Author shares memories of 1979 adventure
By Tim Gallagher | Posted: Sunday, October 26, 2008
For Dennis Weidemann there was no higher purpose in the summer of 1979 than being in a canoe.
A canoe purchased at a garage sale. One that still carried faded images of the U.S. Bicentennial painted across it for a parade three years earlier.
But that's what carried Weidemann and three buddies from Remsen, Iowa, some 1,400 miles north to Hudson Bay. Weidemann, now 50 and living in Madison, Wis., has written a book, "This Water Goes North," to share what he, Hank Kohler, Keith Kohler and Rich Wiebke learned in 2 1/2 months in the wilderness that summer as they paddled a couple of second-hand canoes through the wilderness from a spot near Fergus Falls, Minn., to York Factory on Hudson Bay.
Weidemann will present a slide show at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Wilbur Aalfs Main Library in Sioux City in conjunction with Book People, where readers may find the book.
Why write it now?
"For many years we were content to keep it to ourselves," says Weidemann. "And then three years ago I was speaking to a friend who has heard me talk about it before. He asked em to stop because he wanted to call his grandkids over to listen. It occurred to me that adventure isn't just for the people who were there; it should be shared.
"I'm hoping the book now will give people the motivation to go and live out their dreams."
This "dream" was nearly a nightmare more than once. On the third day of the trek, Wiebke and Weidemann were pinned in the water below a dam, the result of a tree impeding their progress.
"We got lucky," he recalled. "The canoe filled with water and it was then heavy enough to push the branches through, taking us with it."
The title is traced to a fishing trip Hank Kohler took with his father from Remsen to a spot near East Leaf Lake, Minn., nearly four decades ago. Hank's dad asked him where they water flowed.
"Like all good Iowans, Hank told his dad the water flowed south into the Mississippi River and eventually to the Gulf of Mexico," said Weidemann.
His father corrected him, and told him this water ran north to Hudson Bay. The seed for a dream was planted at that moment. As a 21-year--old Kohler and three buddies attacked it, seeing for themselves where the water went.
Where are they now?
Here's what the four men who took canoes to York Factory in 1979 are up to now:
Dennis Weidemann, an author in Madison, Wis;
Rich Wiebke, a stay-at-home dad in Salt Lake City, Utah;
Keith Kohler, a researcher at the Iowa State University Soil Tilth lab;
Hank Kohler, owner of Happy Joe's restaurant in Ames, the very restaurant he left in 1979 to embark on this adventure.
A canoe purchased at a garage sale. One that still carried faded images of the U.S. Bicentennial painted across it for a parade three years earlier.
But that's what carried Weidemann and three buddies from Remsen, Iowa, some 1,400 miles north to Hudson Bay. Weidemann, now 50 and living in Madison, Wis., has written a book, "This Water Goes North," to share what he, Hank Kohler, Keith Kohler and Rich Wiebke learned in 2 1/2 months in the wilderness that summer as they paddled a couple of second-hand canoes through the wilderness from a spot near Fergus Falls, Minn., to York Factory on Hudson Bay.
Weidemann will present a slide show at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Wilbur Aalfs Main Library in Sioux City in conjunction with Book People, where readers may find the book.
Why write it now?
"For many years we were content to keep it to ourselves," says Weidemann. "And then three years ago I was speaking to a friend who has heard me talk about it before. He asked em to stop because he wanted to call his grandkids over to listen. It occurred to me that adventure isn't just for the people who were there; it should be shared.
"I'm hoping the book now will give people the motivation to go and live out their dreams."
This "dream" was nearly a nightmare more than once. On the third day of the trek, Wiebke and Weidemann were pinned in the water below a dam, the result of a tree impeding their progress.
"We got lucky," he recalled. "The canoe filled with water and it was then heavy enough to push the branches through, taking us with it."
The title is traced to a fishing trip Hank Kohler took with his father from Remsen to a spot near East Leaf Lake, Minn., nearly four decades ago. Hank's dad asked him where they water flowed.
"Like all good Iowans, Hank told his dad the water flowed south into the Mississippi River and eventually to the Gulf of Mexico," said Weidemann.
His father corrected him, and told him this water ran north to Hudson Bay. The seed for a dream was planted at that moment. As a 21-year--old Kohler and three buddies attacked it, seeing for themselves where the water went.
Where are they now?
Here's what the four men who took canoes to York Factory in 1979 are up to now:
Dennis Weidemann, an author in Madison, Wis;
Rich Wiebke, a stay-at-home dad in Salt Lake City, Utah;
Keith Kohler, a researcher at the Iowa State University Soil Tilth lab;
Hank Kohler, owner of Happy Joe's restaurant in Ames, the very restaurant he left in 1979 to embark on this adventure.
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