A List of Things I Am Thankful For In 2011

I was recently challenged to list one thing I am thankful for for each of the 21 days in November leading up to Thanksgiving Day. I tried to do them one by one, but I just can't keep up that sort of thing, so here goes a list all at once and in no particular order:

My spouse who supports me in my crazy plans and even helps implement them with me. 

My sons who are not children anymore but competent adults with opinions and ideas and goals all their own, who are smart and kind and generous and creative and inventive and compassionate and who remember to call their mother on the phone now and again, and their father who helped nurture all those things in them.
Their girlfriends who value their originality and compassion and individuality and do things to take care of them when I can't anymore because we live so far apart.
Friends who support me even when I'm a jerk.
My artwork that has brought me self-confidence and satisfaction and fulfillment and has brought me the company of other artists and has lead me to Mineral Point, Wisconsin.
Nature, especially prairie, and my gardens at my homes and the people who have shared time with me in them.
Music and musicians and especially local singer songwriters that you can see live and up close and musical instruments, and CDs and electronics that allow you to take it home and on the road with you.
Wild Ones Natural Landscapers organization that promotes end educates about native landscaping and the friends there.
Photography
Amazing parents
An amazing sister
The seasons and the changes in nature that it brings. The cycle of a day that brings morning light and warm glowing later afternoon light and night that brings starry skies and cicadas and morning that brings fog and dew and frost and songbirds' song.
Health and quality health care and healthcare professionals and researchers.
Flowers and florists and garden shops and nurseries and growers that supply them.
Facebook and reacquainting with old friends and meeting new friends .
Books and used book stores and small book stores.
Cats - also lemurs, horses, otters, tigers, dogs, and other animals - the companionship offered by some and the gracefulness, playfulness, and beauty of them all.
Hiking and backpacking and paddling and trips to the wilderness.
GPS's that help me with my total lack of a sense of direction and geocaching with my kids.
Schools and teachers and opportunities for individualized education.
Boy Scouts and leaders and parents and how it shaped my sons.

Lakes and rivers and paddling in them and overcoming fears so that I can enjoy the company of other paddlers and the solitude of a solo trip on the water.

Wood and making things with it like houses and furniture and such.
Good food and fine restaurants and chocolate and olives and raspberries and pomegranates and asparagus.
My senses, the ability to see color and light and the ability to hear a voice and music, the sense of touch to feel warm breeze and cool rain, the smell of a damp woods, dry corn fields, skunk, rosemary, flowers, and the essence of a loved one, the tastes of good food and salt in seaspray.

Paddling In The Rain

I hadn't paddled much since the Boundary Waters trip where too much wind and too high waves brought back a measure of my old fear of the water. But I resolved this week to get back to it, paddling some of the smaller lakes in the parks around Mineral Point.

It was raining this morning. I went for a paddle anyway. The light sprinkle of rain was just a little cooler than the air, making it refreshing. I put my boat into glass smooth water and paddled across the finger of lake to the far shore under the linden trees, along white barked aspen. Lime green pods of hops trees floated on the surface, hinting at stormier weather prior.

A pair of birds skirted the shore, darting from back and forth from tree to tree, so I paused a ways out, with a view of a ferny bank, and ate my lunch in a light mist. My bird watching reverie was interrupted with the sound of something crashing overhead, and I turned my boat to see a squirrel tumbling from branch to branch high in an oak tree. The return to silence after the violent interruption brought back the sounds of chirping and twittering birds. I finished my sandwich and soda and paddled on and the pair of birds flitted along just ahead of me for a while.

Huge yellow and black swallowtail butterflies drifted along between the shore and my route once the rain stopped. A patch of swamp milkweed at water's edge hosted three of them on the many dense clusters of tiny mauve flowers. Stout black dragonlies skimmed along about eye level to me.

At the end of the lake where the stream feeds it and the water is shallow, I carefully paddled though patches of floating water weed to where I could see Canada geese and mallard ducks and a great blue heron feeding. Soon, the geese took flight, right overhead, so that I could hear the whoosh of their wings with each flap.

The lack of any wind that allowed the glass smooth water also allowed for silence, except for the sound of my paddle dipping into the water and between strokes, the sound of my bow cutting across the surface. When I slowed to a near stop, I heard birds on the shore. An occasional test chirp of a cicada. A catbird mewing over and over. Crows! A low raspy caw and a higher more melodic one.

