It started out like any other Saturday morning. On December 1, 2007, I got up with the kids, drank coffee, and put in a load of laundry. But this Saturday I had agreed to do something slightly out of character for me. I agreed to go on a trip down the San Antonio River with my husband and his brother.

Although I had told my husband I would go with him on a short trip down the river on the first Saturday in December, I wasn’t really planning on doing it. I was pretty sure the weather would be bad or something else would come up that would allow me to bow out of the trip gracefully.

Unfortunately, the weather was really quite perfect – not too hot and not too cold. My youngest daughter Ada was a little under the weather but she wasn’t sick enough for me to use her illness as an excuse not to go when there were ready and willing babysitters on hand.

Since fate had not brought about a way to wiggle out of it, I reluctantly suited up that morning, putting a change of clothes and shoes into my husband’s waterproof carrying case and headed out the door. When I told my five-year-old daughter, Molly, that we were going on a boat ride down the river she asked me, "why?" Good question, I thought.

We met my brother-in-law, Jay, and my father-in-law – also Jay, there in Kenedy. The Jays were tying on the canoe and the kayak to a trailer pulled behind the younger Jay’s pickup truck. My father-in-law was going to drive us out to where we were going to "put in," and then he was going to pick us up where we were planning on getting out.

We drove out to the State Highway 80 Bridge in Helena. I walked over to the river bank, took a look, and then began shaking my head.

"No. Uh uh. Not going to do this," I stated.

I’m not afraid of water. I’m not afraid of the river. I am, however, terrified of heights. At this particular crossing, to get down to the actual water, you have to climb down an extremely steep concrete escarpment and then down further on some rocks and mud. The river seemed miles away to me – it was a long way down.

The men decided that I needed to go down first – I obviously was going to be no help with the boats and if I refused to go down at all they would only need to bring one boat down and not both. My husband Joe reassured me that I wouldn’t slip on the concrete and as I walked down extremely slowly I saw that my shoes and the concrete provided plenty of grip and I had no problems getting down the escarpment. I slowly climbed down the rest of the way and waited for Jay and Joe – who I will now refer to as The Fabulous Baker Boys (as coined by Truett Lee Hunt) to get to the water with the boats and the rest of the gear.

My husband and I got in the canoe and my brother-in-law jumped into his kayak and we set off for our little adventure down the San Antonio River while my father-in-law watched from the bridge above until we were out of sight.

The best part of paddling down a river is that the water is moving – and so the water does some of the work for you. The portion of the San Antonio River running through Karnes County is a great river for beginner canoeists (a.k.a. me) since it’s a slow moving river. So far our family hasn’t come across any areas in Karnes County where you need to get out and walk and carry your boats because of debris or dangerous rocks - this is called portage, or in my opinion, torture. As a rule, the more experienced and stronger paddler will sit in the back of the boat, while the useless (me) paddler sits in the front and pretends like she knows what she is doing.

So, my husband Joe, being older, wiser, (according to him) and generally stronger, took the seat in the back. However, Joe is also a photographer by trade and he would stop paddling every ten to fifteen minutes to shoot pictures. The problem with this was that he would fail to tell me when he would stop paddling to take a picture of some random thing while I kept paddling (usually in the wrong direction) and then he would get upset with me because we would end up in a pile of debris somewhere on the river. My brother-in-law, Jay, in his bright orange kayak, would have to periodically come and diffuse the husband/wife discord by bumping into us and "mind-meld" some positive energy our way. At one point he brilliantly intervened with some percussion games played with a set of river rocks. "Don’t you recognize a polka?" he exclaimed after Joe and I were unsuccessful at guessing the rhythm he was tapping out on the pair of rocks. We also sang river songs, and Jay would instill us with delightful pieces of Karnes County historical trivia. For example, before there were bridges along the San Antonio River in Karnes County, there were a few ferries that would take people and cargo across for a small charge. It cost five cents to take a pig across in the late 1800s. Who knew?

The San Antonio River is always changing. It’s a quiet ride – when you are drifting down at times you feel a sense of remoteness and seclusion. It made me think about who else had paddled down this very river over a hundred years ago, and if they had seen the same things.

Speaking of sights, I was secretly hoping to see an alligator of some sort, so that I would have a fantastic story to tell when I got home, but no luck. We did, however, see plenty of wildlife. Birds were everywhere – there were turkey vultures, cara cara, hawks, owls, egrets, cardinals, doves, and a beautiful great blue heron that traveled along just in front of us. My husband Joe and I were sure we saw a beaver of some sort, but my brother-in-law Jay deducted that it was most likely a nutria, or river rat. We also saw a couple of raccoons and a snake too.

There were three springs running into the river on the right and two dry creeks on the left and one on the right on our six-mile excursion. There were all kinds of trees, shrubs, and grasses – willow trees, cottonwoods, and lots of pecan trees lined the river. Because it was late fall, there were rafts of pecans floating in drifts all along the river. The real highlights of the trip were four massive and majestic cypress tree trunks. Apparently, cypress used to be fairly common in this area, but they were all cut down to make boats by the early settlers here. I would have to guess that these trees had been there for a very long time – withstanding flood after flood. They were breathtakingly beautiful with a quiet, haunting quality.

Before we knew it, we were approaching civilization again – we said hello to a couple of men who were standing on the bank watching the water, and then saw our exit point at Wofford Crossing – this is a bridge about five miles north of Kenedy. Unfortunately, the handrail my brother and husband had used to get out of the river on the last trip was no longer at the bridge, so we had to pick another place to get out on the bank. Getting out was tricky as the ground on the river bank was extremely soft and pulling out a couple of boats and three people was no easy task. Full of mud and exhilarated, we finally got up to dry ground with the boats and gear with the help of my father-in-law who met us there at the crossing.

The entire trip only took about three hours, which is just about right for a beginner like me. There has been talk about a two-day cross-county trip – but that sounds a little too adventurous for me. But I would certainly love to go on a short trip again.

My brother-in-law, Jay, is working to make the case for the restoration of the Hargreaves Bridge. This bridge, which is no longer in use, is a county road bridge that crosses the San Antonio River at a remote location several miles south of Runge. He also hopes to possibly make other river points more accessible to the public so that more people can enjoy the beauty and recreation that the river has to offer.

Jay mentioned that I might be the only woman to paddle down this particular portion of the San Antonio River (Helena Bridge to Wofford Crossing) in the past 100 years – I’m not sure about that – but I can say that I am very likely the only Canadian woman who has done so. I’m very glad I didn’t find an excuse to not go that day. I would have missed out on a trip that has created special memories of the river and especially of the Fabulous Baker Boys.