bottles, and he could not see a lick without them. And, they cost a pretty penny. Like me he was dirt poor. This was a big deal. I looked up. Bob's glasses were perfectly balanced on the rim of my landing net he held. “Hold very still, Bob!” I shouted. I swam over and grabbed them. We finally righted the boat, sloshed most of the water out, and continued on.

      We had never floated this section of that river in the daylight, a big mistake. We soon entered a stretch that was filled with logs from end to end. We had to swim, pulling the boat over, under, around and through. When the river merged with the main White river, it grew much wilder.

The thing about chill bumps. They start on your low back, slowly spreading up. They finally reach your forehead. Such was the case with me, as I sat listening, in the dark, listening to the wild rapids below, between us and my truck. It proved to be a long night, productive only in everlasting memories