Llamas, Anyone?
by Robert Langley

A Wild River Rescue

By Paul Woodcock

Many times people ask me why I canoe or more specifically why I spend weeks at a time in the wilderness. A single incident helps me answer this question.
While canoeing the Guadalupe River, just before the State Park, a group of people yelled from the bank, “Can you help that deer?”

Dana, Mary and I saw a doe swimming in the water. The bank dropped too steeply so that she could not climb out. We paddled over to see how we could help, and Dana herded her into a small cutback and we trapped her there. Mary caught her around the neck and held her. I was reluctant to get in the water with a wild animal, fearing she might start kicking and fighting to get away. However, seeing no alternative, Dana stabilized our canoe while I jumped into the waist-deep water and tried to lift her up the bank. She weighed about 70 pounds and at first I had trouble getting a grip so I could hoist her up the bank.

A few times in my life I have come into contact with wild animals. When I was a teenager I climbed a tree to a hawk’s nest and will never forget the feeling as he defended his home - not really anger or aggression, but a steely look in his eyes as he spread his wings and screamed at me to leave him alone. I was at a wild mustang auction and I could feel the horses’ restlessness as they continuously circled the pen trying to find a way of escaping, and I could hear the desperation as a gray mare squealed and tried to kick apart the trailer she was being loaded into. I was feeding a pack of Russian huskies, untamed half-wolf, and I have never felt such hostility as the pack circled me growling as I put their feed down and slowly backed out of the pen.
As I struggled to lift the doe to the bank, I felt total acceptance of me. Maybe she was just exhausted, but she didn’t resist my touch as we struggled to get out of the river and onto the bank. She fell once as she climbed the hill, and then she disappeared down the other side.
It is experiences like this one that I would never have enjoyed if I did not canoe. The earth is my mother; the sky is my father, the animals my brothers and the canoe makes it possible to be close to them.