THE FLIP SIDE

Journal brings outdoor adventures back to life

Keeping a journal during outdoor adventures helps bring back the memories.
Keeping a journal during outdoor adventures helps bring back the memories.

There's been some good fireside reading this winter with words and pictures from some long-distance float trips bringing those adventures back to life.

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Pages of a journal from a trip on the Current River in southeast Missouri.

It's nice to throw another log on and thumb through journals I kept on each of those trips. Now I can scoot my rocker up to the fireplace and read about each day and see photos of the camping, paddling and fishing from all those enjoyable miles.

I'd never kept a journal until I did a solo float of the whole Buffalo River six years ago. Paddling from Ponca to the White River took six days and covered 133 miles of our beloved Buffalo. The trip was one of the best of my life.

Getting ready for a great expedition is part of the fun. Packing my gear I decided to take a three-ring binder filled with wide-lined notebook paper, some pens and keep a journal of the trip.

Each evening on a lovely Buffalo River gravel bar, I'd sit in a folding chair by the water when the camp chores were done and write a page in the journal. I scribbled paragraphs about the weather, what wildlife I'd seen, if I fished any, what was in store for dinner, any thoughts that crossed my brain.

I really liked writing about the great campsites I had every night. A night on a gravel bar along an Ozark stream is the epitome of camping. There's the sound of flowing water, the fire and the night sounds of insects and frogs.

When I got home, I transferred the pages out of the binder into a three-clasp report folder. I had prints made of a dozen photos I liked and stuck them in the journal with Scotch tape.

I was so pleased with this booklet of my great week on the Buffalo that I kept a journal the next spring when I floated the Kings River, 65 miles from Marble access to Table Rock Lake. A hand-made journal chronicles four fabulous days paddling the Kings.

Now I'm hooked on doing these whole river floats, putting in at the highest practical point upstream and floating to the river's end. Writing in my journal each night adds to the pleasure of these Ozark paddling adventures.

One spring I wanted to float the whole Current River in southeast Missouri, but it's too long to cover in the week I'd set aside. So I paddled all of the Current River that is in the Ozarks. I traveled six days and 125 miles from Montauk State Park to Doniphan, Mo. After Doniphan, the river leaves the Ozarks and flows into the flatlands of northeast Arkansas, where it joins the Black River.

Talk about solitude. On that trip I went from Thursday morning until midmorning on Saturday and never saw a single human being on water or land. Then there was the headwind. When you float a river in May that flows south, you're going to have some headwind. Here's a little entry from Day 5:

"My friend Mr. Headwind is still blowing from time to time. We're on a first name basis now. I call him Harry the Headwind. But he was friendlier today. So thankful for this nice current."

This spring I'm excited about doing a program at Hobbs State Park-Conservation Area about taking multiday float trips. It's set for 2 p.m., April 9. I'll have plenty of photos to show and hopefully some helpful tips. I'll have my journals there if anyone wants to take a peek at them.

There are more high-tech ways to create a slick journal. I like the simplicity of these hand-written, Scotch-taped float trip diaries. They're good reading by a warm fire and get me phyched up for another long-distance float.

Flip Putthoff can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter@NWAFlip

Sports on 01/24/2017

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