GRIZ BEAR COMMENTS: I'm longing for just a few minutes in my easy chair

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

By the time you read this column, all should be quiet at my house. I might even try to find the time to sit back in my recliner and close my eyes a spell and get caught up on my rest.

Leaning back in a recliner is not something I often think about doing - though sometimes on Sunday afternoons, or on Tuesday evenings after the paper has gone to press and there are no more meetings or events to cover, putting my feet up and pushing back just sounds mighty inviting.

But I've been thinking about it for more than a week now - ever since my days got really busy with the arrival of our 13-yearold grandson. He came for two weeks and brought his lab puppy with him, so we've been busy with dog training and trying to fit in as much stuff exciting to a young teenage boy as we can get in.

We've gone hiking in the mountains, visited the Safari, been deep underground in a cave and on a float trip down the Elk River.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Griz opted out of a lot of these "fun" things to do, partly because she had to work and partly because she fears snakes and going underground before her time. I enjoyed all the activities, but doing them all at once seemed a bit much to this old grandpa.

I told my grandson all our "fun" outings would be a bit easier for me if I lost about 60 or 70 pounds, but he graciously told me that my shape was the perfect shape for grandpas. I will say, however, it wasn't the perfect shape for hiking up steep hills, making my way through narrow cavern walls or even being the back-seat driver in a tandem kayak.

We enjoyed our visit to Natural Falls, just across the state line and into Oklahoma. I took plenty of photos - giving me time to catch my breath - and we got to talk a lot about many things. If I hiked up and down the hills there every day, I think it would help me lose that extra weight I've been wishing I could shed.

My grandson, following our walk there, so impressed the park officials that they both came out to my pickup truck to meet his lab pup, who happens to be named Elway after a quarterback on his favorite football team.

The visit to Bluff Dweller's Cavern in Noel, Mo., was also a memorable experience. My grandson kept the tour guide busy and entertained with his questions and comments about the underground caverns. His dialog with the tour guide was almost continuous as they waited on me to complete the long exposures of the cave and its formations.

While across the state line in Missouri, I showed him the Elk River, which pretty much sealed my fate - we'd have to take a river trip because it looked like fun and he'd never tried kayaking or canoeing before.

Mrs. Griz wouldn't go - the snake thing again - but my daughter went with us. I was planning to take a canoe since I've had some experience with canoes on lakes and rivers in Minnesota, but the kayaks looked to be more exciting to my grandson than a canoe ride with his grandpa at the stern paddling and guiding the craft straight down the river. So two kayaks, one of them a tandem, were our mode of transportation as we headed down river.

My grandson learned to steer and maneuver his craft pretty quickly - I'm betting he got in a few more miles than I did because of crisscrossing the river so many times along the way.

I enjoyed the tandem kayak but might have been better off in a canoe - the weight thing again. It seems my daughter at the helm floated high in the water. The stern of our ship - well it rode a little lower. Had the Titanic backed into an iceberg instead and sunk stern first, our kayak might have looked like her last few minutes.

Having never taken my daughter in a canoe or kayak before, our rowing teamwork probably wouldn't have won us any Olympic medals. Steering seemed to be a problem until we submerged against fallen tree branches on a bend in the river and her paddle never came up again - at least not that we ever saw. It's probably caught somewhere under that fallen tree, along with an old film camera I brought along for the trip.

Somehow my daughter avoided going under. I think she jumped ship and grabbed a tree branch when she saw the water wash over the port side. Not being as agile, I just went down with the ship when it capsized and wondered how deep the water was and how far I'd have to swim to get out of the current.

Fortunately for me, we were in the Elk and not the Colorado. We were able to grab the kayak, one paddle and our life jackets and make it to shore. My grandson, who was ahead of us and laughing at our misfortune, rescued my daughter’s flip flops but lost his own in the process - they were recovered a mile or two downstream. He later confessed to having pushed our kayak away from his and toward the fallen tree - I knew he had something to do with our mishap. Anyway, we weren't up a creek without a paddle. I still had one left and was able to maneuver our craft without shipwreck for the remainder of our trip. In fact, it seems steering the craft went better without help.

We did survive and had a very busy weekend, too. We had to hit the garage sales Saturday morning. In the evening our church took in the Passion Play in Eureka Springs, and now my grandson has a sling similar to David's and has begun to master the technique. Guess I may have to learn to throw stones, too, just to keep up with his challenges and prove I'm not completely whipped.

But, as I said, I may just have to find my chair and ponder the technique a bit first, with my eyes closed and my feet up.

Randy Moll is the managing editor of the Westside Eagle Observer. He may be contacted by e-mail at [email protected].

Opinion, Pages 6 on 06/12/2013