My favorite, of course, is the Looking Glass River. Now it’s probably one of the shortest rivers in Michigan and my next favorite is the Grand, which I’ve been down three times from beginning to end on the Grand River expeditions: 1990, 2000, 2010. I hope I’m around to go in 2020. I’ll make sure something of mine is on that trip, whether it’s me or not. But, as far as wild experiences, I think the craziest one I ever had was on the Pine River in Michigan, which is, there are lots of Pine Rivers, but this one happens to be up in the northwest part of Michigan and it’s a very fast river and I never canoed before. And I learned that I always wanted to be in the back. I wanted to be in control. I’m a control freak probably.
And one time, when I was teaching, we took a group of girls–this was before Title IX and they didn’t have other things to do–and we took them on a trip to the Pine River. And we got there, and everyone said “Oh you can’t go down it now, it’s too dangerous.” Well you can imagine 10 or 12, I don’t know how many kids we had along, “Ms. Miller, we can’t. We gotta go! We came all this way.” And I had brought my canoes, because I had a little canoe livery on my river and so I said “Well, we’ll camp overnight here at the campground and tomorrow we’ll see what it’s like.” Well tomorrow came and it’s a beautiful day, and I said “OK, I’ll take you up river, put you in, and if you get down here safely, then maybe we can go the rest of the way.” Well they got there safely, but on the trip down, I was in the lead and another teacher was in the rear to make sure we had everyone accounted and we had three accidents. Yes, two girls tipped, got tangled under in a tree that was down in the river and I had to canoe back upstream to find people because they didn’t come. You know, “Where are they?” And the other teacher, fortunately, she and another girl dove in and got these girls out. And the canoe stayed tangled in the tree, never did find it again.
And another place in the river, another one went over and their canoe got away from them. So I lost two canoes on that trip, but I didn’t lose any kids! And then we were supposed to be home in the early afternoon and it was already late afternoon and we were still on the river. So, when we got off and got to a little gas station place in a restaurant, I said “Call your parents, and tell them we’re a little late, but don’t worry, we’ll be home in a couple hours.”
So I don’t know if the parents ever knew what happened until later, much later. And I still am in contact with some of those kids because it’s a trip they’ll never forget.