NOTE: These little stories reflect my initial discoveries
about kayaking, leading directly to the Microship project.
The Adirondacks... First Touch
Late. Dark. Loons echo otherworldly laughter from afar,
their voices following countless acoustic paths to arrive at my ear as
if from the depths of space, the real distance impossible to
determine. The moon, almost full, filters through deep woods...
little patches of flickering motion adding unsteadiness to our
walk. The mirror-calm waters of Fourth Lake in the Fulton Chain
reflect distant shorelight, starlight, moonlight, and the subtle glow
of a solitary cloud, all perfect in concert like the visual equivalent
of a distant impressionist nocturne. Claire de Loon...
Every overused romantic cliche of idyllic moonlit evenings was created
for this moment.
Christina and I pick our way through the trees to black water, and
quietly slip into our kayaks – the sensation more one of putting on
rather than climbing aboard the tiny boats. We adjust to a new
reality: afloat in tight personal craft responsive to our very
breath, legs disappearing below deck, feet on rudder pedals, hands
gripping cold fiberglass paddles, rumps a few inches below
waterline. Almost silently, with only the swish and drip of
paddles to reveal our movement, the dock falls away.
Surreptitiously we glide into the lake, into the darkness, into the
exhiliration of adrenalin-intensified NIGHT. My bow wave is a
steady vee; paddles flash white in the moonlight, rhythmic, my hands
cranking smoothly like pedaling feet, the rotation of the feathered
shaft already automatic, satisfaction in the silence of efficient
motion. Aimless yet swift, we disappear onto the dark watertop,
drifting in parallel like twin spacecraft, silent, vigilant, coldly
alive and alert in the impossible vastness of infinity. Our
trajectories merge slowly, trimmed by microinches of pedal movement.
I look over at shadowy Christina, a blonde ninja of the night gliding
beside me in beautiful deadly silence, her subtle wake a phosphor line
barely visible yet somehow unmistakable. I murmur sweetness and
she laughs softly, the sound amplified by solitude. Our craft
collide gently and we lay paddles across each others gunwales to merge
them... drifting as one, slowing. Jupiter is brilliant.
Atop the dark cold Adirondack water at 2 AM, our humanity is a precious
shared event of the here and now, the online world of computerized
frenzy far from our thoughts.
The boats tip as we lean together and kiss – lips soft and yielding in
the depths of deep space. Sweet. Moonlight in eyes, a
smile, Gran Marnier on our breath, the night perfect. With a
giggle we push the boats apart and sprint away, circling and drifting,
playing commando kayaker, bumping in the night, dancing with moonbeams,
hiding in the deep shadows of shore, frolicking like dolphins until the
night grows cold and cabin lights beckon...
The Quaking Bog
The next day. Oh my. I could base a lifestyle on this, I
observe to myself with an internal smirk as sun-warmed shoulders bend
again to their rhythmic task, the miles passing easily, the day
sparkling within and without. (The last time I made that
prophetic lifestyle comment was in the spring of 1983, while pedaling a
strange recumbent bicycle along Ohio farm roads and dreaming of
technomadic possibilities...)
Perfect, perfect. The word keeps dropping into conversation as it
does on summer afternoons in the Rockies. Slipping along wooded
shores, at one with the water, the wind light and pleasant.
Gliding through narrow inlets and creeks, prowling coves,
whispering through milfoil and arrowhead, nudging aside the yellow buds
of waterlilies, pointing out deer on shore, startling a quacking couple
shepherding a busy flotilla of downy yellow-brown ducklings. The
muscles of my arms and back growing into a new role, their soreness
strangely pleasant; learning the rhythms of power and the behavior of
the tiny craft, smiling when a maneuver drops me perfectly alongside my
friend to share a moment – or lands me with a whispering bump on
precisely the intended spot.