As I drifted farther into the dense mat of floating green, I heard tiny barely audible plip plops. Was the rain starting back up? No, it was bubbles rising from under water, popping when they reached the surface, the product of some mysterious underwater process. Splay legged insects hopped about the water surface and clusters of small black flies vibrated on the surface of the muck. Tiny amber damselflies landed on the gunwale of my boat and on my life jacket and once on my hand.

I watched the blue heron, standing tail feathers deep in water, as it moved its head this way and that, with long periods of waiting between movements. Finally, it struck with a darting dive of the head and a great rustling of wing feathers, then froze with a fish in its bill. After a shake of its head, it began lifting each long leg in turn, walking toward the shallows, where it finally swallowed the fish after a series of motions where it let go of the fish and darted its head forward to move the fish backwards in its long bill. Then it began looking about the water for more prey, slowly moving back toward the deeper water. But something caught its attention and it thrust its bill into the water, apparently catching smaller fish or frogs again and again. Once it let out a loud squawking and did a sideways wing flapping dance before resuming fishing in the shallows.

Soon, a bit of a breeze came up and pushed my boat sideways, plowing a wide clear swath through the floating weeds, finally pushing me aground in the muck. The heron was undisturbed by my slightly closer approach, but soon, as if on some signal, hundreds, maybe thousands, of cicadas, first on the near bank, then on the far one, began their buzzing. The heron kept its head higher after that, clearly less relaxed than it had been, and eventually with a great slow graceful flapping, took flight, winging just a few feet above the lake's surface until at the last minute, it banked sharply up to land in a skeleton of a tall tree. If I took my eye off the tree, I would lose it in the branches, until it moved again, revealing itself.

Soon it began to rain in earnest and a riffle of waves patterned the surface, so I felt compelled to head back, past the massive rock bluff and towering pines and a half dozen different kinds of ferns. Sumac were beginning to show their flower stalks, bright lime green where they will be burgundy later in the fall. Grapevines dipped into the water from overhanging tree branches.

A lull in the rain coaxed me down the other arm of the lake, where another inlet stream forms more shallows, and a brilliant display of pink Joe Pye weed was topped with dozens of dancing swallowtails, brilliant yellow in the low light of the overcast day.

I headed back in a light drizzle which seemed not to phase the ever present swallowtails, fluttering from one swamp milkweed patch to the next. The light rain held until I managed to get all my gear carted to the van and my boat tied to the top, and just as I made the left turn out of the parking lot, it began to pour.

It was a good day on the water.

Lost Camera, Revisited

Some have kindly suggested that the loss of the camera frees me to enjoy the experience of paddling, to enjoy my hike in the woods, to enjoy the views and the flowers for their pure beauty instead of their potential as a photographic image, to experience the experience without the obligation to photograph.
While I appreciate the friendly efforts to console and cheer me, I cannot really relate to that advice.
To me, part of the joy of nature IS the joy of capturing it in a photograph. To me, there is joy in seeing a beautiful scene and in the process of deciding to frame just a certain part of it to convey a specific message. When you see, you see whole panoramas, you see objects in their situation and in their relationship to all the things around them, but in making an art image, you must edit out much of that and make a conscious choice of what to include and what to exclude. Those decisions determine what message the viewer will take away from the art. Sometimes, there is more than one message, such as the beauty of an individual tree in fall foliage, the beauty of that tree surrounded by others of different shape and color, the separate beauty of the relationship of the reddening leaves to the red rock that gives our Lake Redstone its name, the shape of the individual leaf, or even the vein pattern on part of that leaf. Sometimes, the plant covered in flower is one message and the individual flower with pollen drifted onto its leaves is another and the visiting bee, with its leg pollen sacks stuffed to overflowing is yet another. Ferns say one thing from this angle with the leaf litter under the fronds and another thing from another angle where they rise up to the sky. Lit from behind, the leaf is a glowing bright green that stuns while photographed from the same side as the light source presents a more solid earthy sheen to the surface. Photographing the nature is a way to look at it more deeply, in more detail, to explore the relationships among the parts of the natural world, and to enjoy far more about it than would be seen at first glance. Photographing, or rather the looking and the deciding what message to convey, make nature a richer experience for me and allow me to see more deeply into the relationships and more precisely into the details. Quick, how many lobes on a maple leaf? What is the back side of a white oak leaf like? Where are the legs attached to a bee's body? In taking the photographs and viewing them later, these sorts of things can be studied and learned.
Photography to me is NOT an obligation but a joy, and a way in which I experience more fully the joy that is out there in the world. It is also a reason to linger. Someone might think me a kook if I just stopped and lingered too long in front of their house to look at their magnolia tree buds or their rose shrub thorns quite closely, but if I have a camera in hand, I can inspect and peek and stare and study and no one calls the police or yells at me or send their dog after me. They just smile at the crazy camera lady and leave me be to my joyful soaking in of the details of the world.
And then there is the sharing it with you. I NEED those images to show to my kids and to my spouse and to my mom and to my sister, to email around to friends. to post on this blog, to post on Facebook, to share my story. "I went for a paddle today" is some news, yes, but accompanied with a dozen of the finest shots, it makes other people smile a little bit and hopefully inspires them to get outdoors for a paddle or a walk on a trail or even just around their neighborhood, and maybe the pictures of the things closeup makes them walk a little slower and look a little harder and notice things of beauty that might have been missed. Maybe it makes them love nature a little bit more and support the conservation efforts of some local organization or vote for the candidate who has a 'green' record.
A walk or a paddle with no camera is just me alone, but with a camera, I bring you all along and share it with you in that little way and it is not just me alone anymore but all of us loving nature and our surroundings together. Yeah, it really it that big. I need my camera!

