Holiday quiz: what does Frosty’s nose look like? He’s a snowman . . . and snowmen have noses that are . . . what? Carrots? Right? You would think so. Or I did. But no. His nose is made out of coal. Run the lyrics through your head. You’ll see.

My niece Claire, had to straighten the adults out on that little detail. Always nice to be corrected by a three year old.

[editor's note: wrong again. it's a *button* nose with eyes made out of coal. That was just pointed out to me by an alert reader who did run the lyrics through their head. This guy Frosty needs a facelift.]

This here is Claire. You can tell by the thumbs-up that she approves of Christmas.


And she likes the singing. Here she serenades our Christmas gathering with the guitar Santa brought.


She doesn’t have the G-minor chord figured out quite yet, but her nephew Jacob also has a guitar so he’ll help her along and someday they’ll tour America and the subcontinent, likely in a painted-up bus and I’m going to apply for a job playing tambourine.

Or it might be an Elvis act. She’s been working on that too.


And speaking of Jacob, he crafted a letter/questionnaire for Santa on Christmas Eve. The upshot was that he wondered how Claus delivered gifts all around the world in one night. He left a space for Santa to answer. Next question: how do reindeer fly? Convenient blank space provided for the answer. Jacob mentioned that he thought Santa was awesome, then reiterated the request for Santa to answer the above questions and to please sign the document, with a convenient line drawn with ‘Sign here’ to avoid confusion.

Santa answered. But he was brief about it. He delivers all those packages ‘quickly.’ Reindeer fly ‘great.’ And the signature was ‘S. Claus.’

Jacob didn’t seem delighted with the short answers or S. in place of Santa. His sister Emma rightly pointed out that the one-word replies were incomplete sentences. She’s been a good girl this year, doing her homework.

Well, this S. Claus guy is a busy man. Eat cookies, drink milk. Take the celery and carrots back up the chimney to the waiting reindeer on the roof. So I think we can give him a break on his incomplete sentences. In fact, he was in such a hurry that he left red fuzz on the fireplace screen when he was squeezing back up top.

Good work, Claus. I don’t know how you do it.

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas. If you want to exchange that silk tie, dress socks or soap-on-a-rope for a rafting trip down Hells Canyon, the Salmon or Grande Ronde, give Paul a jingle at Winding Waters headquarters. You need your gift receipt, though. Except for guided steelhead trips. Tom is so eager to go fishing we have a more relaxed exchange policy on those.

The Winding Waters crew went to see rafting Santa this week. He’s just like regular Santa, except he has a boathouse up north and is married to a gorgeous river runner gal he met during a Hells Canyon trip. And he uses a gearboat instead of a sleigh.

Instead of malls, you visit him at a boat launch before the holidays. He asks all the rafting guides if they’ve been good this year. Have you kept everybody in your boat dry who wanted to stay dry and only splashed the people who wanted to be splashed?

Then you tell him what you want this year. New polarized sunglasses because you dropped your shades in the Snake River. A set of Sawyer Lite wooden oars to replace the ones you broke on the Grande Ronde.

Rafting guide Christmas calls for decorating the tree with old fishing lures you’ve found along the banks in the past year. Then you hang your Chaco sandals by the chimney with care. Rafting Santa’s not big on milk and cookies, so the traditional snacks to lay out are crackers and sardines with hotsauce and a bottle of Corona.

It’s exciting to wake up and see a few pulls taken off that Corona. If you’ve been good you might find a new headlamp in your Chacos. Sometimes you get SPF 50 sunscreen, which is like getting new socks. Useful, but c’mon.

Hope you’ve all been good this year – and Happy Everything from Winding Waters.

Welcome to the annual ‘Gearboat Chronicles Don’t-Give-These-Gifts Guide.’ Other sites will tell you how pleased your loved ones will be when presented with a scented candle. Here we spare you the awkward silence on Christmas morning of watching your mom tear wrapping paper from a parcel, then struggle for words because – really? You got me this?


Exhibit A: a handmade cribbage board. Fashioned from a piece of driftwood collected during a family vacation to the beach. Perfect, you say. It’s thoughtful, practical and says ‘I care.’

Note the ratty chunk of wood with irregular holes made by me. Next to it you see a somewhat more professional attempt made by my brother-in-law, who is a machinist by trade and cheated by knowing what he was doing and having a computer-driven drill press to make those precise lines. Very impressive, Chad. Looks real nice next to my piece of kindling with holes in it.

I made that driftwood cribbage board years ago, and did it freehand with a drill, so the holes tilt in various directions and it’s something of a challenge to put the little pins in there. My family plays a lot of cribbage. And they’re nice, so they pretend to like this thing – but the Gearboat Gift Guide cautions against handicrafts if you’re not that handy. Keep that in mind as you search for the perfect gift this season.

Next up: rocks. My Dad likes cool rocks so I found one this past rafting season on the Salmon River. The mouth of the Imnaha River where it meets the Snake is also prime rock collecting, if you need to dash out and find a special rock before Christmas.

But I caution you on rocks with hollow centers that have dirt inside, as mine did. I’d washed it, but not well enough I guess, because Dad tipped it up to appreciate the crystals inside and a pile of dirt spilled out on my Aunt Donna’s pristine white tablecloth.

So there you go. Think twice before giving the gift of crappy homemade cribbage boards or dirty rocks.


On the bright side, Dad and my little sister Jessica seemed quite pleased with the Winding Waters coffee mugs I presented them with last week for their birthdays. Went over real well. If someone on your gift list might like glancing at their travel mug and being reminded of that raft trip they took, give a shout to Winding Waters headquarters and I bet our elves can get one in the mail. Or a t-shirt, sweatshirt, puffy Patagonia jacket or hat. We don’t have scented candles yet. Maybe next year.