100 Nebraskaland • June 2026
Not So
Dismal
By Bob Grier
The Last Stop
I had some memorable assignments in my 40 years with
Nebraskaland. One of the most memorable came in July 1971,
before I had even been on staff for a year.
Lowell Johnson, the magazine's editor, and I joined two
men for a canoe trip down the Dismal River. On our second
day on the river, we already had to saw our way through a
tangle of cedar trees when we approached a waterfall and
made the poor decision not to portage around it.
Lowell summed up what came next in "A Dismal Trip" for
the October 1971 issue. "Somehow, we appeared to have let
our enthusiasm get the upper hand over good sense, and this
was the result: Our 17-foot aluminum canoe teetered on the
brink of a 7-foot waterfall, stopped from sliding over only
because our load grounded us on the lip. Bob Grier, the man
in the bow, was suspended over the raging pool below the
falls. Allowing a few seconds for the predicament to register
in his mind, he turned around slowly and said, half seriously
and half in jest, 'Don't get out!'"
We didn't have waterproof cases back then so of course
I was worried about my camera gear, which was packed
in a wicker trappers' bag. While the boat was being held I
grabbed the bag and ran around so I could look upriver over
the falls.
With my Mamiya twin lens reflex, I fired away as one of
the men from the second canoe came to help, slipped and
fell, swamping our canoe and sending it over with our gear
still inside. Most of it was lost, including a camp stove and
Lowell's new ultralight fishing rod.
We spent quite a bit of time trying to find that gear before
giving up. When we finally got around to righting the canoe,
we managed to scoop up a nice brown trout that had become
trapped inside. There were several jokes about inventing a
new lure for trout — a 17-foot aluminum spoon.
Lowell included plenty of details of our trip in his story, but
he did leave one out: We had the fish for supper.
We didn't know if it was legal or not at the time, so we
thought we'd keep that one to ourselves.
