On the chart, point “A” is something like a walk to the store, and point “B” is something like climbing K2. I find this chart interesting, because you can use it to figure out exactly what your trip is. If it has features of an expedition more than a jaunt, move point “C” towards expedition. If it’s routine, move point “C” downward. If it’s adventurous move the point up. At some point, you can determine what you think your trip is. It could be a routine expedition, an adventurous expedition, a routine jaunt or an adventurous jaunt (Or as William Latham and Roman Dial pointed out in the last thread, it might be a jaunty adventure).

Even more interesting to me is what kind of trip rests on the center intersection at point “C.” Logistically it might be expedition-esque, but it’s also has features of just a jaunt. Parts of the trip are routine, but it probably also has adventurous moments. It seems to me that seems like the perfect description of a long-distance trip, something like circumnavigating a large island or one of the Great Lakes or hiking a long-distance trail, such as the Appalachian Trail. Those trips have serious logistical challenges such as getting to the starting point, figuring out resupply on the way and living in the woods for months at a time. But, day-by-day they feel just like a day-long jaunt. There may be adventurous moments, such as getting caught on the water during a squall, but much of the trip is routine; you wake up, cook breakfast, break camp, paddle all day, set up camp, cook dinner and do it all over the next day. Then months later you succeed at your goal.

That intersection at point “C” is exactly the types of trips that I love to do. I think the appropriate term/category to call this trip type is a long-distance trip. I’d also venture that most of the trips that we have called “expeditions,” such as Freya Hoffmeister’s trip around Australia and South America or Renata Chlumska’s kayak and bike around the United States or many of Verlen Kruger’s trips, are actually long-distance paddling trips instead of expeditions.

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: The Adventure Matrix: Ranking Trips on a Graph

One way of categorizing paddling trips is to try and see if it’s an expedition, trip or adventure. To do that, we need definitions of what each of those categories are. That would seem like a simple task, but it’s surprisingly difficult and the definitions are shifty and often depend on the beholder’s opinion. Defining a trip is easy. Anytime you go out paddling, you’re taking a trip, but the others aren’t as easy to define.

What’s an Expedition?

It seems in the paddling world that an expedition is often called an expedition based on the I’ll-know-it-when-I-see-it principle, which I find rather suspect – not only because it’s a lame way to categorize something, but also because I’ve been subject to that kind of judgment before. When I was planning a 3,600-mile kayak expedition, I was interviewed by the editor of Paddler Magazine. In the magazine he mentioned that he didn’t think it was an expedition for petty reasons, despite the fact that it had never been done before and had an uncertain outcome with a specific goal and cause. Unfortunately, under that editor’s leadership the magazine failed a few issues later.

Merriam-Webster defines an expedition as:

a : a journey or excursion undertaken for a specific purpose

By that definition, if you take the trip for a specific purpose, the trip becomes an expedition. That specific purpose seems like it could be anything. Wikipedia notes that it’s often exploratory, scientific, geographic, military or political in nature. But, it could be a simple as completing a route.

One way to refine the choice was voiced by Jon Turk in Cold Oceans: Adventures in Kayak, Rowboat, and Dogsled. He wrote that the difference between an expedition and a vacation is that on an expedition you do everything you can to achieve the goal and on a vacation you do whatever feels right for that day. This seems useful to me, because when you combine it with Merriam-Webster’s definition you get a trip with a specific purpose that is the ultimate driving force of the trip.

For the definition of expedition to be useful in distinguishing itself from “just” a paddling trip, I think we need to add one more leg to it. The outcome should be in question, dangerous and difficult and it should take work to achieve it. For example, a 10-mile day trip down an oft-canoed river probably isn’t an expedition, because its outcome isn’t in question and it isn’t difficult. Do that trip in the heart of winter, and it just may be. I feel almost like I’m falling into the I’ll-know-it-when-I-see-it trap, but I think that we can trust the expeditioner to determine what is a difficult-and-in-question purpose.

With this three prong definition we get:

• a journey or excursion undertaken for a specific purpose.
• a journey on which you do everything possible to achieve the purpose.
• where achieving the purpose is in question, dangerous and difficult.

That’s useful enough for me to tell the difference between an expedition and a trip.

What’s an Adventure?

“I just had an adventure,” is a common refrain coming from paddlers returning from a trip. It seems like an adventure can happen all the time, but what exactly is an adventure? Merriam-Webster defines it as:

a : an undertaking usually involving danger and unknown risks
b : the encountering of risks c : an exciting or remarkable experience

That sounds about right to me, although if the experience becomes routine it might no longer be an adventure. For example, a kayaking guide might take the same trip daily. It becomes routine and no longer an adventure for him, but it might be an adventure for his clients.

Adventures can happen every day if something remarkable happens. Once I met a movie stunt man in a fastfood restaurant who was on a journey to find his long-lost father. After listening to his gripping story about how he became a race car driver and then a stunt man to make his father see his name on the screen and about how his journey across the country to find him, I felt like I had just had an adventure.

Here’s the Tricky Part

When is a trip an adventure and when is it an expedition? And are many of the paddling expeditions really just paddling adventures? Let’s plan a trip where we will kayak across the north shore of Lake Superior. It’s going to take us a month, and we’re going to do everything we possibly can to achieve the goal. This paddle isn’t something to take on a whim. The shoreline is remote, rugged and Lake Superior’s water is brutal cold and the weather can change in a second. The risk is real and the route is dangerous. During the fur trade, many canoeists died along this same route. And within the last 10 years, an experienced kayaker died on the route and two had to be rescued via helicopter.

