Moseying down the Mohican

Sometimes I wonder about modern-day kid "stuff"—all the toys with multiple gadgets, video games, fancy music players, you name it. Among my favorite childhood memories are snow forts, building mud pies on the beach at Lake Erie, and floating down Mohican River in a pile of 30–40 of my relatives. Nothin' fancy about it.

I think David and I both have a passion for the simple stuff and for sharing it with Noah. I can't wait to take little guy camping, and David's itching for him to be old enough to sit in the woods as the sun comes up while they wait for a Whitetail to cross their path.

One of the things I was eager to do this year was to canoe down Mohican again. It's been 5 or 6 years since we last sailed down that winding water, and I thought Noah would get a kick out it, if we could just get him to sit still enough in the boat to make it downstream.

On Father's Day weekend, David suggested we make our Mohican trip a reality, and that was that. By 10:30, we were paddling our way toward the pick-up point.

Noah wasn't sure about riding in a canoe until we told him it involved playing in the water. I don't think he ever took his hands out of the river the entire 1.5 hours we floated along.

Stroke! Stroke! Despite my declaration that when I took canoeing at Otterbein, I made a mean sternwoman, David insisted I take the bow seat... which led to a fair amount of general laziness and David's repeated questioning of, "What the heck are you doing?" I was recalling all my fancy OC schoolwork, of course—the "J Stroke," "the Draw Stroke," and good old, "Forward, ho!"

A sample of the aforementioned laziness... picture-taking when I should have been paddling. Poor picture-taking at that!

We stopped about 20 or so minutes into the seven-mile trip to let Noah splash in a clear, rocky section of the river. The current was really zipping along since the river had just returned to normal levels following an endless bout of thunderstorms. David's got a tight grip on Noah, just in case.

And for me, Noah just wanted to swing in the water (great arm workout!).

A man and his boat await relaunch.

Very successful trip! Can't wait to get back for some more of the simpler things in life.