Flotation Device

I used to lead trips for an outdoor center.  We would take kids and teenagers out to the wilderness in New England or New York for a week or two.  They were great trips.  They would last a short time but the preparation took months.  During the winter and spring we would plan routes, hire staff, clean and repair equipment, buy supplies and take care of other sundry trip preparation duties. 

We had a wooden bin where we kept life jackets.  It was made of plywood early in the program's history and it had a sloped top, maybe four feet square, that lifted up.  Skip and I sorted through the life jackets one day to get ready for the summer.  We hiked over from the office, unlocked the bin and pulled them all out. 

They were red and yellow, zipped up the front, in sizes extra small to extra large.  We laid them all out by size and checked for wear and broken parts.  We would do what we could to sew up rips and tears, or replace buckles and zippers.  Sometimes we just needed to retire them.  They were one of our most important pieces of equipment, so if a repair was questionable, we tossed it and bought a new one. 

After we had pulled out all the PFDs (personal flotation devices, to use some boating lingo), I noticed a square brownish-orange pad with canvas loop handles on two sides.  I held it up and said to Skip, "What the hell is this thing?"  His reply:  "Oh that's a seat flotation, a seat float.  You know, the kind you sit on.  In a power boat."  Of course it was.

Now let me make something clear.  We paddled canoes for these trips.  There were no power boats as part of the wilderness experience for the participants.  The canoes had mesh seats built into the boat.  We all wore PFDs.  This flotation device was designed to meet the minimum Coast Guard standards, something you would pull out if you managed to flip your Boston Whaler in pursuit of the perfect fishing spot.  We took as little as possible on these trips.  At times we would have to portage, carrying all our gear over land to reach the next lake or to get around a waterfall.  We had no need for something as frivolous as this orangish thing, especially an orangish thing as ugly as this one.

I thanked Skip for his most excellent description of the item, and rephrased my question:  "Why the hell do we have this useless and ugly "seat flotation" in here?"  The answer was not as quick as "I don't know," which might have ended things right there, with the two of us deciding to simply toss it back in the bin to be rediscovered in a year.  It required a story. 

It turns out this orange flotation device had been picked up a few years back on a trip.  One of the things we got the kids jacked up about (OK maybe not all the kids) was picking up trash we found along the way.  On one trip I led, we carried a tire for many miles, then brought it all the way back in the canoe trailer to be recycled.  On another trip we found a size 13 Converse high top sneaker on the first day, then found the match to it a few days later.  This brownish-orange jobber was flotsam that somebody proudly carried in her or his canoe, and then, we surmised, dropped into the PFD bin during the end-of-trip clean-up madness.

Our two-person committee decided right then that, despite any sentimental value it might have, the next home for this seat float was the dumpster.  Although I said I would take care of that task, I lied with no hesitation.  I had a better idea.  Before the day was over, I had tucked it under some maps and other odds and ends in the back of Skip's Toyota.  He did not find it for several days.

When he did find it, his car parked at home, the first thing he did was laugh for a while, then say aloud, as if I could hear, "You crafty bastard."  I only learned this after I discovered the flotation device when I moved a few things in the back of my own car, and later mentioned my discovery to Skip.  I did some laughing myself, then began plotting the next hiding spot. 

The float found a few hiding spots, including in a desk and at the bottom of a bag of gear (discovered during a trip to the Allagash River in Maine).  At one point I decided to simply mail it to Skip.  I did not package it up in a box or paper, but wrote Skip's address in thick black marker on one side and attached postage directly to the upper corner.  He had a post office box at the time, so when it arrived, he got a small yellow slip informing him he had a package to pick up at the post office window.  He was, of course, excited, as anyone who has ever had a post office box must understand.  What could this package be, one asks.  From whom?  The imagination jumps from homemade brownies to wrapped gifts to new books to who knows what all.  So Skip waited his turn in line, handed over the slip, and when the postmaster handed it to him, she asked, "You expecting a flood?"

I did not see the float again.  I moved to New Mexico (ironically, hauling a kayak I never used while there).  I came back before too long and learned of the flotation device's fate.  Skip had organized the signing and decorating of the float by the whole crew of outdoor educators with whom I had worked.  He mailed it to a friend who lived nearby in New Mexico.  The friend was instructed to walk into the place I was working at the time and hand it to me.  I admit, the plan was worthy, but its execution bombed.  It never showed up, I moved back east, and the brownish-orange seat flotation device fell away into the pit of personal history.

So cheers for the orange float.  Thanks for the memories.