Our trip fits all of the points in both the definition for expedition and adventure, so we really can’t categorize it into a single category. By default, because we have a goal, it becomes an expedition, but this expedition that we just planned also happens to be a guided kayaking trip. It used to be performed by voyagers as a job. Surely a guided trip isn’t an expedition, because its outcome is seldom in question. Can our trip still be called an expedition when someone guides the same route, and it feels routine to him with an outcome that’s not in question? I don’t know for sure, but probably it could for us. But, that seems to make the expedition category somewhat arbitrary. I’m going to go out on a narrow and brittle tree branch here and say that we need to add one more prong to our definition of expedition. To become an expedition, it must also:

• serve a cause beyond personal enrichment.

If we add a cause to our definition of expedition, we now have a useful separation that doesn’t feel arbitrary when the same trip could be done as something routine without a questionable outcome. An expedition must also serve a cause. To be a noble expedition that cause shouldn’t just be tacked on. For example, adding “to bring attention to cause X” by climbing up Denali. Instead it should flow from the expedition. Our Lake Superior expedition might have a cause that could only be done by kayak. Our cause might be to increase scientific knowledge about water quality along the north shore. We would sample water daily. Or it could be to increase paddlesports participation or to increase wilderness protection.

By adding a cause to expeditions we get three distinct categories. Trips encompass both adventures and expeditions, but don’t need to serve a cause or have significant danger and risk, i.e. you can take a trip to the store. Adventures and expeditions are related, but expeditions have a cause and a purpose. That feels like a useful separation to me, and it might also downgrade some major paddling trips called expeditions to adventures.

I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts.

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: What’s the Difference between a Kayak or Canoe Expedition, Trip and Adventure?

The first seiche that I witnessed was several feet tall. I had just finished guiding a kayak tour and was heading to lunch when I noticed some standing waves forming in the mouth of the river. There wasn’t any waves or wind on Lake Superior, so I though it was odd. After lunch, I walked back to the boats to get ready for the next tour when I noticed that the water level in the river looked higher. A small sand island was completely submerged. Thirty minutes later the island rose above the water again. Later in the day, I heard a news report that a seiche of similar height had occurred at about the same time almost 150 miles across the lake.

The next time I experienced a seiche was in Big Bay, Michigan. We were practicing rescues and skills in a harbor. Someone noticed a current pushing into the harbor and we watched the water level rise by 6 to 10 inches. Then it rushed out. Then it rushed back in. It did this over the next hour or so with the periods between high water and low water averaging about 20 minutes.

After that experience, I tried to watch out for more seiches. In 2011, I spent 45 days kayaking 800 miles on the Great Lakes and I had a camera ready to capture any seiches. I experienced three that I caught on camera. Two were small. The third one was hard to gage.

The first was on Lake Huron. I was in camp and noticed the water level going up even though the lake was mirror calm. Over a half hour it raised several inches.

The next was on Lake Superior near Sault Ste. Marie. So much water went out that I couldn’t really figure out the height, but it was enough to make me have to drag my kayak to the beach which was normally submerged.

During the third I felt my kayak getting pushed along by a current and then it felt like the current stopped. I landed on a rocky point and watched water drain out from under my kayak. About 30 minutes later the water came back. In the third picture you can see some ripples formed by the water rushing back in.

A related event on the Great Lakes is a storm surge. The picture below I took during the Extratropical Cyclone of October 2010. Look at how the breakwall on the right-hand side of the photo is inundated by water. That breakwall is typically five to six feet above the water level. Usually, the opposite side of the lake drops by as much.

While the Great Lakes might not have the constant tides and tidal currents of the oceans, there’s still plenty of interesting events to keep a kayaker happy.

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: Great Lakes Seiche – The Joys of Kayaking on the Big Lakes

In the comments, a bunch of “sea kayakers” jump on Kirkby, call him inexperienced and take apart his approach to kayaking by calling it irresponsible, incorrect, full of poor planning,  foolhardy and that he was just plain stupid. A commenter naming himself “NeoEgolitarian” even wonders, “How is Bruce Kirkby still alive?!?” It turns out that the joke is on the “sea kayakers” because Kirkby is actually an experienced sea kayaker who writes humorous self-deprecating travel articles to a lay audience. His experience includes expeditions to “Greenland’s East Coast (40 days) and a complete traverse of Borneo’s north coast (60 days).” And, he was a sea kayaking and rafting guide. In other words, he’s experienced and accomplished.

The Commenters Lash Out!

I don’t want to pick apart the comments one-by-one, but seriously, it’s so easy to read them and think, “Most of these ‘sea kayakers’ haven’t been on a big expedition” or just “Seriously?” Well, seriously:

