Camp Zoe Memories
Float Trip Legends by Lucy Hirsch
The legends I make reference to are all float trip stories. I had no idea that they ever expired as long as camp had float trips. The rock of the little people is a huge boulder just around the bend after Lulu rapids, the ones right were we put in at Current River resort (Alton Club). It is out in the middle of the river and used to stick out 2-4 feet. We pulled both john boats in down stream of it and they stayed "magically" in the eddy it created. The eddy is still there but the rock is shifted now and only breaks the surface a little. The counselor in charge of the float trip always told the story about how Mac took a float trip before camp started and stopped here and some of the little people who lived on the rock went with him and lived for the summer in the speakers around camp that is how the announcements were made. All the little people were great at imitations and imitated the voice of anyone who used the PA perfectly!
Fiddler's cave is on the right side of the river with a deep rapids in front of it and a sandy beach on the left. We always stopped here to learn rump bumping. This is fun but is actually a survival skill needed if one ever falls out of a canoe or raft in white water. You must go down the river feet first, on your back. This protects your head if not your rump! Then the story of the cave was told. Long, long ago during the era of the logging barons there was a mansion in the woods here behind us. The logging baron had a beautiful daughter (can anyone remember her name)? The family had a big party for all the employees and to local folks once a year with food and music and dancing. A very poor but gifted fiddler lived up the next holler. He played at this dance every year. The baron's daughter loved his music and eventually the girl and the fiddler fell in love too. This could not be. She was rich and he was poor. Her parents did not approve. She went away to college, something the Ozark folk rarely did, but returned every year for the big dance. The fiddler kept his love and his hope deep within his heart. One year they announced the party would be the biggest ever because it doubled as the celebration of the daughter's wedding to a big city man. It was a party to beat anything ever seen in those parts. There was a bridge built across the river hung with lantern for the guests to walk across the river by the light of the full moon to the cave. The fiddler played like no one had ever heard him or any other man play. The music went on till midnight. He played his heart out because it was breaking with love for the girl he could not have as his own. He played as he crossed the bridge over the river and played into the cave and kept going on and on deeper and deeper into the cave, the music slowly fading away into the depths with the fiddler. He was never seen again. BUT if you go way into the back of the cave at midnight on the night of a full moon you can still hear the music faintly in the depths.
The next story is about the fire tower that can be seen soon after that way above the river. They had had a lot of trouble with that fire tower being damaged in the fierce storms that often blow up suddenly out there. They got tired of building it over again when it blew down so an underground silo like a missile silo was built so that if a storm came up it could safely be lowered into the ground. The neat thing was that they often tested the lowering device and we told the kids to keep watch. Every time a kid spotted it getting lower, the counselor said "no I think your are wrong its still tall", but then it would sink out of sight as we approached the base of the ridge it stood on.
Josephine rapids are named after the canoe Josephine (remember the strange names the canoes had? Mehitabel and Josephine are the ones I remember, again who can name more?) These rapids were at the confluence of Sinkin Creek and Current. There was a huge rootwad on the right hand and all the water went straight into it. At some time in the past when Zoe floated in canoes Josephine got wrapped around that root wad and needed a wrecker to pull her out. No one liked to use her because she had a huge lead patch in the middle where she had bent in half.(true story not a tall tale).
Next we passed the bluff of the little people on the right. The current goes straight into it and we always collected beer or pop cans as we traveled down the river so that we could sacrifice one to the little people at the base of that bluff. You see they used them to make little railroad tank cars. The sacrifice was made by throwing a can at the base of the bluff and hitting it with paddles until it sank. If we were unsuccessful the little people swamped our boat.