The Lake's Steely Grip

I've heard the tales of others' mishaps, dropped keys, eyeglasses, sunglasses, fishing tackle, favored barware dropped from the pontoon boat serving as party barge, tools dropped while assembling and dissassembling the dock or working on a boat motor, and the very modern versions with dropped cell phones and GPS devices. So when I am out paddling in my little canoe with my treasured camera, I have a system. The camera goes into the chest pocket of my life vest in a zip lock bag. When I am taking landscape photos of the scenery and fellow paddlers, the wrist strap of the camera is snapped into the strap that holds that pocket closed. I can take most pictures with the camera safely snapped into its combined pocket strap/wrist strap tether. When I need to reach out to take a shot of a shoreline flower or the leaves of an overhanging branch, the wrist strap goes around my wrist where it belongs. Alas, the weak point in that fine chain of safety procedures is the transfer point between pocket and wrist, and it was just such a weak point that allowed my beloved camera to be stolen from me last week. I was drifting under some overhanging shoreline branches trying to shoot a little bright green plant growing in a leaf litter filled gap in a tree root that had been eroded bare along the bank, when I decided I had to put the camera away and do some serious remaneuvering to get around an offending shrub that was blocking the perfect angle. I had slipped the camera off my wrist and was moving it to the vest pocket when my boat drifted me into a tree branch that snagged the camera and some other part of me or my boat then released itself to fling the camera out into the water. At least that is what I think happened. One moment I was sliding the camera into its plastic bag lined pocket and the next, I was watching bubbles rise about a foot and an half from my boat.
I stared at the bubbles, stunned. I cussed. I tried to look down into the water to see if it was visible. I stuck my paddle straight down in to see how deep it was: about 4 feet. When you can't swim, four feet under water might as well be fifty. There was no way I could go into the water along that shore of rocky boulders to ever try to get it back, especially not when out there alone. The lake had my camera as though in a steel trap, as though buried a dozen yards underground, as though on the surface of the moon. I would not be taking any more pictures with that one or even retrieving from it all the wonderful shots I had taken so far that day. I cussed some more. I cried. I called my husband on my cell phone, daring the risk of the loss of another electronic devise. He said it was just stuff and to enjoy the rest of my paddle. I cried some more. And paddled away, after one last look at the unphotographed pretty little plant growing in the tree root. And I paddled resolutely down the middle of the channel to the lake. With no camera to photograph it, I chose to avoid the shoreline with its taunting spring wildflowers and fresh green mosses and ferns and rock shapes and sculptural tree roots. I stayed out farther in the deeper water and paddled continuously, testing my stamina and my fears of the deeper waters. I paddled one landmark past the farthest I have paddled alone and then turned around to head for home. It was about then, in that last half hour before sunset, that the light wind diminished totally, and the clear bright light of the low angled sun made the shoreline trees glow warm and brilliant. The reflections in the water were perfect, rippled slightly in a uniform pattern, much like looking at a mirror made of antique rolled glass. I could read the words of the shoreline signs in their reflections, I could see individual catkins on the reflections of the birch trees, I could count the five individual needles that identify the shoreline trees as white pines in their beautiful perfect reflections. Ah, the photographs I could have taken. But I just paddled slowly, cognizant of the limited daylight left in which to make my way back to the home dock. I stopped now and then to drift and soak in the beautiful perfect views. It occurred to me at one point that the views were so perfect that it was as if there was no surface to the water and I was suspended above a perfect upside down world. I decided not to dwell on that thought too long, lest it rouse my latent fear of heights to combine with my suppressed fear of water which might come to bad result in my heightened emotional state of loss about the camera and joy about the beauty around me. So I paddled and drifted and enjoyed the amazing reflections of the beautiful nature of the lake.
And in case you are fond of details, I ordered a replacement camera last night. It was a $215 mistake.

