Cascade Paddle Club Canoes, camp, and the same good company.

Meet-up

Ravenshore, when the other clubs came in

The annual gathering: more hulls than usual, a rescue practice that turned into a comedy, and enough stew for two clubs and the leftovers of a third.

Portrait of Pete Written by Pete · 15 June 2026 · Ravenshore

A large group of men and canoes on a lake beach
Saturday, before the speeches. We do not really do speeches.
A flotilla of canoes on a mountain lake, paddlers in PFDs
Everybody on the water wearing a vest. I checked. I always check.
A big camp kitchen with Brick cooking
Brick running a kitchen that had become a small town.
Several canoe brands lined up on the beach
The beach as a catalog. Old Town, Prospector, Wenonah, and a guest aluminum that had stories.
A large group of men around a campfire
Two clubs, one fire, the guitar that appears every year from someone in the Kootenai bunch.
Dawn at a crowded canoe camp
Morning after. Coffee, mist, more tents than we are used to.
Canoe-over-canoe rescue practice, all wearing PFDs
Rescue practice. Then it was funny. Then it was useful. Then it was funny again.
Group photo of the canoe gathering
The picture we take so we can remember we actually did this.

Once a year we stop pretending we are only seven men and a calendar. Ravenshore in June is when the Olympic Peninsula Paddlers drive over with their west-side manners, and a few of the Kootenai Canoe Circle show up with a guitar and an aluminum boat that has outlived three hull fashions. The Deschutes bunch could not make it this year. They wrote. We saved them a rumor of stew.

I like a big camp if it still has rules. The rule is vests on the water. I said it once at the beach, and then I did not have to say it again, because Tom said it in that coach voice and Brick said it while holding a spoon, which is more convincing.

We lined the hulls up like an argument. Tom’s Penobscot, Brick’s Prospector, Marcus’s Minnesota II looking like it had arrived from a different sport, the Magic, the Keewaydin, my Tripper, Nick’s scuffed Discovery, and the guest boats with their own loyalties. A man from the Peninsula crew paddles a Clipper too. We nodded at each other like cousins.

The flotilla in the afternoon was the point. Cold water, bright vests, too many boats to be graceful, happy anyway. After, we did a canoe-over-canoe rescue because I asked, and because a gathering that does not practice will someday wish it had. Sam rolled with the patience of a man who has already imagined the worst. Jules laughed and then did it correctly. A Peninsula fellow named Harris — I think Harris — dumped on purpose and came up grinning.

Brick’s kitchen became a small town. Marcus chopped. Jules fetched water. I stayed out of the way except to count heads. There is a particular pleasure in feeding men who have been on the water and know it.

Night was a bigger fire than we light when it is only us. Someone from Kootenai had the guitar. Nobody sang well. That was correct. I looked around at the same faces I paddle with all year, a little older in the firelight than they are in the morning, and at the men we only see at these things, who are also in great shape and also glad to be here, and I thought: this is the club, and also the clubs beside the club.

Dawn was mist and too much coffee. We took the group picture because if you do not, the weekend becomes a story without proof. Then we packed. The Peninsula convoy left first. We yelled the usual thing about February, when they host on their water.

If you were there and I missed your name in this, write a fellow, not the form. The form is down. The stew was enough. The vests were on. That is a good gathering.