• The one that sticks out the most is “Don’t go on a trip in a kayak you haven’t tested.” There goes rentals, there goes sponsorship where the company ships the boat ahead. In fact, the logical extension of this thought is this, if you don’t know how a boat will work on an expedition, don’t take it. Well, if you haven’t taken that kayak on an expedition how do you know it will work? You don’t. If it doesn’t, you deal with it. Is that ideal? No, but stuff like that happens. If you’re in this situation, i.e. no boat for a trip, before the trip you get advice, you do research and planning and then you bite the bullet and order the boat. It usually works out. In this case, shipping and what not caused the boat to get there late. I remember a recent article in Sea Kayaker Magazine where a paddler did the exact same thing as Kirkby. He picked up the boat just before the expedition and didn’t try it. He realized that the boat wasn’t going to work because it was sitting too low in the water with his gear, so he dumped half his food. He was celebrated, because he finished the trip. I know a guy that built a Greenland-style skin-on-frame kayak to paddle around Lake Superior. At the start of the trip, it started sinking. He called it quits, bought a new plastic kayak and completed the trip. He’s now making a movie about the trip, and sea kayakers will celebrate him as a hero. Whereas Kirby is called a fool, probably because he used good judgment and quit the trip. On a personal note, I picked up a new kayak before a 20-day expedition once. I actually paddled it 20 or 30 times before the trip and while on the trip, I had stuff go wrong with it. Guess what? It happens. Additionally, I’ve seen sit-on-top (SOT) touring boats designed for expeditions. They usually include knee straps so you can roll the boat (see below), but I’ve never seen one that leaks to the extent that Kirkby’s did. Typically on rotomolded boats, the part that is going to leak is the bulkheads, especially the foam ones. SOT expedition boats don’t have bulkheads, because there is no need — the inside of a SOT should be watertight. The leak points are typically the hatches. But, I’ve never seen a SOT touring kayak leak like this, and I used to sell them. He got a defective kayak, which sucks. He never tells us the exact defect, but I suspect it’s a cracked hull or something below waterline. Although off my rant, here’s a good reason to pick a composite boat for a trip, because you pull over, dry your stuff out, fix the crack with a fiberglass repair kit and go on paddling. Now I’ll return to my rant. If Kirkby had figured out how to fix this problem, went on with the trip and wrote a book about it, I’d guess that most of the same commenters would be praising him for how self-sufficient he was on the trip. He’d be a hero.
• F Lutzen says, “The idea of entering rough waters in a sit-on-top kayak is so idiotic I don’t even know where to begin.” Lutzen probably never heard of the Tsunami Rangers.
• Maximilian Widmaier tells us that kayaks are for rolling because that’s what the Greenlanders designed them for. I don’t even know how to address this, except by saying kayaks were designed for hunting. I consider rolling a skill that kayakers should learn (Kirkby never tells us if he can roll, but if he guided sea kayaking there’s a good chance that he can). Then Lutzen tells us that if you accept the “Greenland attitude”, you will never come out of your boat, because you will always roll. This is just completely untrue. The only truth is how many days you had between swims. Everyone swims.
• Commenter “p.a.l.” tells us “There’s enough warning signs there to worry any experienced kayaker,” because in part “gear not all in dry bags.” Kirkby is writing for a lay audience and not a sea kayaking audience. We don’t know specifically that his gear wasn’t in dry bags, we just know “Everything inside – clothes, food, gear, books – was floating in water.” It’s an economical choice of words to explain what was inside the hatches without having to explain to a lay audience what a dry bag is. Newspaper columnists have word limits, and I know from writing for them that it’s hard to stay under those word counts. Sometimes you sacrifice details because you have to.
• I could go on about the weather FORECAST may not be the current weather or even relevant for the shoreline that you’re on. I could mention that knowing enough to hop eddies seems like something a skilled person would do when a tide is creating rough water. I could mention that a raft guide probably knows about “haystacks” and “rollers” more than many sea kayakers. I could go on.

So, how did we get to this point in the sea kayaking community?

Whenever you read a sea kayaking incident report on the Internet or even a small story where something went wrong, you can expect to see loads of comments from “sea kayakers” telling the author how stupid he is, how he’s going to give sea kayaking a bad name and how he should be dead. When I think about this, it just doesn’t seem all that healthy. How did the sea kayaking community get here? I have a few ideas:

• The letters to the editors of paddling magazines have given a voice to criticism, mostly healthy. Most are well-written with poignant arguments. In many cases, the author can respond. And, because the original article was written for sea kayakers, we probably have most of the details required to write a well-written letter to the editor that makes good sense. I suspect that many of the readers take these letters to heart and think that because they’re published in a national magazine, that they are the norm of how you’re suppose to respond to something that goes wrong without ever thinking that an article, blog or forum post might not include all of the relevant details like it would in a paddling magazine.
• It’s the Internet and people will jump all over you for anything, and there’s a subset of “sea kayakers” that like to do this sort of Internet trolling.
• There’s an interesting culture of safety in sea kayaking. “Serious” sea kayakers take safety seriously, and they should. As instructors we teach rescues all the time, the magazines are full of rescues and there are loads of video about rescues. I think that despite all the safety training, risk management and judgment get ignored, and because risk management and judgment get ignored safety becomes a dogmatic mantra where catch phrases replace thought. For example, Lutzen tells us “The idea of entering rough waters in a sit-on-top kayak is so idiotic I don’t even know where to begin.” He obviously doesn’t have the experience with SOTs to be able to make the judgment about how risky they are. Instead, he just repeats an oft repeated mantra that a SOT can’t be used in the way the Kirkby wants to use it.
• Kayakers want to think that they’re experts and that they have the experience to make judgments about others. I think that there’s a bit of labeling going on. Everyone wants to be the “advanced” paddler and not the “beginner.” I think there’s a little Dunning-Kruger going on here. I think the key to staving off the dreaded D-K is to always know that you don’t always know. You can always learn more, and that things might not be as things seem at first glance.

How do we fix this problem? It’s simple: ask questions before repeating the mantra.

At any rate, the best part of this entire situation is that I’ve found new interesting books to read. Bruce Kirkby has written two books. He wrote Sand Dance: By Camel Across Arabia’s Great Southern Desert in 10 day! That’s pretty mind blowing for an aspiring novelist. It tells his story of traveling 1,200 km by camel across Arabia’s great southern desert. I can’t wait to read it. His other book, The Dolphin’s Tooth: A Decade in Search of Adventure, tells the story of adventures that Kirkby has had over a 14 year time span.