Fear Itself

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." I don't know where that came from and I suppose I could look it up, but the provenance is irrelevant, really. When I was in that reading frenzy that all pregnant women enter to try to figure out exactly what was going to happen to me and how something the size of a small fire extinguisher was going to get from in there to out here, I would find reference to hormones that would make sure you never remembered the pain afterwards. Oh, yeah, that was comforting: It's gonna hurt like hell but you won't remember. It was a lie anyway: For a while, the memory was quite vivid and easy to call back up, so I am not so sure about the hormones that were supposed to take care of that. But now, 17 and 21 years later, I can say that I don't have a clue what the physical experience felt like. But I still retain vivid memories of the fear. The sense of not being in control and not knowing what was going to happen next were overwhelmingly terrifying for me. I wanted to DO something, wanted SOMEONE TO DO something to retain control of the situation. And when I think now of the things I most dread, it is the fear of the unknown, of what will happen and of not being able to control it.

The phone calls about the illnesses of parents, the waiting in the Emergency Room with a child, the news that a friend is going in for some sort of scan, what I remember most is the fear, the loss of control, the being a victim of whatever had happened and not having a way out or a choice.

My fear of water was like that. Since I cannot swim, I cannot afford for the boat to over turn, and with someone steering or paddling or another person or two even riding in the canoe, there is the risk that they will do something to overturn the boat. When I got my own one person boat, there was fear of waves, of wind pushing me, of current pulling me, and those fears of not being able to control the course of my boat brought me to the edge of panic. But learning to balance and paddle my boat, to steer it to where I wanted it to go, to paddle it back to a place I wanted to be, to stay on course in wind and waves, to learn to control my destiny in my boat on that water on that day keep the fear at bay.

And conquering one fear, standing up to the forces that caused that fear, gives you confidence about facing other fears. I will always fear giving a talk or teaching a class, but I will do fine. I will fear the reactions of people to whom I am presenting a project, but if they don't like things, I will fix them, or explain why they must remain that way and I will do fine. I will fear the airplane ride, but statistics tell me we will land safely, and I will be fine.

Back when I was delivering those babies, I should have focused less on trying to control the external factors, and more on controlling the fear within. The baby will come because the body knows how to make that happen. Let that process take its course, and manage the fear itself. In a canoe, see the waves, face them, and keep paddling, that part is simple, but the fear is a separate thing to be given focus and managed. Each time it is pushed back into its box, it comes out later and weaker and is more easily pushed down.

There is nothing to fear but fear itself, and when we tear fear down to physical symptoms, a lump in the back of the throat, a feeling of the insides rising, sweating, shaking, feeling lightheaded, none of that is terribly unpleasant in itself. If we stay in the moment during fear and stay still and swallow and breath and wait out the panic and calm the symptom for what it is, a physical process in our body and our brain, we can conquer the fear feelings, the fear itself. And what freedom that brings, what confidence that brings. But it is not something you do once. You learn to back down the fear and you do it again and again, every day. But knowing you have before and that you can and will makes it doable!

