My future as a concert violinist, not to mention the use of my left hand, ended with my first childhood visit to Niagara Falls.

It was on the water-soaked boardwalk leading to the Cave of The Winds near the base of the falls, where winds are frequently clocked at 60 miles-an-hour. They didn’t officially, or unofficially, record anxiety levels here, but they too were excessive.

Nervous mothers exhibited Herculean strength as they clutched their children’s hands in a death grip. Since I was the youngest and smallest of three siblings, it was my now-atrophied left hand receiving that protective motherly attention.

"You’ll fall in and never come up," my mom shouted over the noise of the cascading water. Her non-tourist bureau warning only prompted other mothers within earshot to maim their children’s hands as well.

We were in a group of about 30 tourists wearing one-size-fits-all yellow ponchos, on our way to the awaiting Maid of The Mist boat ride. Over the past several decades they switched to blue ponchos. I don’t know why. Seems like the yellow ones would have been easier to spot when a kid did fall in. Anyway, the ponchos didn’t really provide very much protection.

The main thing I remember about the boat ride is, it was wet. Mist from the cascading falls was everywhere. Coming from every direction. Mostly sideways and up. Not down, like regular rain.

I also recall spotting whirlpools in the turbulent water and wondering where you went if you got sucked in—they probably never found the poncho either.

After a toweling off, a picnic lunch, and nap in the family station wagon, we toured the Canadian side of the falls for another impressive view. The guide told us about a schoolteacher—a schoolteacher, mind you—named Annie Taylor, who was the first woman to go over the Falls in a barrel. My teachers thought it was dangerous just going to the cafeteria.

Anyway, a couple of summers later, I visited the Falls again, this time with four fellow Boy Scouts, two dads and Mr. Ledbetter our Scoutmaster. But Niagara was merely a stopping point.

The eight of us were headed for the wilds of Canada and a four-day canoeing adventure, pitting man against nature.

The explorer’s heart versus the raw unsettled land.

Buck answering the call.

The intrepid...well, you get the idea.

Except for occasionally paddling Kellogg Avenue creek which ran into the Ohio River near our Cincinnati homes, this was the first ‘real’ canoe trip for any of us.

And we came prepared.

The Troop 141 silver and blue trailer behind Mr. Ledbetter’s Chevy station wagon was packed full. In addition to three aluminum canoes strapped on top, we had one of everything Boys’ Life Magazine had ever advertised as a "camping essential." Plus a few extras.

"You don’t make every situation," Mr. Ledbetter was fond of saying, "but you can prepare for it."

I didn’t know what he was preparing for, but I was fairly certain that I’d never have to send a semaphore flag message from the bow of my sinking canoe. Four cook stoves? That was overkill. And we brought enough batteries to produce more power than the Falls generated in a week.

Mr. Ledbetter, a man of deep Southern extraction, fancied himself as something of an expert astronomer and at the end of every Scout meeting, we’d gather in the church parking lot to star gaze.

The Big Dipper and North Star were his favorites.

"Jest connect the two stars at the end of the Drinkin’ Gourd," as he insisted on calling the Dipper, "follow’em up to Polaris, and you’re headin’ north, jest like the slaves did."

Then, he’d start to sing, "Follow the drinkin’ gourd and you’re headed to freedom." The tune varied from week to week.

I could actually find the end of the Dipper; connect the dots; and point in the correct westward direction when asked the inevitable, "and which way is the Kah-ween Citt-eha?"

Mr. Ledbetter never caught on to my method. Standing in the parking lot with the basketball goal to my right, downtown Cincinnati was straight ahead, it was a no brainer.

Did the slaves escape to the Queen City? Never too clear on that, but just knowing where the North Star was gave me some sort of comfort. It also raised the question, "If I’m so damn prepared, why don’t I have a compass and find north that way?"

Having become a practicing north nerd, I was none too happy when I realized we were traveling west to go into Canada. Canada’s not supposed to be west, its north. Everybody knows that. But from the Falls it’s west.

The first night we camped right beside the navigation locks on the Welland Canal and, of course, searched star formations before the dads retreated to their tents and us kids sneaked off to recon the area.

Back then, you could walk right up to the water’s edge and actually talk to crewmembers on the passing ships. I actually traded hats with a crewman on a gleaming white Norwegian tanker as it was lowered through the locks. Today, barriers keep curious tourists confined to a viewing platform 50 yards away from the series of water stair steps.