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: When the Kayaking Community Goes Wrong

1. Set up a training schedule. As with any physical activity, if you train for it, you grow your skills. Although you might rather stand on your head and drink Tabasco sauce than get out and train, I have news for you: Training for kayaking is fun, because as the old cliché goes, “A bad day of kayaking is better than anything else on Earth.” To set up your training schedule pick a couple of days during the week that you’re going to go out and work on rusty skills. If you need help coming up with ideas, I’d suggest doing sets of forward and reverse sweep 360 degree turns, high and low braces, rolls, reverse paddling, draws, side slips and sprints.
2. Learn freestyle canoeing. Yes, I used the dirty word “canoeing” in an article about kayaking. Freestyle canoeing, also known as canoe ballet, uses balance to make a highly-leaned canoe do what doesn’t even look possible. Check out this video of Karen Knight to see an example. Freestyle canoeing is all about the conservation of energy. It’s about turning your canoe quickly with minimal work, and to top it off, you only get one blade to pull it off. As Karen Knight says, it’s “about doing more with less energy.” If you even learn a few techniques like posts and axles, your draws, rudders and side slips will feel easy.
3. Take a course. Many kayakers never take a kayaking course, because everything seems so easy. The main problem is that you’re setting yourself up to experience the Dunning-Kruger effect. Just read the four points below about the D-K, and I shouldn’t need to say more.
   

   1. Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill.
   2. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
   3. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.
   4. If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.

4. Plan and succeed on a long trip. There’s nothing like reaching the take-out after a long and successful trip. You just want to howl at the moon, to scream at the sun, to high five your partner and basically smile while gloating about how cool you are. If a successful trip doesn’t increase your enthusiasm to kayak more, then maybe you should take up yo-yoing. Plus, you gain the experience of planning and carrying out a mission. While it might not seem to be, trip planning is a kayaking skill, because every time you get on the water, you’re taking a paddling trip.
5. Spend lots of time in the seat. Someone once told me that the difference between kayakers is the amount of time in the seat. You can take all the courses and lessons that you can afford, but unless you get out on the water in all kinds of conditions, all that training does nothing for you. You need seat time to practice and refine your techniques, and the only way to get that is to paddle, paddle and paddle.
6. Fail at a tough trip. Failing sucks. It sucks big time. It’s depressing. It’s demoralizing, but it teaches a lesson. When you fail, you can usually trace it to one or more specific reasons, and you should take the time to figure out why you failed. Next time you attempt a tough trip, incorporate the lessons learned to give yourself a better chance at success.
7. Get pounded in the surf. I don’t know about you, but I’m afraid of water. It’s a deep seated fear that comes from being thrown into a swimming pool multiple times as a kid until I passed the highest levels of swimming certification at the YMCA. And surf looks scary, because it’s scary water that becomes all bubbly, foaming and really tall. When you get pounded in the surf and survive, you get used to it, and it doesn’t look so scary the next time around. After awhile, racing down a wave’s face, being pushed by a mass of foaming froth becomes fun.
8. Learn to roll. Swimming after you flip your kayak is fine and all if you like to swim, but it takes too much energy to get back into the boat. If you learn to roll, you just pop back up in a few seconds. It’s soooooo sooooo so much easier.
9. Braces! Braces! Braces! Braces keep you upright. When you’re upright you can breath. Therefore, braces keep you breathing. I think that logic sounds sound.
10. Paddle with someone better than you. When you paddle with someone that’s better than you are, you can push your skills and know that someone is around to help you out if you get into trouble or have questions. Also, watching a more skilled paddler can help you learn what you need to do.
11. Teach someone a skill you’re good at. There’s an old saying, “Those that can do, do, and those that can’t, teach.” In kayaking, that just isn’t true, because if you’re going to teach the skill, you need to show that skill. When you learn to teach something correctly, you improve your skills, because you need to know everything about it.
12. Go to a symposium or gathering. A symposium is what happens when you take a bunch of kayakers with different skill levels, different ideas on what kayaking is, different ideas about teaching, and put them in a bag, shake them up and then dump them out on the beach. They’re good places to learn new skills or new takes on old ones.
13. Dream. Go kayaking, find a remote beach with tree, set up a hammock and dream. Think of life as a circle that starts with dreaming. You pick a dream to live in, make the dream come true, and then let it fade away. Afterwards, you go back to dreaming another dream. To improve your kayaking skills forever, you always need to dream something into existence.
14. Kayak up against a rocky shoreline in waves. Not only is this the best way to make it look like you paddle your shinning new kayak by coating it with deep scratches, it also requires that you use draws, braces and almost every skill in your quiver. Just make sure to protect your head with a sturdy helmet.
15. Learn to land on cliffs. So, we determined that somewhere along the line you can avoid swimming if you roll. All true, but if you want to land on cliffs, you take a swim, climb up the cliff and pull your boat to shore afterward. Although it can be dangerous, it’s also a blast, plus it builds the skills needed to land on rough shorelines.
16. Practice reentry and rolling. It takes a long time to get back into your boat after a swim. Not only is reentry and rolling faster, but it increases your sense of being part of the boat, because you need to use tactile feelings in your legs to make sure everything is in the right place for rolling. Kayakers often forget about using their legs — out of sight and out of mind — but your legs help propel the boat and more. Develop that feel and use your legs.
17. Crawl from stern to stem. Paddle out to deep water, sit on the rear deck of your kayak and crawl to the stern. Then crawl to the bow, spin around on the bow without falling in and go back to the stern. Do laps. This exercise builds better balance. You might want to make sure that nobody sees you, because it looks pretty silly.
18. Stand up. Seriously. Just stand up in your kayak. Just do it.
19. Tow someone for a mile. Towing someone for a mile doesn’t sounds like fun, unless you’re the towee and you get to lean back and drink a cocktail, but it does teach you how bad your forward stroke is. It also prepares you for those times when you actually need to tow an injured, tried or sick paddler. The day after you finish the tow, if your arms hurt more than your torso, you probably need to work on torso rotation. What’s torso rotation, you ask; read this article by Oscar Chalupsky and Greg Barton to learn more.
20. Paddle a different kayak. Your boat feels like an old pair of worn jeans. So, why would you buy anything else until you put holes in its knees? Because, a different kayak might test your skills in different ways. It’ll feel like you need to relearn all your strokes to make the new boat perform like your old. After the break-in period, you might find a new favorite pair of pants, or you might find that your old pair fits even better than before.
21. Give a slide show about kayaking. When you give a slideshow about a kayaking trip, you’re forced to pick the best and worst moments to talk about. Those moments can teach you something about yourself and also about your kayaking skills.
22. Navigate in the fog. Unlike in cartoons, when a character cuts a hole through pea soup fog to see the other side, you can’t do that in a kayak. You just need to paddle and use your compass to find your direction and your watch to figure out how far you’ve come. Holding a course with a compass and no landmarks can quickly show you if your forward stroke needs work or if you need new glasses.

