Stop Thinking, Just Paddle

River conservation is hard work. You can worry yourself to insomnia about dumb things people do to rivers: official neglect, active abuse, shoreline stupidities, cow poop (see blog entries below). It's causing me insomnia already, and I'm wide awake.

Sometimes in this earnest and furrow-browed conservation world, we figure out the best antidote for this taking-rivers-too-seriously-sometimes is to take yourself out on a river and simply have fun in it. A few fellow rats did just that on Saturday, paddling a hidden gem of a river in northern Waupaca County -- the Little Wolf. It's a typical central Wisconsin stream in that it runs clear and clean and cold, but its Laurentian shield granite outcrops and boulders make for a surprisingly active paddle. Dodging boulders in the Little Wolf, interspersed with aimless prattle and loving insults lobbed back and forth, finished off with a gentle rinse of Jim Beam at the takeout -- it was a fine day.