Our adventure river actually fed off below the locks near a small Canadian town called Black Horse. I was convinced that we were the first white men to ever dip a paddle in her cold waters. And we were on our own, no outfitters, no guides.

"Loo-tenant Meriwether Lewis didn’t need a guide," Mr. Ledbetter proclaimed, overlooking the fact that Lewis was a captain and a gal named Sacagawea kind of helped out on that cross country trek.

Anyway, with no outfitter assistance, the adults had worked out a hopscotch system of shuttling our supply trailer downstream from our put in.

As I remember it, we had two Scouts and 600, maybe 700 pounds of supplies in the first canoe. Okay, maybe not that much, but it seemed like 700 pounds. Our second craft carried two Scouts and one dad. Number three was Mr. Ledbetter and me, the kid that drew the short straw. The remaining dad was the odd-man-out. He drove the supplies to the next pre-determined campsite.

Five hours later, we paddled onto a sandbar marked with—what else—semaphore flags.

We had to pack-back our supplies in from the trailer on a dirt road that was about a quarter mile away. The two dads then drove back to our starting point to retrieve the second car. While they were gone the rest of us pitched tents, started fires the hard way with flint and steel (even though we came prepared with wax-dipped matches) and started cooking the mandatory campers stew.

That evening, the Black Horse Legend was our campfire tale, made up on the spot featuring a headless horseman, Lake Erie pirates and snakes. Enough material there to make a kid jump at shadows all night long.

It took half the morning to fix breakfast, break camp, load the trailer and finally hit the water. An accurate, but unfortunate choice of words.

Mike McGuire was the first to spot the approaching "rapids," twisting around in the lead canoe and standing up to shout out his discovery. Losing his balance, he promptly went in the drink. As he popped to the surface, I could once more hear my mom, "You’ll fall in and never come up."

The two Scouts in the nearby supply canoe were quick to the rescue. Both leaned out to help Mike and gravity got them too.

What didn’t sink, including Mike and his two would-be rescuers, simply bobbed along down river. The bulky yellow kapok life jackets we were forced to wear, worked. It looked like one of those rubber ducky fundraisers with little floating yellow birds bobbing on the water.

The supplies were another matter. They sank like a rock. Nobody said we were supposed to tie down all that stuff.

Back in Mike’s canoe, his shouting dad and the remaining Scout caught up with two of the floating kids. It was like a bad water ballet—all in slow motion. The floaters grabbed the same side of Mr. McGuire’s canoe at exactly the same time and brought it over, dumping the forth Scout and the senior McGuire.

More bobbing ducks.

In about ten minutes all five floaters had made it safely to shore, two on one side of the river, three on the other side. Mr. Ledbetter and I caught one drifting canoe and watched the third get snagged along the banks downstream. In a half an hour or so, everybody was back on the same side of the river; canoes retrieved and dripping boots hanging from drying sticks.

Mr. Ledbetter proclaimed that this was our campsite for the day. Mike’s dad spent the better part of that day wringing out wet socks, mumbling and throwing rocks in the water.

I got tagged with the mission of leading a ground party to retrieve the other father who had long since driven away with the trailer to our next intended campsite. Even without my basketball goal reference, I was able to correctly point North when asked, "Which way did he go?"

That evening, with everyone dry and fed, Mr. Ledbetter put a good spin on his "change of ah-TIN-ah-rare-ee" announcement, ending this leg of the trip. Tomorrow, he said, we would make an overland portage to historic Old Fort Niagara and explore some its Lake Ontario shoreline. Then, we would go home.

We never completed what the Army calls an "after action report," writing down the strengths and weaknesses of a concluded mission. In fact, we didn’t talk much about the trip at all, except to occasionally call Mike’s dad "Tyler" behind his back. You know, Tippecanoe and all that.

Some of us added a few merit badges to our sashes; canoeing wasn’t one of them. Mr. Ledbetter got a new job and moved away. Mike’s parents got a divorce. And Troop 141 just sort of fell apart.

Several months later while Mike and I were shooting baskets in the parking lot, he told me why "Tyler" was so mad about the capsizing episode and the lost supplies. The supply canoe was where he had stashed a couple of hundred dollars in emergency cash, along with a bottle of Jack Daniels.