Riding An Old Rusty Boat

The story begins in the summer of 2009. My brother Doug and my friend Albert decided to go on a hike. Since I had been in "another world" for 5-6 years and wasn’t a very good person I hadn’t developed a relationship with my brother, or even knew Him very well. So this hike was the first time me and my bro had hung out and did anything for years. So I prayed and prayed and prayed that we would have a wonderful experience together so He’d want to hang out with me again. So we drove a couple hours to a place called Willow Springs lake (Arizona), which by the way, we found NO spring anywhere. Anyway, we began to hike, me, Doug, Albert and my dog Kiwi. We had never done this hike before, yet being adventurous we started off. We saw so many cool things, I caught a lizard and he bit the crap out of my hand over and over again as I held him for a picture. We jumped rock to rock, crossed logs, found cool things and enjoyed the scenery. After a couple hours we came to a bend in the lake, after contemplation we decided to “hike around the whole lake” for it looked pretty small, how big could it be, right?

So we continued hiking another hour and we ran out of water. We hoped it wasn’t much farther as we came around a bend. Doug pulled out his phone to look at a map and to our amazement we had not realized that there was whole other side of the lake we couldn't see from our car ! We were in the middle of the horse shoe! We could see my car across the other side of the lake, yet the water was freezing so we couldn’t swim. We had to come up with a game plan. Choices were, we could hike back the way we came, 7-8 miles, still with no water and it would take us another 3 hours. Or we hike forward around the other side, which on the map was longer then the way we came, estimating close to 10 miles, which would be 4 hours, and still with no water. We were in a pickle.

            Then the real adventure began. We remembered about 20 minutes back, a abandoned metal fishing boat. We hiked back to check it out. We took off our shoes, and went out about 20 feet out from the shore line. Luckily the water was pretty shallow. The water was cold as we arrived at the boat, it was full of black mucky water, pretty disgusting and had to have been sitting there a long time. We tried tipping the boat to get the water out, rocked it back and forth and splashed some of it out, but the boat was so stinkin heavy. An older man and his wife rowed by in their canoe. He asked “Is that your boat?” In a gruff angry tone. “No it’s not” we replied with a mischievous/adventurous grin. 

So after thinking it through using much “wisdom” and thought process, ;) we all got in the boat! Kiwi was our lady on the front of the boat, I sat at the back holding our shoes and technology to keep them as dry as possible. And Doug and Albert took turns "rowing."We had one large stick/log to push off the side and one stick that we thought would pass as a paddle. We thought, “Hey, how hard could it be? We can see the car. We’ll just float right on over to it.” WRONG!

So we leave the shore. The wind and current have a different idea. It starts to bring us over to where we want but then changes course and brings us to the middle of the lake. Once in the middle of the lake we realized how crazy we were, getting into that old nasty boat and going afloat! There could have been anything in the black mucky water, diseases, more fishing hooks (Which we had already found a couple), a homeless man? (Ha jk) And there could have been holes all though it! We might have sunk!! ha The so called “rowing” stopped and we laughed hysterically for a good 5 mins. I'm sure it echoed for miles!

Now in the middle of the lake, the same older man came by and said “Do you think that was the best idea?” “It's a little late now sir!” I said with a smile.

The boat soon took us over to a bank and we tied the boat off and hopped out onto dry land. We put out shoes back on and started hiking. The boat probably took off a good 8 miles and a couple hours of hiking. We still had a distance to go but we were closer! Our path came to a dam which we had to climb down the one side and back up the other to get over it. We then jumped a large chain link fance and BAM! We were back to my car and had an awesome story to tell! Such a fun moment!

Since then my brother and I have become best friends and love spending time with each other. I asked for the Lord to make this a wonderful memorable experience, and he DID! :)