Water that bonds

We didn’t make our goal.

Stopped well short of it, in fact.

We had charted a canoe route of 240 miles, from Kalispell, Mont., to Sandpoint, Idaho. Instead, we stopped at Thompson Falls, Mont., after 10 days and 164 miles.

Not that either of us feel defeated; it was with a feeling of accomplishment that we walked away from the Clark Fork River.

Did I mention that my paddling partner is 12 years old?

I started thinking about a father-daughter trip several years ago, after reading about a Coeur d’Alene man who left his job for half a year to hike from Mexico to Canada with his 14-year-old.

Though I clipped and saved the article for inspiration, I was thinking in terms of days, not months.

As for mode of transportation, there was little question it’d be our familiar red canoe. Our family has spent scores of afternoons drifting the Little Spokane River and gone on many overnight trips. Kelly knows all the basic strokes and has better form than most adults.

I considered routes on the Missouri and Columbia rivers, and Puget Sound. Kalispell-to-Sandpoint won out for its mix of flowing and still waters, small towns and isolated shorelines.

Kelly’s take on the idea was typical for a soon-to-be teen: She shrugged.

Setting out

The three forks of the Flathead River have rapids with ominous names like Bone-Crusher, Jaws and Fang. But the energy gained tumbling from the Rockies is expelled by the time the forks join upstream of Kalispell.

It was a broad, meandering river that we saw the gray afternoon of Saturday, June 18. We launched between cloudbursts, and I set the GPS unit at zero. Tracking our speed and daily mileage became Kelly’s passion.

It was pouring and nearly dark when we stopped at a dock and received permission to camp on private land after 14 miles on the river. The weather had cleared by morning, but a headwind kicked up about the time we reached the largest natural lake in the West.

Flathead Lake is undeniably beautiful with beaches cobbled in shades of copper and turquoise. The Mission Mountains rise behind forested foothills. Frequent storms and broad vistas mean there’s often a rainbow.

But the lake’s 120 miles of shoreline is almost entirely private, interspersed with only seven campgrounds. Distances are shortest between campgrounds on the eastern shoreline, but we chose the west side for better views and more shelter from the wind. That meant long days in the canoe.

We saw a mink, went 18.2 miles and were in the canoe for seven hours. I was wiped out. Kelly’s journal entry, June 19, 2005.

One of the attractions of traveling the lake’s west side is stopping at Wild Horse Island, which is so big, I had to repeatedly check the map to make sure we weren’t seeing mainland in the distance.

The island’s 2,200-acre state park is a wildlife-rich grassland where camping is prohibited. During our five-hour stay, we saw perhaps 100 bighorn sheep and a cinnamon-colored black bear.

But only three wild horses remain on the island, according to Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. We missed them – a disappointment to Kelly, who kept her pockets filled with carrots.

It was in the tourist town of Polson, at the southern end of the lake, that I first presented the option of ending the trip at Thompson Falls. After 54 tough miles in four days, I thought Kelly would pounce at the opportunity. Instead, she gave a familiar shrug.

“Let’s decide the day before we get there,” she said.

Easy, no work

Researchers say water stays in Flathead Lake for more than three years. Leaving at last, it plunges through Kerr Dam, then churns through a stretch of whitewater interspersed with long pools.

There’s no good way around the dam, and our paddling skills are no match for Buffalo Rapids. Flathead Raft Co. offered a solution to both. The guides picked us up at a Polson hotel Wednesday afternoon and had our gear and canoe shuttled by company bus while they took us through the whitewater.

We went rafting for 10 miles. Dad fell out, but I stayed in. June 22.

Back in the canoe, we gawked at the GPS. We had struggled to average 3 mph on Flathead Lake. On the river, without working hard, we paddled three miles in about 20 minutes, then made camp.

The next day, we traveled 26 miles.

Easy, no work. Read the whole time, and swam. June 23.

I read “To Kill a Mockingbird” aloud from the stern, as Kelly lounged in the bow, sometimes dragging her toes in the water. From time to time, I’d interrupt the narrative to point out wildlife or to steer away from eddies or around obstacles. Otherwise, we did not paddle.

Birds and beasts

To kill a mockingbird may be a sin, as Atticus warned Jem and Scout. But the birds we met didn’t show much respect for avian life.

Twice, we saw bald eagles attacked by ospreys. One such fight involved two eagles and four ospreys, with little actual contact, but lots of bluff charges and dives. A red-tailed hawk circled the melee.

We watched a pair of magpies attack the nest of two California king birds that would frantically chase away one of the long-tailed birds only to have the other dive in from the opposite direction.

But the swallows seemed ever at peace. We watched a colony making nests on a cliff, following an orderly and endless aerial procession to and from a spot of mud with the right consistency for construction.

Kelly wanted to paddle close to every horse that appeared on shore, and to have me moo at every calf. We saw one herd of elk and more deer than we could count, and spent an hour trying to sneak up on 10 turtles sunning themselves in a marshy area.

Then there was the outhouse skunk. All I can say is this: I’m glad I looked before I sat.

Bringing it home

We were looking forward to the campground at Plains, Mont., figuring we’d gone far enough – well over 100 miles – to be treated as minor celebrities among the RV set.

We never saw the campground – it was probably near the highway, far from the river. So we beached at a park and walked to the nearby Sanders County Fairgrounds, introducing ourselves to the caretaker. He loaded our gear onto a yard tractor, hauled it to a fairgrounds barn and told us to make ourselves at home.

It would prove to be our most pleasant night of the trip, one we stretched into a 24-hour stay. We showered in the 4-H restrooms, ate at a diner and caught the final episode of Star Wars in the town theater. Later, we pitched our tent between the poultry and home-economics buildings. Kelly started writing a list of things she wanted to do back home: Listen to music…. Think… Sleep.

She got a jump on that last goal by sleeping in until 11 a.m.

Our final night on the river was spent on a low island, and my thoughts ran downstream. All it would take is time to follow the Clark Fork to the Pend Oreille to the Columbia and on to the Pacific. From there, you could see the world.

Our trip, though, ended about noon the next day. Beaching the boat for the last time, we stood at water’s edge, hugging and exchanging high-fives. Then we walked to the sign welcoming tourists to Thompson Falls, a town named for an explorer who traveled by river – and was the father of daughters.