It was a grey, but warm day as 32 college-aged students set out on the Buffalo National River in Arkansas. They had loaded their canoes earlier that morning with camping kitchens, food barrels, tent packs, and their own personal gear. The Destination: Mt. Hersey. Everyone called it “Mt. Hershey” instead, and they dreamed of a campsite with shady trees and grassy slopes.

 

The camp site was not what they had imagined in the slightest. It was a lumpy field with random patches of long-ish grass and bald spots that cracked and oozed with mud. After dinner was cooked and served, they had a community meeting where they decided to paddle hard the next day, some 30 miles, down to Tyler Bend (a luxury campsite compared to the field of mud they were currently occupying). Besides having nicer accommodation, they would be able to beat the forecasted rainstorm that was supposed to hit the Buffalo sometime in the afternoon the next day.

 

As the night wore on and dusk sunk into dark, there were no stars to be found in the sky. Clouds hovered above as the air warmed and the students shed their jackets and long layers of clothing. The last of the burning embers in the fire went out and the last of the students crept into their tents (which has been strategically positioned on patches of grass) to get some much needed sleep for the long paddle tomorrow.

 

After the last tent zipped up, the sky opened and rain began to drizzle down. All night, it rained down on the students encamped at Mt Hersey. The storm would rise and fall with shattering thunder and flashes of lightening that lit up the rising river and it was around four in the morning when someone thought to check the canoes. Shouts rang across the field and woke up other students, “We need rope! Who has rope?” All fourteen of their canoes (while tied to each other) had been picked up by the flooding river and were washed down about 50 feet, holding their position wrapped around a tree.

 

A few avid kayakers jumped into their river boats and paddled towards the canoes in the dark storm. They managed to secure them to the trees they were wrapped on so that if the river rose or fell, the canoes wouldn’t move any further.

 

Once the canoes were taken care of, the students began to wake up and mobilize. The river was still rising and the camp needed to be moved. The once grassy patches of grass where the tents had been placed were now under six inches of water and inside the humble abodes, sleeping pads and books began to float.

 

I stepped out of my tent and realized that there would be no dry feet on this day. As I began to see the situation around me I was amazed at how everyone had instantly pulled together. Everyone was out there in the torrential rain, taking down tents, grabbing their gear, hauling heavy food barrels, and making their way towards the base of a hill. When I got there a few guys had already begun to cut vines of thorns back from a winding path they had made up the hill. The camping gear for 32 students was moved from the flooding field, up the hill, and to a gravel road where we were able to rest before heading back down to do it all over again. Nobody stopped and sat down, we just kept on going.

 

By using each of our abilities in full force, we had managed to move camp before we found ourselves under water, and we had done it together. Once we had all of our equipment with us (no barrels full of cheese floating down the river) we began to look for a place to shelter. Somebody had found an abandoned barn just a ways up the gravel road on which we were currently gathered. We made our way there. It wasn’t much, but there was a tin roof, and the barn was dry inside we stepped out of the pouring rain and into what would become our home for the next two days. I looked around and wondered what he had gotten ourselves into. I looked for rats and mice in the corners and hoped that there wasn’t anything inside the barn that was crawling and alive, save a few bugs and spiders.