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Evidence was piling up suggesting that the Lower Umpqua River was an excellent smallmouth bass fishery. Youtube videos showed happy fisherpeople struggling to hold up stringers laden with fat fish which was enticing, but also multiple pontoon boats careening towards various dubious underwater ends which looked all too probable for long kayaks. Uncle Rico and Kip shifted gears into research mode and before long had analyzed the serpentine path of the river and come up with a figury-eightish route (if 'eights' had 3 or more loops) that only required advanced technical paddling prowess for two water obstacles over an otherwise negotiable 27 miles of drifting. Photo courtesy Google Earth The accumulated Covid-19 death toll for America had only just topped 100,000 at the end of May, just a week after 10 Oregon churches had sued the governor for mandating masks and public distancing. While these kinds of reactions established that the United States was not responding well to t...

Kip showed up at the bar with a detailed river-keepers' map and guide-books that explicated his proposed route down the Willamette River . He had performed a careful analysis of the water route, marking potential launch sites, sensible campsites, and devising preliminary outlines for shuttling the boats. He had even spaced the campsites apart according to his estimates about river velocity based on seasonal water volumes and the river gradient, and also which sections of river would require extra time for thorough fishing. It was almost as if he was some kind of project manager. But as the early July launch-date approached, it became clearer and clearer via meteorologists that the trip would test our resilience to rain—lots of it. Though  I often imagine myself to be a daring and self-sufficient outdoorsman (and by often I mean whenever I spend several hours at a bar), the fact is that so far, my camping experiences in the rain have been accidental, infrequent and generall...