I've done some pretty dumb stuff in the outdoors, at least dumb in hindsight. And here's another example, but first, I want to share that I love to spend time in very remote places. This tale is about camping out of a canoe in the Ozark Wilderness area, where we float for a early spring week and do 50-60 miles of the Jack's Fork into the Current rivers.

There are 3-4 days of that ride where we see no people, no roads/bridges, no power lines over our heads, etc. Total Deliverance water where if you get in trouble or get cut off from your party (ME!) you are on your own. On your own.

Well, on the last trip I was in the process of cleaning out my system, no alcohol or anything else. I was out in front of the other canoes, by myself fishing, and took the left fork of an unexpected split in the river. The folks behind me took the right fork. Well, the left fork was a chute of fast water that ran for about a mile, fast enough to blow my hair back as I navigated the rocks, trees, root wads, etc. The right fork was a meandering, slow current affair. My buddies went to the right and that put me about 2-3+ hours in front of everybody else. I stopped as soon as I passed the join, jumped up on a sand bar in the late afternoon getting on into evening. I figured I was alone thru the night and took stock of what I had going for me. I had a dry tee-shirt, wet shorts and tennies, clean water, 2 seat cushions, a life vest, a small tarp and fire. And a harmonica. I collected firewood, dug a shallow firepit in the gravel and got ready to spend the night. Used fishing line to drape the tarp just over me to make a shelter. No rain, not too cold, but misty and damp. Slept on the seat cushions and wore the life vest to help stay warm. Burried my legs in sand. Didn't bother to try to use the fire to stay warm, just kept a small fire going. Got thru the night just fine, but was spooked pretty bad when something woke me and as I sat up whatever it was went crashing away thru the sand/gravel bar and kasploosh! into the river. Still don't know what was checking me out but it was pretty big, prob a deer.

Next morning, you can bet I was awake and shivering to the bones as it began to get light. Ran arounmd a bit to warm up. And since there was nothing else to do, I began fishing. After a while a canoe of strangers came by and stopped to tell me to be on the lookout for some guy who was/is lost on the river. That guy, of course, was me. They didn't realize it because I had a tarp that looked sorta like a tent, a smoldering fire, and I was calmly fishing when they saw me. I told them I was the guy, they told me I was lost and I responded that I wasn't lost a bit, I knew exactly where I was. An hour of so later I hear this megaphone voice blasting down from the far bluff: "Are you Mr. Fox?!" It was a CO, my friends had hiked out from the river the previous evening to get news to the law that I might be in trouble somewhere on the river. "Yes! I'm Fox and I'm just fine!" "Ok, I'll pass the word back to everyone!" sez the CO. "Thank you!" yells me. I never even saw the guy, he was way above me on the bluff and lost in the trees. Again, the rivers we float are just like in the Deliverance movie, one side of the river is sand/gravel bars and the other is always a huge bluff. We make camp every afternoon and break camp every mnorning; it's like backpacking but from a canoe.

I was never too spooked because I had what I needed to get by for a while. The COs were exactly correct when they assumed that I went thru the chute while my partners went the long route. They used an ATV to get to the nearest bluff where they could shout down to me. I later learned that if the one CO didn't find me where I had stopped they were gonna call out everybody, all the searchers. But I was where I should have been, considering the circumstances, and all was ok. My buds caught up with me a couple hours later.

True tale.