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: 22 Ways to Improve Your Kayaking Skills Forever

…Ravens may drop walnuts on your head, storms may batter your canoe, blizzards may scatter your reindeer, but lighten up; nature is ‘playing’ with you and that is all. It is not to be taken seriously. The myth doesn’t offer any advice on how to control the forces of nature; instead there is a clear missive to laugh at misfortune and move on with life. (p. 210)

The passage reminded me of a man I met while sitting on a wooden bar stool at the counter of a restaurant on Isle Royale. The man, his daughter and son had hiked in to Rock Harbor from a nearby campground to get out of the cold, unrelenting wind that blew the rain sideways in face-stinging sheets. They were soaked, their faces were red, and the daughter and son huddled around their hot chocolate. The man’s swisher sweets and a bright orange GPS unit were sticking out of his fly-fishing vest’s pockets. A hotel room key sat on their table.

He asked the waitress, a young woman who had grown up on the island, “Don’t you feel like when you’re out here…” He pointed out the window and then continued, “That everything is out to get you?”

The waitress stared at him, but she didn’t say anything.

He continued, “I mean, the bugs always trying to bite you. The rain trying to soak you. The wind blowing into the shelter to make you cold. It’s always something coming at you out there.” He pointed out the window. The rain ran down the window in streams.

The waitress smiled at him and said, “No. I think of all the good things out here, like the flowers and the sunrises. There’s more of that then the bad things.”

“I guess,” the man said.

Later, he asked me the same question. At that point, I had kayaked for the last 40 days. I contemplated the question for a second, and had I read The Raven’s Gift before the trip, I might have quoted Turk summing up the European view of nature using the example of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven. Jon writes, “…once you fear and demonize nature you open the philosophical floodgates for the bulldozer and chain saws.”

Instead after pausing I said, “No, I might have thought that way at the beginning of the trip, but not now. Everything out there…” I pointed out the window and then continued, “Is the normal state of the world. The hard part for me now is navigating traffic, going to stores and wandering around towns. It’s the stuff in here that’s hard.” I pointed at the picture windows, the knotty pine walls of the restaurant and the cash register.

“Being in the woods is easy,” I said.

That’s how I feel, being in the woods on a paddling trip or expedition feels easier than living day-to-day life. Everything seems simplified in the woods. You wake up, eat, take down camp, paddle, set up camp, eat and go to sleep. The next day you do it all over again.You don’t need to worry about money, about making payments, about finding your place in a world where none of the puzzle pieces are designed to fit together. You just paddle day-to-day, and when something happens, you face it head on now.

I like Jon Turk’s interpretation of the raven in aboriginal mythology, because it fits within my world view. While I don’t believe that nature specifically ‘plays’ with us — it just does what it does and its spirits interacts with us within that context — I do believe that you can’t take it too seriously. Because, if you did when you wake up an hour before you normally do, because the mosquitoes trapped between your rainfly and canopy sound like an alarm clock, you’d never leave the perceived safety of your square home again.

Instead, when confronted with a natural blood donation situation, you smile, laugh a crazy laugh, get out of the tent, run away while waving your arms past your head while spinning in circles, and then laugh some more at how silly you looked while doing it. And, that’s really easy once you accept that things are what things are.

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: Waving Your Arms Past Your Head While Spinning in Circles

Lake Superior never really froze over this winter, so I’ve been paddling all winter long, but the weather is heating up and the days reach temperatures above freezing, the days are longer and daylight liberation day made the evenings last longer, so I’m paddling more often. Yesterday, I saw two other Grand Marais kayakers out on the big lake. Today, I woke up to a completely frozen harbor. Last week, the parts of Lake Superior that actually froze blew free of ice. The ice piled up into mountains of ice on Park Point in Duluth. Some mountains are 30 feet tall! All signs of spring. Of change.

Inland, the lakes remain covered with feet of ice, but I can feel that ice-out is coming. Sort of like that episode of Northern Exposure when the town goes crazy waiting for the ice to break. I feel it. It’s coming. I know it. When it will happen, I can’t say. I hope it’s not one of those years where ice stays on the Boundary Water’s lakes until mid-May. It’s also making me crazy. I just feel like doing something out of routine, something not planned, something different, something crazy. Something that feels like spring.