The highlight of this day (actually, a meta-highlight, given that the
day itself is one) is the bog on Third Lake. “Marsh,” I
thoughtlessly label it, unmoved, muscling back toward open water after
a quick pass through a tree-lined cove. “No, no, wait,” Christina
calls, “I want to check this out.” Reluctantly, I steer hard to
the right and come about for a quick pass... and find myself in another
world.
Covering many acres, this is a quaking
bog – a floating ecosystem of cranberries, lichens, sphagnum
moss, cattails, orchids, redwing blackbirds, and carnivorous pitcher
and sundew plants. Awestruck, we creep softly into a long crack
barely wide enough for the kayaks, pulling up next to a beaver house of
stacked driftwood. We climb gingerly out of the boats – I onto a
small island, Christina onto the larger mass... and it’s fluid!
She bounces up and down, and over a hundred square feet of surface
rocks with her; I try the same trick and my island sinks slightly,
covering my ankles... then it calves, drifting a foot or so away from
the mainland. I pull back with the paddle, feeling like a penguin
on an ice floe.
How many years has this been growing? Did it begin with a
windblown scrap of sphagnum or a bird-dropped DNA ambassador from
afar? I glance across the lake to well-manicured lawns and moored
powerboats, and suffer a wave of sadness... this micro-world may one
day be developed into oblivion as have so many of its diverse
brethren. But for now it is a timeless wonder, a living
laboratory, a showcase of natural magic.
We return to the water, somehow changed. An idea, already
germinated, is beginning to take root.
Whispering Through the Slushbergs
Winter in Wisconsin. It’s a cozy morning, but my kayaking clothes
are wet from yesterday’s crunch-gliding adventure among gently bobbing
slushbergs, the GPS tracking distance and bearing back to my host’s
house as I whisper past an icebound shoreline reminiscent of Carlsbad
Caverns (where I walked the twisted subterranean paths of Middle Earth
only 6 weeks and 5,000 miles ago). White birds ghostly against
white sky. Ice clunking under the hull and tinkling off the
rudder. A pair of bemused Irish Setters regarding me from their
backyard. The obligatory kayak-mobile contact on 2-meter ham
radio. The irrational temptation to turn east and paddle the 80
miles to Michigan...
The Epic Crossing of Morro Bay
Morro is a gentle bay, protected from the raging winter surf of the
not-so-very-Pacific by a long finger of dunes. West of these,
waves thunder and hurl a haze of suspended spray into the chill air;
east lies the quiet bay, only an hour or two by kayak from any point to
any other. (Unless, of course, you get caught in tidal currents
– a few weeks earlier on a solo trek to Morro Rock, it took a
serious death march to make it back before dark.)
We launch from the little espresso shop in Los Osos, fueled by
righteous caffeine and the mild adrenaline of casting oneself upon the
water in a tiny craft. A small crowd of latte snatchers watches
us, wide-eyed and chattering; we stow the kayak dolly and off we go,
savoring as always the freedom of the water, dreaming of Microships and
adventure.
It doesn’t take long at all, however, to discover that Morro Bay is a
shallow body – for most of the mile-plus crossing we can clearly see
underwater grasses gently leaning with the tidal outflow (and I can
report that when you see birds standing on the water, you should take
that as a clue that it’s not
a good place to paddle). But we press on and beach the boats on
the dunes to clamber across their desolate landscape, marveling like
children at the strange shapes wind-sculpted into the sand by recent
storms, drawing hiragana with
a stick, and generally dropping into first-to-set-foot-on-a-new-world
fantasy mode. I keep glancing at my watch, wondering when it
would be wise to head back.
About an hour after we should, we do. The folly is immediately
evident, and as the water drains away we find ourselves seeking little
rivulets in the vast expanse of mud that might get us closer to the
shore before we have to start slogging. Like the veins of a leaf
are the drainage patterns, and on a distant capillary, a hundred meters
or so from the espresso shop, we can float no longer.
