Thriller Tree

The climate was cloudy and water was shaky that’s exactly what we needed for canoeing today. We took four canoes and three kayaks for a seven mile row. As expected I did my photographic work of clicking people while wearing their life jacket, canoeing in the turbulent water and dashing each others small boat. The sail was set and things appeared smooth until one of our friends splashed water on us using the paddle. It was more enjoyable chasing adjacent boats and splashing water on co-rowers. Our aim was to get everyone drenched by swashing but somehow two of our friends escaped from this play. We stopped in between to have our lunch and after 30 minutes break we started to row again. A tree on our left with its branch floating in water grabbed our attention.

As me and my partner were thinking to row towards the tree we steered casually and were excited to experience the thrill of sudden jerk after dashing the tree. Almost close to the same time two of our friends reached the spot and dashed the tree branch which made them lose balance and topple.

As we were pretty close to the tree we tried to see how much we could help our friend who was clinging to the tree branch. We got our canoe close to the branch were our friend was hanging. Before starting our rescue operation we tried to balance our canoe by holding the other side of the branch firmly. We called upon other members of our group to support our canoe but even the slightest touch of other canoes to the tree branch was making us lose the balance. We tried our full strength to pull our hanging friend inside our boat but due to heavy water current and imbalance we could not pull our friend in. In sometime we saw two of our friends approach us in their kayak and we hoped things would get better. To our dismay things worsened as the people who came in kayak tumbled and were pulled away in water so that increases the count of people floating in water.

Now it is just two of us me and my partner who are completely responsible to pull our hanging friend. Even the slightest hit to the branch sometime made us lose balance. Our friend’s neck was between the branch and the canoe any pull or push in wrong direction would only make her choke. When she screamed "I am unable to breath" we had no clue how to handle this situation. I was little afraid when I heard this and was every concern about her neck. At the same time few American rowers surrounded our canoe and tried providing us support to pull our friend. After few minutes of chaos we managed to get our friend in the canoe. Challenge now was to get the canoe out of the branch, I had to duck in my head to pull out and reminded in the same position for a while even after people shouted we are good to go.

After securing people we now had to hunt for the lost kayak and canoe. We found one kayak in the power boat traced by the Taylor falls canoeing operations team. We tried to reach the power boat but kept moving away from it. At last they threw a rope and we pulled ourselves to the back of the power boat to tie the kayak to our canoe. Immediately we tried to row forward but our canoe didn't move even an inch in spite of giving full strength from front and back rowers. I lost my strength at this point and sat still for 2-3 minutes and after a while my friend from back tried hard to move it forward. I took a breath of relief and continued my rowing activity.

Overall the experience of balancing the canoe between the tree branches was very thrilling.