I Should Have Been...
April 14, 2020
by Kent Walters

I should have been somewhere on Highway 7 in Arkansas, in a truck with Brent Hwang and Ken McCormick, with our gear and 3 kayaks by this time today, looking forward to a great dinner and planning session at the Low Gap Cafe.  I'm seriously bummed out that this is not where I am.  As I sit here at my desk in my home office, exercising my share of our abundance of caution, my mind wanders to the place I belong - to the anticipation of seeing the air gap at the Ponca low water bridge tomorrow morning, loading up at the concrete shelf next to the bridge and peeling out into the swift-moving, troubled water on river right, passing under the high bridge into the pool to collect our group of stunningly adept paddlers before continuing together downriver past the high bluffs rising out of the clear water.

 

I stole a glance at the weather forecast and current flow to humor myself.  Tonight at Kyle's landing will be chilly - down to about 35 deg F at 7:00 AM, which, as Christy knows, would still find me comfortably cozy under my blanket.  But Christy would be freezing her butt off while making her coffee.  By our 11:00 AM launch target, it will be a more tolerable 52 deg F, climbing all the way to 60 deg F in the late afternoon.  Each day gets warmer after that, with up to a 40% chance of rain on Friday and Saturday.  The flow is 722 CFS, and the rate of decay is flattening (nice).  As a reference point, last year we started at 775 CFS and ended at 298 CFS.  So, it is shaping up to be a really nice trip that we won't be doing.

And so, as I picture us heading north on sunny Highway 7 through the Ozark National Forest, I leave you with this thought:

Memories are a great resource when the present is less than optimal:
(Click the images below to see the photo albums.)

Looking forward very much to the next time we can do this for real,
Kent

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The author, Kent Walters