Adventures in Worry

Six years ago today or thereabouts I was obsessed with bears. My first born baby was going on his first Boy Scout High Adventure wilderness canoeing trip. There were bear bags mentioned for stowage of food at night and sessions where they learned to prevent their clothes or bodies or tent from becoming 'smellables'. They learned how to eat and deal with other 'details' to keep free of the smell of food and things like mint and perfumes that a bear would take as a signal of food. They learned to make a moderate bit of noise while hiking to prevent surprising a bear and they learned never to approach or run from a bear. I woke up around 4 a.m., certain my baby was going to die in the wilderness. Certain. I went out into the backyard in my pajamas and robe and walked around trying to figure out how to tell him he could not go. I eventually realized that if I kept him home, I would save his life and make him hate me forever: This was not a 'no' that we could ever recover from. So I sent him off later that morning and cried all the way back from dropping him off. My friends invited me on outings and took me to lunch and tried to distract me, but there were too many hour in each day for them to cover and so I worried and cried and cried and worried. And worried and cried.
When he returned safe and full of stories some 10 days later, I was so proud of him. The adults had tales of his hard work and maturity and helpfulness while his centered around the fun they'd had paddling and swimming and portaging the canoes through various adverse conditions of trail and weather and the beautiful and amazing sights they had seen. He seemed taller and definitely more grown up, and when I sent him off to summer camp with the rest of the boys a couple weeks later, I missed him almost as much, but I sure didn't worry. Summer camp in Wisconsin was a safe haven at a luxury resort compare to the wilderness he had just returned from where hungry bears roamed freely.
So they both go off again in the morning. The bags are packed and the lists are checked off and the international and local paperwork is done. This is the oldest's seventh summer high adventure and the youngest's fifth. I had the privilege of going with them on two of them and I know they are competent, skilled, and wise young men, and I look forward to their safe return in 10 days! And I look forward to their stories! Paddle safely, men, paddle safely!

Compass Rose

The first time I saw this idea was on the floor of a stone house that was hand built by one of my heroes, a local naturalist. His house is on a river, and his water source is a spring that flows through his house and out to the river. His staircase echoes the shape of his wife's baby grand piano! Some of his crown molding is grapevine split into quarters. I loved the hand crafted touches in his beautiful home. We have been trying to fit a compass rose into every remodeling project and building project since and finally, at the lake house, it seemed right. This granite tile is set into the slate floor of the foyer, revealing the orientation of the house in relation to true North. Up north, where we came from in North Dakota, up north where we spent lake vacations at Star Lake when the kids were younger, up north where the Boy Scouts went on High Adventure paddling and are going again in a couple weeks. If you were looking at a map of Lake Redstone, knowing where true North is might help you understand where our lot is in relation to the southern bay of the lake. Knowing the cardinal directions might help you understand where the sun will rise and set in relation to the houses amazing windows and views. The design has an abstract sail as a North arrow in honor of the little sailboat my kids and their dad rescued from the garbage and restored to use. The bur oak represents the prairie savanna that covers the rolling hills of the region. The sugar maple represents the maple-linden woods that shelters the stream edges and valleys. The white pine grows to towering heights along the shores of the lake on the sunnier drier slopes, and our lot whose slope faces nearly north has hemlocks that drape their graceful branches near the shore where we put in our canoes and kayaks. Some day, I hope to carve this design into a linoleum block, reversed of course, so that I can make prints of it.

The Drum

The drum
It is our heartbeat
The rhythm of our walk feet
It is the contractions of our mother’s womb
It is the in and out of our breath
That began then and continues until our death
When those with us will listen for the last one
And hold their own for just a second
Before they breathe again to live on
The drum
It is the running of the feet of children
It is the rum rum rum of the spinning wheel
The crack crack crack of the pounding of grain into flour
It is the kneading of bread, the crick crick crick of the warming oven
The chewing of happy family
The drum
Is the ocean wave crash crash crashing
Or river waves gently splash splash splashing
It is the prairie grass swish swish swish in the wind
And the tree branch woo woo woo
The bumble of the June bug against the screen bat bat bat
It is the rain pit pit pit, pit pit pit, pit pit pit outside the window
Or splat splat splat on our bare arms
The drum
It is the walk walk walking to the lake’s shore
And the pad pause pad pause paddling of the canoe
It is the beat of the wings of ducks as they take flight
The scrape scrape scrape of harvesting wild rice into the canoe bottom
And the reach pull drop reach pull drop of gathering berries
The drum
It is the rhythm of life
The drum
It is the rhythm of earth
The drum
It is the rhythm of us.

Traces

When you paddle through the mats of algae and duckweed, you can look back and see exactly where you have been. What if life were more like that? Wouldn't it be good to be able to look back and see where you have made a difference, to see what good you have done? But would we be able to handle seeing the harm we did along the way?

