Living in North Carolina, we love living by the water. The one thing we quickly learned is that the shoreline doesn’t take care of itself. After a storm, there is debris that litters the shoreline, whether it be trash, sticks, a fallen tree, pieces of a broken dock from upstream, or even islands of some sort of floating vegetation.
Our first trip out in the kayaks one summer, we found our steep rocky shoreline full of branches, logs, and two giant islands of floating plants. I had this ‘great idea’…. I thought I could stick a foam noodle over the long handle of a hand cultivator, paddle out with the cultivator in the kayak, hook the floating islands and pull the vegetation out into the middle of the river, and let the current gently float the islands away. You don’t want to kill the plants, because this is a great habitat for schools of fish and baby turtles. You don’t want it near your property because the baby turtles and schools of fish attract water snakes. I had our grandsons grab their kayaks, and we all got in the water to take on this seemingly simple task. After struggling to get the cultivator hooked into the island of plants, my husband came home from work, and saw us slammed up in the rocks surrounded by plants, fish, and the cutest tiny turtle. He went into ‘hero mode’, changed, and grabbed his kayak to come down to rescue us and move the island. Once in the water he saw that my issue was that I didn’t have enough arms. If I held the cultivator, I only had one hand on my oar, and rowed in circles. If I hooked the cultivator in the plants, then sat on it, the cultivator was too far out of the water, and I lost hold of the island. He had a plan! He had our oldest grandson pass his kayak to his younger brother to hang onto while the older grandson climbed onto my husband’s kayak. He had me hand the oldest grandson the cultivator with the noodle on it, incase it fell in the water. He paddled over to the green floating island, had the grandson ‘hook’ the cultivator into the island, and began paddling with all his might. This island began to move, then seemed to multiply, fall apart, and started to fight back. All the sudden, we heard a huge splash, and my husband and grandson were surprised as they flipped over in slow motion into the frigid waters. After I was done laughing and the comical sight, I jumped off my kayak near the shore, and began pushing what has now become a green monster out away from the shore, as my husband and grandson tried to climb back on the kayak. I jumped back on my kayak, grabbed a handful of plants, and tried to paddle with one hand to get the fish, turtle, (and hopefully not snake ridden) island away from our dock. Pieces of the island began to pull away from the island, and float into different neighbor’s docks. It seemed like all we were doing is spreading the mess and sharing the undesirable green monsters with everyone along our shoreline. After my husband and grandson tried to hook and move the main island, almost fell in the lake again, he decided to pull all our kayaks out of the water and get the boat out to pull that green monster(s) away from the neighborhood docks.
He had me stay in the freezing water to push the green monsters off the shore- out deep enough so the boat could get close to the masses, one at a time. While I walked down the shoreline waist deep in the water to push the monsters out deep enough for him to grab, he put the boys in the front of the boat, gave each one a tool to hook into the floating plants, one at a time as slowly backed the boat all the way over to an uninhabited area of the lake.
As we cleaned the shoreline, trying to keep the snakes away from the area that we and our neighbors play in the water, we splashed, laughed, and had fun. These are the times that are some of my favorite memories. Even though moving the green monsters away from our dock was hard work, we had fun and enjoyed each other’s company. We enjoyed the time that we were not only clearing our shoreline and dock, but it felt good to be able to help our neighbors by getting rid of their green monster. At one point, when we were all struggling, one of the grandsons asked it we could just leave one of the green monsters wrapped around the neighbor’s dock. This was a great opportunity to show him how to apply what is commonly known as the ‘Golden Rule’. We would greatly appreciate it if and when our neighbors would move the green monster away from our dock.
“So whatever you wish others to do to you, do also to them, for this is the law of the prophets.” Matthew 7:12
