Maintaining communications within and outside of your group when kayaking or canoeing, whether it’s a day trip or a longer one, adds a degree of safety to your trip. There are multiple types of signaling devices on the market, and many can be used for both communications to your paddling partners and any outside entities, such as [...]
On PaddlingLight, I try to steer clear of politics, but one of PaddlingLight’s missions is to increase wilderness protection so I have to stick my toes into it now and then. Recently, we had some alarming numbers on wilderness participation rates, and with an increasingly anti-environmental U.S. congress, which according to some numbers is the [...]
Nashville songwriter, author and educator Jerry Vandiver recently released True And Deep – Songs for the Heart of the Paddler, an album of canoe country inspired songs. After getting a copy of the album, I was instantly hooked. The songs capture the spirit of a canoe trip in the northwoods and the arrangement takes you on [...]
Many of the areas that I’ve paddled have built up shoreline with houses coming almost to the water and parks, if they exist at all, more than a day’s paddle away, or parks that don’t allow camping. During a multi-day kayaking or canoeing trip, if you want to camp in these areas, you’ll camp on [...]
Lots of news in the paddling world today, but the scariest is a report just released by the U.S. Forest Service about the Boundary Waters Wilderness Canoe Area: In it, we found out that the average user age in 1969 was 26 and in 2007 it was 45. We also found out that first time [...]
courage: mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty In February of 2011, I was thinking about courage and how technology can change the amount of courage that a wilderness trip requires (see: Modern Technology and Courage in the Wilderness). I concluded that certain types of technology can reduce the risks of [...]
Years ago, I decided that the best food in the world would be a bar named “Food Bar.” You’d eat it in the morning, and it would sustain you throughout the day. While that still isn’t available, many energy bars do the trick for me. Years ago I settled on Clif Bar’s Crunchy Peanut Butter, and [...]
Guerrilla Camping for Canoeists and Kayakers
I awoke with a start, not due to loud rumbling, but due to the ground shaking under my sleeping bag. It was 3:30am and a heavily laden freight train was headed north on tracks located just across the river, less than 30 yards from my tent. We were guerrilla camping along the Tioughnioga River in [...]