Years before I began working for Pontoon and Deck Boat magazine, my aunt Colleen had already discovered the expansive possibilities of a pontoon. And that mattered, since by then she was relegated to a 500-pound motorized wheelchair during her final years battling ALS.
She had spent a lifetime enjoying her annual river rafting run. Before her diagnosis, Colleen and her husband Brian had spent more than 30 years rafting the Green River, which cuts through the spectacular red canyon walls of Flaming Gorge, Utah. While the reservoir made by Flaming Gorge Dam is popular for trout fishing, my aunt and uncle loved running the river.
Beginning as a teenager, Brian had already spent years on Green River when he married Colleen. The summer after their wedding, he brought her along and she loved it, too.
“Colleen loved Flaming Gorge as much as I did, and we spent thousands of hours on the river. We went once or twice every year, making the 7-mile run multiple times we were there,” Brian said. As their family expanded, they eventually brought all four of their children, once they were old enough. It became an unmissable family tradition and a great way to connect with nature.
Depending on the height of the river, the run would take the family anywhere from an hour and a half to three hours to finish. Once, they had their four-year-old granddaughter Kelsy aboard when an unexpected wave crashed over the raft and soaked everyone to the skin. Kelsy started crying and Brian tried to reassure her saying, “This is fun! This is an adventure!” Kelsy harrumphed and said, “Well, I don’t like fun!” Yet at the end of the trip, she jumped out of the raft and told a handful of fishermen at the bank, “We had SO much fun!”
Because Colleen also loved hiking, sometimes she would drive the truck to their designated pick-up spot, and hike more than 3 miles up the riverbank to catch up with the rafters coming down. They’d have a life jacket ready for her, and she’d be able to jump in the boat and finish the run with the group.
That all changed when Colleen was diagnosed with ALS when she was 52; she quickly lost her ability to walk. When the following summer came around, she placated herself by telling her family that she’d sit on the riverbank in her wheelchair while they made their run. “I’ll miss out on the fun,” she told her husband. “But at least you can still go.”
Not one to be deterred, Brian thought this was unacceptably sad and he looked for a way they could ALL spend time on the water. He said, “We looked at renting a boat, but we knew it would be too hard to get her into a speed boat. Then we asked about renting a pontoon. It was perfect because we could use our ramp to roll her right onto the boat.”
Alongside the benefits of extremely comfortable seating, pontoons have always offered extended accessibility, especially with their wide boarding gates and the stable platform as a result of a flat deck. Many manufacturers are willing to make further adjustments so that boating can be even more accessible for customers with wheelchairs. Add in the considerations of the one-level flooring and open spaces, and wheelchairs can easily maneuver through a pontoon’s “living room.”
“We had such a great time,” Brian said. “Colleen loved it! She thought it was great getting out on the lake. We cruised around Cart Creek Bridge and the kids did some cliff diving off the bridge. We did a little swimming and some fishing, too.”
It was a day to bring a semblance of normalcy to their lives and to enjoy an adventure together as a family, even if it wasn’t on the river. Like many times before, they made new memories. They stayed within a few miles of the dam and also took the boat to some nearby spots for geocaching, another one of their shared hobbies. Brian remembered, “We found a few geocaches while we were there that you could only reach by either hiking a long way or getting there by boat. We had a lot of fun and even caught a few fish. At one point when I was driving the boat, the dog hopped on my lap and helped me drive.”
In a blog she kept throughout her illness, Colleen wrote, “I love to go river rafting down the Green River at my favorite spot in the whole world, Flaming Gorge. We have been going there for many years. Once we pulled over to shore by some huge boulders and everyone got out to jump. Ever since then all my kids have jumped off some cliff or other. The last few summers that I have been in my chair we have used a pontoon boat on the lake. What a great place to be!”
Looking back on that time, Brian said, “We have a lot of good memories. And the pontoon was a good memory. Although Colleen wore a life jacket, I should have been more concerned that she was strapped to a heavy wheelchair. The first year she just had her seat belt. But the second year, she also had a chest belt to help hold her upright. But I had enough faith in the pontoon boat that I wasn’t worried about it sinking.”
The trusty, flat-bottomed pontoon boat made a great day possible, heavy wheelchair and all. Even if the boating trip looked different than the adrenaline rush of a river run, it was still a happy day on the water.
Disabilities can change our lives in so many ways, and may make us want to give up things we’ve always loved. Sometimes, though, we just need to adapt. I’m so glad a pontoon made that possible for my aunt and uncle.