Speaking of Northern Exposure, I know that winter is almost over, because we’re getting to the season where Joel starts to get mystical and philosophical. My partner watches all the season each winter starting with the first snowfall. I feel like Joel this time of year. He takes long boat trips, plays golf in the bush and generally disappears. I have Wanderlust with a capital “W” like how the Germans spell it. When I start speaking German, I know I’m either crazy or it’s spring.

And then there’s the repairs. I have gel coat chips from last year’s rock hits. A stress riser crack in one hull at the bulkhead, more gel coat work on a canoe. I need to revarnish a wooden canoe. My carbonfiber paddle needs resin on the tips to hide the fraying carbon. My equipment is getting old — even my two-year old lifevest faded in color. It never ends; the replacing and repairing gear. For some reason, spring feels like the time to fix things, but if I don’t get around to it, then another year will pass without repair. Maybe I should buy some new gear, but I don’t like spending money, so maybe not. These crazy thoughts — I can’t make up my mind — like spring, it’s hot and looks like the snow will melt one day and then it’s cold the next. So it goes. So it goes.

I guess it’s just another spring in the northland, because I get this way every spring. I’m ready to travel. I’m ready for warmth. For growth. I’m ready for the seasons to change. But, most of all, I’m ready to paddle.

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: Spring, Cabin Fever and Wanderlust

The Year’s Highlights

I did so much paddling this year that’s it hard to pick the highlights. Here are a few from each month.

April

The year started with a bang. For our first trip of the year, Ilena and I tripped down to Tettegouche State Park. Tettegouche and Palisade Head form one of the premier destinations for kayaking trips on Lake Superior. The route is stacked with 100-foot-plus cliffs, loads of caves and arches and lots of committing sections. We were lucky to get a trip in when we did, because later in the year, the park’s most famous arch collapsed.

May

In May, I found a wood-carved voyager in a wooden canoe reminiscent of wooden canoe in the children’s book Paddle-to-the-Sea. I found the guy washed up on a rock next to the campground in Grand Marais, so I took him out away from the shore and placed him in open water. I saw a boy and his mother on shore. I wondered if he had carved the boat or had set it free.

June

June was an extremely calm month and I paddled often. For the last couple of years I’ve been fighting tendonitis in my forearms and a shoulder injury. I remember that June felt pretty good, and I hoped to do some long distance kayaking during the summer. In the end, I decided against it to help further heal.

July

In July, my family visited, and we took a trip a day trip into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. It was my brothers first trip. He loved it. We paddled the classic Kelso River Route, although we didn’t make it to the dolmen, a good time was had. We used canoes from Sawbill Outfitter, one of the best outfitters in the Tofte, Lutsen and Grand Marais area. I also spent lots of time on the big lake.

August

In August, I paddled a ton, both solo and with the Sawtooth Mountain Paddlers (Grand Marais’ Paddling Club), which meets each week in the summer on Wednesday nights to paddle on Lake Superior. Ilena and I tripped to a secret beach to search for the semi-precious gemstone thomsonite. We found a couple of good pieces. I also managed to get out surfing more often than the past, because I found a reef that breaks on two-foot waves, which we see on Lake Superior pretty often. And the water was warm! Ilena and I took a week-long trip into the BWCA and paddled a big Sea Gull Lake loop.

September

In September, I soloed a ton. The club paddled out to the Susie Islands and stopped at the Spirit Little Cedar Tree, commonly known as the Witch Tree. This is by far my most favorite kayaking trip on Minnesota’s north shore. It’s long, varied and is committing. Once you’re out in the Susies, if bad weather hits, you gotta deal with it. The weather was so nice in September that it was hard to not go paddling.

October

October turned out to be another sunny and warm month, which is rare in these parts. I took advantage of the weather to paddle another committing trip on Minnesota’s north shore. I tripped down to see the waterfall of the Manitou River. The month, which is usually wavy, had way too many calm days, but I managed to get out a few times after big blows. The highlights include a wonderful day of long-period swell in the 6 to 8 foot range. The people on Artist’s Point had a heyday taking pictures of me.

November

In November, the Kiyi, a NOAA research ship, visited Grand Marais and the first ice coatings started to form on my boat as I paddled around. I spent much less time on the water and much more time working on finishing up the switch from Nessmuking to PaddlingLight. I also managed to photograph the sunrise many days during the month.

December

December felt pretty cold. Ice formed quickly on the kayak whenever I took it out, so I only got out a few time. A long trip to Aruba, and island that has only rec boats, didn’t produce any paddling time. I did get slightly tanned from all the sun in the 83 degree temperatures. The inner harbor froze up.

January

I cross-country skied a ton in January, because the conditions were the best in years. I enjoyed the month of skiing, but I also managed to get out on Lake Superior a few times. I got one of my favorite kayaking photos of the year from January.

February

In February, I spent some time paddling around sea ice on Lake Superior. We didn’t have much, but I took advantage of it as much as possible. Nothing was large enough to land on, which is rare towards the end of February. Most of the month, I spent time photographing the sunrise and sunset. I got some of my best winter images this month. To top off the month, a few good friends visited and we went ice climbing, and I taught two Winter Photography Workshops.

March

Then just on last Saturday, I paddled for the first time in March. I decided to break out the Explorer and went out on Lake Superior. There was interesting ice in the Grand Marais harbor, and I found a piece of ice cake just big enough to land on! So, I got up on the piece of ice and lounged around. Tried my hardest to paddle it around, but that didn’t work. I remember thinking, “I love paddling.”

What a great year! Here’s a toast to you and to paddling. Have a great paddling year!

