"I am the carving on the front"" (354). The found boat is man -made, but like the water it takes on significance according to the underlying emphasis surrounding it. Significantly, the boys refer to the vessel as "she" immediately upon their seizure of it.
During the repairs of the boat the children start to assume stereotypical gender roles. The boys do the laborious work of sawing, hammering, and tarring. The girls are separate from the boys "but offer criticism and suggest names" (356). These are classic examples of stereotypical gender roles, that of men being the head of the household and women choosing the baby names. During the repairs Clayton tells Eva that she can stir the tar pot on his mother's stove, placing Eva in the traditional homemaker role. The boys repair the found boat out of things, floating around in the swelling river, debris such as: " branches, fence -rails, logs, road signs, old lumber; sometimes boilers, wash tubs, pots and pans, or even a car seat or stuffed chair, as if somewhere the flood had gotten into dump" (356). The debris described is a mixture of both nature and culture, though there is a symbolic order in which the debris is described. The debris listed after the word, "sometimes" are associated with women. .
When the boys finish rebuilding the boat the children go on a journey down the river, which has resumed its conventional course. Munro uses this journey to symbolize the emotional journey the children are going through. At the beginning of their journey the boys and girls take turns riding in the boat keeping the genders separated. The boys go first establishing control and then allowing the girls a turn, symbolizing their gender boundaries. The children then begin taking turns together " in mixed-up turns, two boys and a girl, two girls and a boy, a girl and a boy, until things were so confused it was impossible to tell whose turn came next, and nobody cared anyway.