Poling a Canoe Upstream

I've been working on the chapter covering human-powered watercraft this morning for my book project: Bug Out Vehicles and Shelters and one of the topics I am covering are the different methods of propulsion for such watercraft.  Everyone thinks of paddles and oars when it comes to moving small boats, but the simple pole is often forgotten. While poling may be the most primitive way to move a boat known to man, it can also be extremely efficient in certain conditions.

I first began to appreciate the value of poling when my canoeing buddy, Ernest Herndon and I traveled downstream for several days on the Rio Coco, which forms the border between Honduras and Nicaragua.  On that trip, we hired some Miskito Indian guides and one of their long dugout canoes carved from a log to travel downriver, but all along the way we passed other locals poling their dugouts back upstream between the widely scattered villages along the river.  The Rio Coco has a considerable current and some treacherous rapids in some places, but despite this, once they dropped us off at our destination, our three guides would have no way home but to pole their way back up river, staying in the shallows near the bank.  I don't know how many days it took them to get that heavy, 30-something foot canoe back to their home village, but it couldn't have been easy, considering that it was a four-day journey  with all five of us paddling it downstream with the current. 

But in places like Mosquitia, where outboard motors are still rare and gasoline for them is rarer still, if you would use the river as a highway through the jungle, you must be able to travel upstream as well as downstream.  This is also true if you plan to seriously contemplate bugging out into remote wilderness areas where no other boat but a canoe or kayak can go.  On my own long-distance kayak trips, I have had to travel some stretches of river upstream for a few hundred miles in order to reach a divide and cross over to another river where I could go downstream.  It's slow going and a work-out, but an efficient sea kayak can be paddled against the current, especially if you know how to play the eddies.  A canoe is not so easy to paddle against the current as a sea kayak though, and the bow will frequently get swept around when you least expect it, making for frustration as you lose ground you worked so hard to gain.  By standing up and using a long pole to push off the bottom, you are able to put your entire body into the effort and the result is that you can make remarkable progress, even in swift water.  The experts make it look really easy.  I especially like this video I found YouTube, and watching it makes me want to shut down the computer, throw the canoe on the truck racks, cut myself a long pole and go!  Have a look for yourself and see if you don't feel the same way:

BOL Overview: Aucilla River

The Aucilla River:  A Potential BOL on Florida's "Nature Coast"

Florida's coastlines are not all tourist beaches and condominiums.  Much of the so called "Nature Coast" of the Big Bend section of Florida's Gulf Coast is undeveloped and sparsely populated.  There are good reasons for this, particularly the expansive areas of shallow water off this coastline and the lack of good harbors navigable by deeper-draft vessels.  The lack of long natural beaches here is another reason this area wasn't ruined long ago.  Unlike the panhandle area to the west and north, and the coastline south of Tarpon Springs, this part of Florida's Gulf Coast is mostly low and swampy, and broken up by the entrance of several sizable rivers, including the Suwanee, the Chassahowitzka, the Withlacoochee, the St. Mark's and the Aucilla.

Google Earth view of the swampy hardwood forests along the lower reaches of the Aucilla River

The Aucilla River is one of many good potential hideaways along this coast that could be accessed by shallow-draft larger boats and small vessels like canoes and sea kayaks.  In it's lower reaches this river flows through a sub-tropical hardwood forest that is about as jungle-like as anything you'll find in North America, complete with tall palm trees overhanging the waterway from the bank.  Back in the '70s and '80s when drug smuggling by fast boat was rampant in Florida, the remote estuary of the Aucilla was a favorite drop point.

 

Another view near the mouth of the Aucilla:

The Aucilla and other rivers in this area have a lot to offer for someone who can navigate them in a small boat, especially a canoe or sea kayak.  Camping conditions here can be tough due to mosquitoes, no-see-ums and other pests, but in this kind of environment, the woods are so dense and impenetrable that even a relatively small area can make a good bug out location.  Fishing will be good, as well as foraging for all sorts of aquatic animals and plants.  Just watch out for big 'gators and don't forget the machete if you plan to go anywhere off the river.  

The Aucilla River

Location: Florida's Big Bend section of the Gulf Coast east of St. Marks.

Additional Resources:

Books:

Waters Less Traveled: Exploring Florida's Big Bend Coast (Florida History and Culture)

A Canoeing & Kayaking Guide to Florida, 2nd (Canoeing & Kayaking Guides - Menasha)

Florida Atlas & Gazetteer

Online:

http://www.aucillariver.com/v1/home/home.htm

BOL Overview: Chickasawhay River

Here's a Bug Out Location from right here in my local stomping grounds in Mississippi:

The Author's Sandbar Campsite on a Kayak Trip Down the Chickasawhay

Mississippi is blessed with fine rivers - many of which have long stretches of uninhabited bottomland hardwood and mixed pine forests along their banks.  The Chickasawhay is one such river, with more than 160 miles navigable by canoe, kayak or light John boat from its upper reaches near Enterprise to its confluence with the Leaf River, where the two merge to become the Pascagoula River.  The river winds through the sparsely populated counties of southeast Mississippi, which is not real wilderness by the definition of big tracts of roadless land, but is nevertheless remote enough in many stretches to serves as a viable bug-out location.  Hunting, fishing and foraging for edible plants is good along the entire course of the river. Deer, wild hogs, wild turkey, gray and fox squirrels, rabbits, armadillos, bass, bream and catfish are all especially abundant.

A Google Earth view of the upper Chicksawhay, near where the photo at top was taken. Big sandbars and heavily-forested banks are found along most of the river's course.

The areas along the river that are not naturally wooded in mixed pines or hardwoods are mostly forested in pine plantations at various stages of growth, so there is a buffer between the river and nearby roads, farms and dwellings along most of its route.  In a few places you will see open pasture land or scattered camp-houses, but for the most part a trip down the river is a journey through what feels like a much wilder area than it really is. 

Some parts of the upper Chicksawhay are bounded by high bluffs of mixed clay and rock.  Springs like this one feed the main river and make finding drinking water easy.

The farther downstream you travel, the bigger the river becomes.  Sloughs and oxbow lakes like this one off the main river become more common, and the bottomland hardwood forests become more extensive.

In 2004 my canoeing partner, Ernest Herndon, and I set out to paddle the entire Pascagoula River System from the headwaters to the Gulf of Mexico.  The Chicksawhay and the Leaf Rivers run mostly parallel to each other, with the Leaf to the west, until they merge together to form the Pascagoula, which runs another 80 miles before reaching the Mississippi Sound.  We spent two weeks on this trip, and wrote about our experiences in our co-authored book: Paddling the Pascagoula, linked below.  Having made this trip and many others on these waters, this would be one of my prefered bug-out locations if I had to hit the woods close to home here in Mississippi. 

The Chickasawhay River

Location: Southeast Mississippi, from Enterprise to Merrill.

Additional Resources:

Paddling the Pascagoula
Preserving the Pascagoula
Canoeing Mississippi
Mississippi Atlas & Gazetteer