Sample Chapter (continued)
...After about two hours, I knew something was very wrong, and that I needed to ask someone for directions. But I was travelling in the one area of this densely-populated country where there were no people to ask. No stores, no houses, no roads; just sprawling meadows and miles of dried-up cattail stalks. The idea of turning around and going back down the Rhine seemed out of the question. I had been awake every second of the past two hours and not seen the Ijssel, so logic said I had to continue up the river in the hope of finding it.
After another half-hour, I saw something on the shore: a bright red camping tent towering above the cattail stalks. This object seemed very out of place in this polite country where, as I had learned 57 years earlier, camping in parks and open land is frowned upon. What kind of person, I wondered, would violate this taboo?
As I drew closer, I saw that the tent belonged to two husky men wearing workmen’s orange bibbed overalls and big rubber boots. They looked like construction workers or mechanics on vacation. One was fishing from the bank farther up the river, the other was standing by the tent that was pitched among the reeds. I overheard him shouting something to his companion in German, and immediately grasped the situation. These were not polite Dutch people who were violating the taboo against commando camping on open land. They were uncouth foreigners!
I was in no position to be judgmental, however. I desperately needed advice on where to find the Ijssel. I beached the kayak and walked up to the man by the tent. He put aside the fishing rod he was trying to adjust and greeted me with a blank stare.
"Sprecken zie English?" I asked. I confidently expected a positive answer, because I’d heard that most Germans have a good command of English. Well, not these guys. He shook his head vigorously. "Nein, nein. Nein sprecke Eenglisha."
There was no alternative: I had to try to resurrect the few words of German that I had learned half a century ago on my European hitchhiking trip.
"Ich bin Americaner," I began, repeating the first thing I always said when Germans picked me up on that trip ("I’m an American"). "Und. . . ." I wanted to say "I’m lost" but I didn’t know the German words. "Well, er," I stammered, shaking my head, hoping for inspiration. "Wo ist der Ijssel?" that was supposed to be "Where is the Ijssel" in German.
The man shook his head, obviously not comprehending. Perhaps he was such a casual intruder into Holland that he didn’t know that there was an Ijssel River, or that we were anywhere near it. Or perhaps my German was faulty. In any case, communication between us was obviously impossible. I furrowed my brow in frustration, gave the man a little good-bye wave, and returned to the kayak. Back on the river, I continued paddling upstream, knowing with each stroke that something was increasingly wrong.
After another mile, I came to a spot where a narrow secondary road crossed the Rhine. There was a little three-car ferry that took vehicles across the river. A car was stopped on my side, waiting for the ferry. I beached the kayak and clambered up the bank, which was crowded with stalks of stinging nettles that grew almost as tall as I was. I had to ease myself through, keeping my hands high and using my elbows to push the stalks away from my face—not entirely succeeding in avoiding the fronds that gave my hands little stabs of pain. I reached the road and approached the car. The driver, a man in a dark business suit, was talking on his cell phone. I tapped on the window. He looked up, saw me, and gave a "hold on a minute" sign with his fingers.
When the call was over, he rolled down his window and turned toward me. Fortunately, he was Dutch with a fine command of English. I explained my problem.
"You’re looking for the Ijssel?" he said. The look he gave me suggested pity toward a traveler so incompetent he can’t see his hand in front of his face. "It’s that way." He pointed down the river where I had just come from. "About six kilometers."
That confirmed what I had increasingly begun to suspect. Somehow, I had managed to miss the turnout to the Ijssel, pointlessly paddling about four extra miles against the current.
I thanked him, edged my way back down through the nettles to the river, climbed in the kayak, and headed back the way I had come. I paddled vigorously, knowing that I was way behind schedule, and that now I probably couldn’t make Doesburg before nightfall. In my old days of commando camping, this situation would not be a problem. I would just pull off and unobtrusively camp alongside the river. My tent, by the way, was not a glaring red color, like that of the brash Germans, but dark olive, hardly noticeable to passersby. But I had made the decision to become a virtuous traveler on this trip, and not violate Dutch customs by commando camping whenever I needed to. I had proudly left this dark olive tent and my sleeping bag back in America. My fate that night seemed to be to end up beached alongside a muddy cow pasture, shivering in the bitter wind and rain, waiting for double pneumonia to set in.
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