Outside Magazine

“Say, do any of you have extra underwear?” asked Rob Stevens, looking like a miserable Santa in his sodden red woollens and fluffy white beard, as he inspected our replica 18th-century bateau. His lisp was a bit more pronounced than usual, so I knew he was upset. “They need to be 100 percent cotton.”

The bateau was overturned on the bank of Quebec’s raging Chaudière River—which basically means “boiling cauldron” in French—and Rob, the 62-year-old boatbuilder who’d constructed it, was charged with the emergency repairs. The riverbed had shredded our boat’s bottom like so much Gruyère. Even worse were the see-through gaps where rocks and water had ripped out the caulking.

I peeled off my long wool underwear, tottering a bit on the rocky shore, and slipped out of my green tartan boxers. They were my favorite pair—and apparently the only cotton ones at hand.