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river rat: Skipping Stones and Dead Loons
Who hasn't skipped a stone across the water? If you haven't, I'd like to help you fix that one day with a smooth, flat skipper in your hand and a broad, calm stretch of river rolling silently before you.
I love skipping stones. If you let me, I'll do it until my elbow is swollen and my shoulder crying in agony for me to stop. There's something about wasting time on the water that I find universally appealing.
The motion itself is horrible for human physiology. A low, side arm toss with a flick of the wrist is what it takes to make a flat stone skip well across the water. That's the equivalent of a baseball pitcher throwing hard, sidearm fastballs or sliders; which simply rip most elbow joints to pieces. Sticks and stones may break my bones...
My brothers and sisters taught me that any stone would skip. Sure, small flat and very smooth stones skip best, but with enough force, even a round goony will make at least one quick carom off of the water's surface. It's the big, hard to skip stones that would always tear me up, yet I thrilled at being able to make such a large stone bounce off water.
Anyone who water skis will attest to the way a body can skip across the water. Water is a physically hard reflecting surface as well as a visually reflective surface. Nearly anything will skip across water given enough speed.
A small stone thrown low and parallel to the plane of any body of water's surface with lots of back spin from a well timed flick of the wrist will skip more than a dozen times before floundering slowly to the bottom. Our stone skipping contests always degraded into fantasy "counting" contests. Whoever could count out loud the fastest was the winner regardless of who actually skipped a stone the most times over the water.
"One, two, three, ...thirteen, fourteen, fifteen." Hey you cheated!
Once when I was very young, I tried to surprise my father by skipping a goony past him as he rode by in his airboat. I knew my throw was way off when the rock hit him hard on the side of the head. A wide trail of blood dripped down his brow as I wailed in fear of having hurt him and then in fear of getting spanked. He never even mentioned it. Mom stitched him up, bandaged his wound, and it was forgotten. Thirty or so years later, Dad does still remember it.
Bored with tossing stones out into the water, we'd come up with games to make skipping interesting. Skip twice and over a grass patch. Skip once and into that boat. Skip the highest once. Skip the highest twice. Who can skip a stone in the shortest distance?
Skip and catch is a good one. Find a large flat stone the size of a pancake and skip it towards another person. The flat, solid disk will flounder high into the air; high enough to be caught by a skilled idiot foolish enough to catch a rock that's coming at him after a quick carom off the water. Teeth are lost this way. There are teeth on the bottom of the river that have been lost to this activity. I know this to be true.
Many permutations and possibilities with skipping stones made tossing rocks good for about an hour or more of fun on just about any day before finding the same joy in another of the river's diversions.
Wading out into the river, the most challenging game was to skip a stone back to shore and have it wind up closest to the water's edge, landing on the bank after having skipped several times. This was our low-fi, waterborne version of pitching pennies. Just the right touch would have the slowly rotating stone surf right to the muddy bank and rest without being lodged into the muck or flop up on the grassy shore.
I sucked at this game and quickly became bored, opting to splash huge boulders in the mud spattering everyone. The drama of making everyone look as though they came out on the losing end of a shit fight made the beatings I received worth it.
There is a picture taken by my brother Bill of Curt and myself searching for good skipping stones. On that day, Curt found a tomahawk head. Bill happened to be right on top of us and captured the first investigations of this find on film. He laminated the picture to an oak block and gave it to our parents.
Adhered to this solid block-three inches by four-is shimmering blue sky and sunshine reflected in the water and in the random droplets on Curt's skin. The curve of the tomahawk stone and its flat cutting edge are apparent along with the colors of the rock glistening darkly against my brother's pruney hands. Another laminated shot shows the two of us catching crayfish and picking through the river bottom for smooth stones. Tousle headed, sun drenched, and broadly smiling we skipped and splashed that day for precious moments captured on film. The wood blocks have since cracked but the clarity of the memory remains crystalline.
My dad did the same type of playing as a boy. Digging in the soft muck for treasure or crayfish, he would find arrowheads and perfect skippers, just as we would decades later, and our children would later still. Skipping stones has likely been a playful pass time for all river rats since man has stood upright at the water's edge needing to while away time and make the water ripple.
Back in the days of my father's youth, he and his friend Bob played at skipping stones the same way we eventually did. Bored with this the boys would also enjoy all other manner of play with the water.
One day, Bob's father let the two carry his .22 caliber rifle to the river to shoot targets. Target practice turned into shooting cans, trees, bottles and anything in sight. Boys with guns, tsk, tsk, tsk. At least they didn't take to shooting themselves that day or any other.
Together the boys decided to try to skip a bullet across the river. They had heard this was possible and were ready to prove it for themselves now that they actually had a gun and weren't hampered by supervision.
Hunkered down low, they sighted down the barrel across the river. Both boys saw a loon on the far shore and the decision was made to fire at it. A .22 caliber rifle can't possibly shoot across the water accurately without gravity pulling the bullet down precipitously over the near mile expanse of river where they were crouched. It could, theoretically, skip across and, if aimed correctly, hit its target.
Of course they never figured they'd hit it. That would be a long shot in the truest sense.
BANG!
The loon disappeared.
Fearful of the worst, they poled across the water in their small wooden boat a mile or so to the other side of the river.
Lying in the spare grass of the eastern shore they found the elegant carcass of a pale blue loon. The long crooked neck and graceful bill pointed accusingly in the direction from which the bullet skipped miraculously across the water. With the loon's feet splayed awkwardly under its lifeless body, a red hole in its neck attested to the dumb luck of two boys skipping bullets across the water.
Two pre-teen boys shouldn't have had a gun unsupervised for any period of time. They took themselves and the gun away from the body of the protected, now dead, animal. Dad and Bob made their way back to their town's side of the river, ashamed at the loss of a beautiful creature and determined to stick with skipping stones.