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: 12 Months of Paddling

Technology in Wilderness

I place technology in a wilderness context into five categories:

1. Technology that compliments skills.
2. Technology that replaces skills.
3. Technology that provides entertainment.
4. Technology that connects to someone beyond the wilderness.
5. Technology that supports other technology.

Here are a few examples to clarify my categories. In the first and second category, consider navigation. For millenniums humans used natural and now nearly forgotten skills to find their way across the globe. In recent times, compasses evolved from magnetic needles that floated in a bowl of water and dry compasses to enclosed liquid compasses now used for navigation. In contemporary times, for some GPS units replace compasses and maps. A compass compliments the skills developed to navigate by indicating north which helps find the path forward. GPS units replace the skills by telling which way to go after entering a waypoint destination. An Apple iPod and dice or a checkers board are forms of technology that provide entertainment. VHF radios, satellite phones and PLBs that connect to someone beyond the wilderness fit into category four. In the fifth category, I’d place items like solar panels and power generators. I’ll concede that there might be other categories of technology.

Courage

When I think of courage in the wilderness, I think of the courage of the original American pioneers, the Norse explorers finding their way to North America, the Paleo-Indians crossing the Bering Strait, the Polynesian settlement of their islands and any similar movement of people into the complete unknown. On a more individual level, a journey like Sir Alexander Mackenzie’s quest for the northwest passage exemplifies courage. I imagine it as something such as Thomas Wolfe wrote in Old Catawba, “and hardship, through solitude and loneliness and death and unspeakable courage, into the wilderness.”

On trips less ambitious than Mackenzie’s, something like I might take, I think of courage as attempting something that has a big possibility of failure, has risks that I must manage or overcome and fears I must control to succeed. Adventurers more courageous than I might attempt something like K2, on which for every four people who summit one dies, and on which rescue is nearly impossible. I might not accept a risk like that, because I don’t like the odds, but that’s part of having courage — accepting bad odds and extreme difficulty.

If some travelers are more courageous than others, I can accept that there are different levels of courage. I can image a courage scale with the more courageous side on the left-hand side and the less on the right-hand side.

Courage and Technology

The challenge for me is trying to figure out how or if technology changes the amount of courage it takes to complete a trip, and if courage is even important for a trip. I want to know how technology moves the courage indicator on the imaginary courage scale.

When I examine the navigation example, using a compass and map depends on my map reading skills to travel. I need to have confidence in my personal skills. If I make a mistake, I might get lost. It takes mental strength to know that I can accomplish a task using my own skills. The compass and map help with those skills. Without the compass, the task becomes more difficult and relies more upon a skill set. With a GPS unit, as long as it doesn’t run out of batteries, as long as the satellites work and as long as it doesn’t break, I don’t need to worry about skills or lack of skills to navigate. I know that I can’t get lost. It seems to me that having no tools except for my skills falls on the left side of the scale and the GPS falls on the scale’s right side. And compass and maps somewhere left of center. But what happens when I refine my map and compass skills until they become routine? Then it no longer takes much courage for me to depend on them. Is that an illusion? I don’t know. Even so, I think I can comfortably place technology that replaces skills on the right side of the courage scale. The more important of a skill it replaces, the more courage it takes from the trip, and the more the trip’s courage measurement moves to the right.

Technology that provides entertainment is harder for me to classify. To me it makes the dull days easier to enjoy and persevere. I can think of several times when windbound that a good book or a song on my MP3 player made it easier to sit in the tent. I know someone who carried a dictionary to pass the time on an extended trip. It doesn’t seem to make a difference if the technology is advanced or not. It does the same thing; it keeps the mind occupied. Does it make a trip easier? Yep. Does it make a trip less courageous? I don’t know. Unless, you convince me otherwise, I’m placing it slightly right of center.

When I can connect to the outside world, I have a way to call for help if something goes wrong. I can easily place this type of technology on the right-hand side of the courage scale, because having communication to the outside world reduces risks, fear and danger significantly. If a trip involves less of those aspects, it takes less courage to pull it off.

The last category doesn’t seem to matter.

Does Courage Matter?

If you look at wilderness trips as a form of recreation, something like going to a movie, courage probably doesn’t matter. Because it’s recreation, the goal is fun and not anything else. If the trip takes some courage, that’s cool, but it isn’t necessary. But if wilderness trips are considered potentially transformative, then courage does matter. Being faced with unknown difficulties, dangers and fears has the potential to transform someone when they discover their own courage to push past. To figure out just how much you can handle under stressful situations can serve as a reality check and force you to discover what you’re made of. You might not like what you find. That takes courage. If something like that is the goal, then the less courage-sapping technology the better.

I’m reminded of an old motivational poster I used to keep on my wall. It pictured a climber’s cramponed foot kicking into a piece of vertical ice in the foreground. The motivational quote read, “Without risk, there is no reward.” It takes courage to tackle risk. and I want rewarding wilderness trips in my life. That’s why I examine how technology affects courage.

Note: Somehow, I think Simplicity in the Wilderness is related. You should probably read that post, too.

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: Modern Technology and Courage in the Wilderness

Paddling Instruction Methods

One point emphasized during my American Canoe Association instructor trainings is that we should as instructors practice and emphasize that practice makes permanent. I whole-heartedly agree. We’re also taught that one method of teaching a paddling stroke is whole-part-whole. Essentially, the instructor models the entire stroke, breaks it down into steps and then models it again so the students see how the parts work together. Another method is the walk-through. In it, the instructor describes what he’s doing while demonstrating. Usually, instructors use the whole-part-whole method for stroke instruction and the walk-through for rescues. Both teaching methods fit within the 3D method of instruction, which is describing a skill, demonstrating a skill and then having the students do the described and demonstrated skill. When looking at this method from a distance, even when the instructor makes it fun, it seems very mechanical to me. It feels like something is missing. I intuit that the teach methods miss teaching mindfulness and flow.

