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What’s Our Burden as More Experienced Kayakers?
I had an interesting experience yesterday afternoon. I went out paddling on Lake Superior in 1- to 3-foot waves, sub-40 degree Fahrenheit water temps and air temps in the 50s. There’s a really rocky and nasty surf break near town, so I paddled there to ride the outside of the break, then I made my way back to the parking lot landing in dumping waves on the beach here and there just for fun. A rec boater apparently saw me paddling and thought it looked fun. Just as I was about to go to the car, I noticed her without a lifevest and no wet/drysuit trying to get out through dumping waves.…
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When They Want to Take Away Wilderness
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 most anti-environmental congress in the existence of the United States — as of September 2011 they made 125 votes against the environment and 33 votes to undermine protection for public lands and coasts — I feel like it’s my duty as a paddler, a blogger and a lover of wilderness to speak out. Especially now with…
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Courage in Wilderness Travel
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 wilderness travel and reduce the courage it takes to tackle the trip. In a more recent article a commenter made a remark about how boat type can affect courage. In his example, he used an inflatable kayak in an area where the norm is hard-shelled sea kayaks. While his choice may or may not make…
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Should You Buy That New Piece of Paddling Kit?
This post isn’t going to have a lot of meat, but, hopefully, this flow chart will help you decide if you should buy that new piece of paddling kit. It’s inspired by guitarsquid.com’s flow chart for buying music equipment. I changed it up slightly and added an additional step. And simplified: Enjoy. I kind of like this flow chart idea. Anyone have any other perplexing paddling questions that need to be answered by a flow chart? If so, I can throw one together for you.
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The Adventure Matrix: Ranking Trips on a Graph
Last week, I wrote about the difference between an expedition, adventure and a trip. After many comments, I still don’t know if I have the perfect criteria for determining if a trip is an expedition, but I do think that we figured out that expeditions don’t necessarily need to be adventurous. In the comments of that thread, Roman Dial, author of Packrafting! An Introduction and How-To Guide, suggested that we could rank trips on a two axis chart. One axis would run between expedition and jaunt and the other between adventure and routine. I drew up the chart to see what it would look like. On the chart, point “A” is something like a…
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What’s the Difference between a Kayak or Canoe Expedition, Trip and Adventure?
It’s wintertime again, which means that I start to get all philosophical again. It’s probably from the lack of paddling. The only water time I’ve been getting lately is second rate, because it’s on the solid kind with cross country skis instead of the liquid kind with a kayak. Over the years, one topic that has interested me is a question of semantics and the intensity of multi-day paddling trips that we take. Truly, whatever the trip is, is whatever the trip is. But, I like to try and place a trip into some kind of category so that it registers in my mind correctly. One way of categorizing paddling…
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Great Lakes Seiche – The Joys of Kayaking on the Big Lakes
The Great Lakes are five vast inland seas. Lake Superior, the largest, is approximately the same size as Iceland. Taken together, almost two Englands could fit inside the total surface area of the lakes. They’re big. Because they’re contained within smaller basins they don’t have tides like you’d see on the oceans, although the Great Lakes tides are measurable. A significant tide-like event that occurs on the Great Lakes is called a seiche, which is a sloshing of water caused by air pressure or wind. A seiche typically occurs quickly and can drop or raise the water significantly; some seiches are reported to have changed the water levels by 12…
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When the Kayaking Community Goes Wrong
Every now and then I read an article on the Internet that makes me go, “Oh, that’s an interesting approach to sea kayaking.” One such article is by travel writer Bruce Kirkby. It’s called In a kayak, there are some danger signs you can’t ignore. In it he describes how he sets out on a three-week kayaking trip on a committing coastline with a kayak that he’s never used before. On day one he finds out that his kayak leaks so much that he has to end the trip. It takes good judgment and self control to end a “dream” trip, but that’s not the part of the article that…
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22 Ways to Improve Your Kayaking Skills Forever
We paddle because it’s fun and relaxing and sometimes challenging and risky. When it isn’t fun, it’s usually because our skills aren’t up to the challenge. In those circumstances, we can either grit our teeth and deal with it, or we can try to improve our skills so that next time we can smile and laugh instead of grinding the grit from our teeth. Improve your kayaking skills and kayaking techniques today by trying one or more of these 22 ideas. 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…
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Waving Your Arms Past Your Head While Spinning in Circles
Jon Turk begins Part 4 of The Raven’s Gift: A Scientist, a Shaman, and Their Remarkable Journey Through the Siberian Wilderness with a discussion about the mythology surrounding the raven in aboriginal cultures. He relates a myth about Raven dropping a walnut on a man’s head and then laughing about it. The man’s feelings are hurt, so he asks Raven, “Why?” Raven stops laughing and tells the man that he isn’t mocking the man, but just ‘playing’ with him to have fun. Jon interprets the story this way: …Ravens may drop walnuts on your head, storms may batter your canoe, blizzards may scatter your reindeer, but lighten up; nature is…
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Spring, Cabin Fever and Wanderlust
Spring is almost here in the northland and on the shore of Lake Superior. Robins flew back into town the other day. I saw a raven carrying sticks for nests. The gulls are back and loud and dive-bombingly protective of the shoreline and their islands. Tons of eagles soar along the shore. And the deer, both dead and living, line the highways where the melting snow exposes grass. The wolves have followed the deer. These signs signal spring. 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…
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12 Months of Paddling
I did it! On Saturday, I closed the circle and paddled year round for the third or fourth year in a row. I set a goal for the last few years to paddle at least once a month, even in winter when it’s cold. Most years in my area, Lake Superior remains completely open, but every once in a while it freezes completely over. This year, it didn’t even get close, and the area experienced enough warmer days throughout the winter to make paddling bearable for a couple of hours at a time. So, I did it! 12 Months of Paddling in a row. I usually don’t write about personal…
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Modern Technology and Courage in the Wilderness
The last time I dipped into a modern technology in the wilderness discussion, I inspired an almost book-length response — both public and private — from one blogger, so I’ve stayed out of the issue since. Lately, cabin fever has moved me into a more philosophical mood, so I’ve decided to stray once again into a subject that causes tempers to flare. This time, I’m thinking about modern technology and how it affects our view of courage. Technology in Wilderness I place technology in a wilderness context into five categories: Here are a few examples to clarify my categories. In the first and second category, consider navigation. For millenniums humans…
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Mindfulness in Paddling Practice
Mindfulness, mindlessness, practice makes permanent and practice makes automatic are four topics that I’ve pondered lately. I think how they relate impacts directly on how much enjoyment a paddler experiences. In my experience, I enjoy experiences when I’m feeling the flow versus when my actions become automatic to the point that I don’t realize what I did until after it finished. I wonder how instructors can add the flow and mindfulness experience to paddling instruction. 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…
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Simplicity in Wilderness Travel
A trend in ultralight-speak is defining “simplicity” and its meaning within the context of personal relationships with wilderness travel. A couple of examples: Ryan Jordan writes on his blog about Wilderness Simplicity, Flexibility, and Power: I love Brent Simmon’s recent post about flexibility and power in the context of iOS Apps, and especially, his brilliant observation that …flexibility is just a tool to use exceedingly sparingly, only when it substantially increases power. There’s a lot of meat in this statement, with direct relevance to trekking, and trekking gear. Now, it depends on how one might define power. Traditional definitions might equate power to speed, or distance. A more thoughtful person…
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