To read part seventeen of day six, click here.

Bruce told me to start paddling, and for some reason I did. I must have been out of my mind.

I started paddling, headed straight for the big white spot. Bruce started turning us to head downstream, towards the spot where our crewmate was standing on the opposite side of the river. We were supposed to end up by him/her.

Patrick yelled out “Go save _____ from that creepy old guy! Ok, when I get to three flip. One, Two,”

I never heard the three. I don’t know if he did it on purpose, but Bruce flipped us before the three. I was under water, water up my nose and not enough air in my lungs. My feet found the bottom of the river and I pushed off, trying to get to the air that I knew was only a couple of feet above me.

Within five seconds, I was at the top. But something wasn’t right. Instead of breathing in air, I was feeling pain on the top of my head. It took me a few precious seconds to realize what was happening – I was stuck under the canoe. And there wasn’t any air under there.

I was running out of oxygen. I’m not good at holding my breath, and I was reaching my limit. I used my hands to push myself out from under the canoe, grabbing the side and hauling myself up it.

Have I ever told y’all that I love oxygen? 😀

Breathing right again took a little bit. But we were running out of time – the river was sweeping us past the spot where our crewmate was standing.

What happened under water didn’t even take a minute, but it seemed like a lifetime to me. And when I was above the water, all I could think about was breathing and getting to the shore and out of the river.

Bruce was swimming at his end of the canoe, yelling something at me. I took a second to get the water out of my ears, and then I could hear him.

“Brett, you have to grab the canoe and start swimming. Brett?”

I grabbed the side of the canoe and started swimming to the shore. At least, I tried. We weren’t really making any progress.

“Brett? Grab the painter. It will be a lot easier to swim!”

Well, that made sense. I grabbed the painter (the rope hanging from the edge) and started swimming with that.

We made a lot more progress. It wasn’t long before we were nearing the beach (at least, it resembled a beach) where our crewmates were waiting.

Once everyone was done flipping, we had to move the canoes. We had landed them on a small island, so we had to move them all the way across the island, over the (long!) bridge, to the trailer.

It took forever. When we were done, we were all tired and hungry. But we had to wait for the car to get there.

We pulled out some trail mix and sat one some logs to eat it. I was walking over to get some trail mix when Patrick came up to us and told us to not go over to Glenn.

Of course, we asked why.

“Because there is a rattlesnake over there.”

Click here to read the next part of Day Six.

*Everything here is from my own memory and may not be correct. Outward Bound is not responsible for anything I post here. Thanks too NCOBS for letting me use their photos.*