Flow in Kayaking and Canoeing

Flow is, as defined in Flow in Sports: The keys to optimal experiences and performances by Susan Jackson and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,

“a state of consciousness where one becomes totally absorbed in what one is doing, to the exclusion of all other thoughts and emotions. So flow is about focus. More than focus, however, flow is a harmonious experience where mind and body are working together effortlessly, leaving the person feeling that something special has occurred. So flow is also about enjoyment. People associate flow with peak performance… [but] flow offers something more than just a successful outcome. This is because flow lifts experience from the ordinary to the optimal, and in those moments we feel truly alive and in tune with what we are doing.”

Csikszenmihalyi identified several ways to increase flow:

• Setting goals
• Participation in an activity that you enjoy
• Paying attention to the activity
• Enjoying the moment

Flow in Sports includes several other ideas on how to increase flow, but one I found specific to paddling instruction was the idea of balancing the challenge with skill. Giving a challenge to the student that’s just that point where she feels challenged. Beyond that point fear enters and detracts from the experience. I.e. don’t send a beginner out into 3-foot waves.  Note: If you’re an instructor, you should probably buy or read this book.

Mindfulness

In “Mindfulness: A proposed operational definition” Scott R. Bishop, et al, argues that mindfulness consists of two components:

The first component involves the self-regulation of attention so that it is maintained on immediate experience, thereby allowing for increased recognition of mental events in the present moment. The second component involves adopting a particular orientation toward one’s experiences in the present moment, an orientation that is characterized by curiosity, openness, and acceptance.

Mindlessness is the opposite. It’s like when you’ve paddled a couple of miles before you realize it without awareness. It might share a sense of acceptance, but more likely feels like a loss of time. Without being in the moment, it’s like practice makes automatic. You just do it without awareness. To avoid mindlessness, the student’s mind needs to constantly engaged with the current experience. And as an instructor, you need to encourage that.

Mindfulness and Flow in Paddling Instruction

In my experience a typical paddling student wants to learn to be a better paddler. That desire brings with it among other things a sense of fear of failure and a fear of judgment that he’s not good enough. That desire, although a motivation and a goal which would seem to increase flow if we believe Csikszenmihalyi, seems to work at odds with the second component of mindfulness. The instructor needs to address the motivation behind that desire to engage a student within mindfulness.

One way is by being a humble and accepting instructor who doesn’t pass judgment. The more curiosity, openness and acceptance that the instructor shows, the more that attitude becomes reflected within the student. On feedback forms, one comment that I often see is an appreciation of a non-judgmental approach and that “no question is stupid.” This reflects an open, curious and accepting approach by the instructor. One key approach is to take the “better paddler” goal and break it down into skill components. There is no such thing as a better paddler, only one with refined skills, so removing the desire to become one helps placate the fears that come with it. Unfortunately, the “better paddler” concept is built into many paddling instruction programs with the ACA level system and the BCU star system. I’ve seen it in other instructors as well. During my most recent instructor re-certification, we were watching video of me doing a deep brace. I fell over, my head went underwater, but the technique was sloppy and the instructor trainer pointed out the issues. Another instructor in the class voiced that he thought I was a good paddler. That wasn’t the point. The point was that the skill could see improvement, especially when modeling it for others.

Besides removing desire, each lesson needs to include a goal that challenges the student just enough to engage her mind and body without frustrating it. This forces the student’s attention directly on the experience. If the mind is engaged, it can’t wander off in thoughts about other things. It must concentrate on the body and experience what the body is doing. Within this, the student should also experience what the boat is doing. I often find that a student fails in an attempt, because he doesn’t also understand that the boat is just as involved in the stroke as his body is. One way to help a student realize this is to develop exercises that help the paddler to tactilely experience the boat and how the water moves around it. For example, when edging have the student feel what happens to each knee and bum. Have her describe the experience. What did the seat feel like? What did the knee brace feel like? Where does the backband move to? What does the boat feel like? Where did the water move? And, ask more questions. In all activities, ask him what he felt during the stroke’s parts. When you see something that looks more refined, ask the student how it felt different. The goal in the questions is forcing the mind to concentrate on the current activity and develop curiousness.

In addition to the tactile feels, let the students admit any feelings that they’re having, such as fear. Acknowledge those fears as valid and accept them as valid. If the students begin to understand that fears are okay, they might move beyond them by accepting them and finally replacing them. I’ve found this especially true during rolling instruction and self-rescues. If a student has a fear, he concentrates on the fear instead of the skill, which causes more failures. When you discover a fear use practice tools that help remove it before coming back to the skill.

Encourage questions during the class. The more questions, the more curious a student becomes and that engages further with mindfulness and the moment. It also develops curiousness during the practice. If a body and boat connection feeling is developed, curiousness might move a student to try variations during a stroke and understand how it differently affects the boat and body. This improves a students skills by helping them better understand the reactions.

Finally, understand that the whole-part-whole instruction method removes a student’s attention for the component parts to focus on the whole. He knows he must achieve the final whole, which might prevent him from staying in the moment and concentrating on the immediate experience. Using the walk-through method of instruction might work better for keeping a student in the moment because she concentrates on the component parts more than achieving the final whole.

To answer the article’s title: it can be.

Note: this is my first attempt to put into writing what I attempt during my courses. I’m not sure it’s exactly what I do, but it’s a start at verbalizing it. I hope it helps someone. I appreciate feedback.

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: Paddling Practice Makes Permanent, but is it Mindful?