To the knowing smirks of tide-conscious locals, we plunge into
knee-deep black stinky mud, barefoot to prevent sandal-sacrifice, and
fight our way slowly to shore. When at last we arrive (flicking
off one leech), someone tries to sell me a set of tide
tables. The learning curve of the aquatic life inches
slightly higher...
The Many Flavors of Water
West Seattle, Alki Point. I spend my days in a tiny beachfront
apartment: watching the tides come and go, and with it, the slow
turnover of beach detritus bringing messages from afar: fishing
floats, beer cans, tennis balls, seaweed, a hardhat, worn glass, rubber
gloves, respirators, sawlogs, signs, and a giant styrofoam block that’s
was in a different spot every morning until I launched it back across
the sound last night in an offshore wind. Civilization’s debris
rendered vaguely romantic by the actions of wave and tide...
At night I clamber the breakwater – a ragged jetty of treacherous
boulders sharp with barnacles at low tide, slick in places with dark
slimy patches of seaweed. Trusting my life to floppy sandals, I
pick my way seaward in the blackness to my favorite perch, where I
recline, slip into reverie and watch the lights: nearby
apartments, distant shores, massive ferries, sweeping high beams on
shore, buoys and beacons, tiny twinkles of stars, the busy air corridor
to SeaTac. Last night the moon was full... making a fine sheen on the
back of a harbor seal annoyed by my clumsy appearance on his home surf.
It’s the water that lured me here, and it’s the water that’s out there
now, steel gray under Seattle skies, marked momentarily by a freighter
wake, random pockets of glassy calm, a blue heron and the gaggle of
seagulls who steal his sushi-on-the-fin, and a few heads of kelp
dotting gentle chop. Further out, the islands: Vashon,
Blake, Bainbridge. I have kayaked to the latter two, miles of
slow paddling, accepting the pace, adjusting to the two-dimensional
world of water after years of one-dimensional roads, looking up
occasionally in unconscious extrapolation and seeing flight as merely
another degree of freedom.
I seem to be a perpetual quest for water.
Water. It’s endlessly alluring – and it touches me the same way
the original road-fantasy once did, but more so. Not only is it
symbolic of freedom, but, at least in nice weather, it’s intrinsically
pleasant (unlike asphalt). And what has fascinated me recently is
that it contains infinite variety: everything about it changes
from place to place, from moment to moment. The myriad
interactions of current, tide, and wind. The violence of storms,
and the dramatic effect of distant ones. Clapotis and williwaw,
chop and swell, breaker and rip, eddy and bore. The smell and
taste, color and density. The wildlife... and the human company
too, ranging from crusty fishermen to buzzing jet skis, from drunken
power boaters to massive freighters, from gentle creatures smiling from
shore to the laughter of children carrying across the watertop.
The surrounding land, the air, the feel
– all alive and evolving in real time, changing from placid to
terrifying with the wake of a too-close ferry, startling me with
interacting wave reflections from a stone seawall, delighting me with
the sight of an osprey nest or frolicking harbor seals, saddening me
with visible pollution viewed in close-up, eliciting pangs with the sea-view of a
flesh-strewn beach, and offering a slow revue of architectural styles
ranging from stained industrial ugliness to the manicured riverfront
estates of Old Money. All that and more – yet without the killer
hills, wheel-eating road surfaces, impatient drivers, and broken glass
that have been an integral component of my nomadness since 1983.
It does have its life-threatening components, of course, but they are
an attraction, in a perverse sense: grand, impartial terrors of
the deep as opposed to the pathetic but no less painful demise lurking
behind every swerving pickup truck.
“Hey, this is fun; I think I’ll base my lifestyle on it for the next
few years.” Sounds impulsive, but how could I do otherwise when
the tools exist to drift quietly and efficiently on sun-sparkled water,
sitting so low that I feel a part of it, yet linked better than ever
before with global information networks, friends all over, and my own
on-board network of alluring machines?