There's a big difference between adventure and misadventure. I learned that lesson the hard way on a 12 day canoe trip down the Big Salmon River in the Yukon of Canada. 

The trip started innocently enough: fireweed painting the hills, moose with their calves wading through marshes, and long summer evenings filled with steaks, hot chocolate, and the kind of laughter you only get when you're bone-tired and bug-bitten. Sure, the river twisted endlessly, the wind toyed with us, and the trip dog thought rotten fish heads were treasures, but that was all part of the charm. 

Then came Day Six.

The brand new blue racing canoe that made its debut on its first family float trip struck a rock. The current swung the boat sideways. My uncle Jeff who sat in the rear of the boat was tossed out, disappearing under the water and down the river. My aunt Dorothy clung to the smashed boat, and the rest of us scrambled to figure out if this was the part where our family became a cautionary tale.

Adrenaline does funny things. My cousin Annie - a flash of red hair and rope - sprinted for the shoreline that overlooked where Dorothy sat with the boat. Her younger brother Danny waded slowly out toward the current, dragging in gear before it disappeared downstream. I tore through dry bags from our boat, mentally preparing to start a fire before realizing that torching the Yukon during wildfire season probably wasn't the move.

Twenty minutes later, Dorothy and Jeff were shivering but alive and wrapped in sleeping bags. The boat had wiggled itself loose from the rock's hold and snagged on a sweeping tree along the bank. We quickly assessed what we had lost. Half of our food? Gone. The "dry" bags? Laughably soaked. The DSLR camera? Inside a bag of water. Our campsite looked like a soggy thrift store exploded - tarps strung between trees, clothes dripping on branches, and five humans plus a wet puppy jammed into one tent, giggling like maniacs every time Hudson, the puppy, growled at his own echo bouncing back from the mountains.

The next morning, Jeff hit the SOS button on our satellite tracker. Hours crawled by until the thrum of a helicopter echoed down the valley. A pink chopper swooped in, watched us drag the boat out of the water, and dropped MREs and a sat phone across the river. It was equal parts comforting and absurd — rescue flavored like chalky brownies and reheated hash browns.

With nothing but pine pitch, duct tape, and sheer stubbornness, we patched the boat. Somehow, it held. We limped the rest of the way out, rationing chocolate chips, giving each other pirate names, and watching river otters slip through the current like nothing had happened at all. 

By the time we reached the Little Salmon pullout and drove the rest of the way to Carmacks, we looked feral. Civilization greeted us with mountains of poutine and hot showers, and the kind of relief only misadventure can deliver. 

Looking back, that wreck is one of my favorite memories. Adventure isn't neat, it isn't pretty, and it rarely goes as planned. But it leaves you with stories that stick to you like Yukon river mud. 

And speaking of washing off river mud... I now make soap built for the outdoors. Soap that will keep you and the river clean as you wash, soap that hand to dry by the fire, soap that survives being jammed into a pack between bug dope and trail mix.

So if you're planning your next adventure - or misadventure on purpose - take a bar of Wayward & Wild soap with you. Because unlike our "dry bags", it'll actually survive the trip.