May Day In A Boat

May Day! There was something oddly reassuring about seeing May 1 at last on both my cell phone and my camera.
It was a long winter, for the severity of the weather, for how it seemed to hang on and on, and for the challenges and struggles that this one held.
May 1 seems to close a door on all that and define clearly that we have passed a certain portal into true spring.
May Day in school was a time to make paper baskets, write poems about nature, and color flowers to post around the edged of the chalkboard.
I remember violets under last fall's cottonwood leaves on the playground and forgetting coats outdoors at the end of recess and hoping to be the one person sent outdoors to gather them up for everyone.
Today the wind made the water choppy and scary so I clung to the edges and the coves where I was gladdened to see green things poking up out of last year'd dead and brown things.
There is nothing like fresh green shoots pushing past dried brown to remind us of the cyclic nature of nature and the certainty that struggles will be rewarded with happy times again and sorrows give way to joy.
May Day is truly spring and there can be no turning back!

One Day On The Water

When the docks and boats are off the water, it is still and peaceful, allowing reflections of the shore on the water. When the leaves are off the trees, the evergreens stand out, almost resembling a Japanese woodblock print. It was pretty, and it is everchanging. It will be different when I go this week with new things to discover and awe me.

Knock Knock!

"Knock knock!"
"Who's there?"
"Wooden."
"Wooden who?"
"Wooden you love to have a boat like this?"

You can't buy these in stores. They are hand made. You start by building a table. Yes, you need a perfectly level very long table, so you build it out of plywood. Then you cut shapes out of plywood that are cross sections of the canoe type you want and you mount them upside down on the table.
Then you take tiny strips of cedar wood, 1/4" thick and 3/4" wide and very long. The first one is clamped onto the forms and the second one glued to that and the next one glued to that. Where they meet along the center, you have to cut very precise angles both across and along the wood so that they meet just right. When you have all the strips glued together, then you sand and sand and sand so that the series of flat strips forms a continuous smooth curve.
Then you put on a layer of fiber glass cloth with epoxy. The cloth is white and it seems like this is going to DESTROY the beautiful wood boat, but the epoxy makes it clear. You do this inside the boat and outside the boat.
This boat is like no other in the entire world, for then a gas grill was retrofitted as a steamer with PVC pipe so that it somewhat resembled a still, and wooden strips were steamed to soften them and then quickly bent into shape to fit the inside of the canoe. When all of the dozens of strips were bent one by one into shape, they were glued in place, and the whole thing was given more coats of finish. The top edges, called 'gunwales', oddly pronounced as 'gunnels', were cut and trimmed and sanded and glued into place and the triangles in front and back, called 'decks' were hand crafted by meticulously cutting and fitting various kinds of wood. The center support, called a 'yoke' was hand carved into a shape to make it comfortable to carry the canoe upside down on the shoulders and wooden frames were cut and glued and sanded then woven with rawhide strips to make seats.
The man in the yellow had did most of the work and the kid paddling in front helped, especially with the bending of the ribs inside the canoe.
It is a thing of wondrous beauty and it made its first water voyage recently on a cloudy day. But oh, it is amazing, when beautiful wood is finely hand formed into something so perfectly functional. A canoe itself is a thing of quiet beauty that takes you places where the splash of water, the breeze on your face, and the life in the water and on the shore make you remember that we live in a beautiful wonderful world indeed. I love my little one person boat, but a boat like this, built for two, means you have someone along to share it with, when you make a discovery and whisper 'Look!"

I've Been To The Water

I've been to the water in my boat for the first time this season. Twice actually, yesterday for just a bit and today enough to accomplish a light burn on the arms and legs and a bit of soreness in the arm muscles. It was beautiful, of course. It is too early for most of the docks to be back on the water. And the water is too cold for those silly loud waverunners and water skiers. So the water was smooth enough to reflect the rocks and trees. The buds are just starting to swell on the red maples and the aspen catkins glow pale in front of the dark pines on the slopes along the shore. It is quiet enough to hear the dip of your own paddle and the gentle lapping of the water at the banks. I saw a loon. There are frogs chirping in the coves where water drains into the lake. It was very very lovely!

I Have No Photos of The Actual Beaver

It was on that last day that I paddled on the lake in October. It was quiet out there, with only a couple other people fishing from those long flat boats. We could greet each other in normal conversational voices even as I paddled far away to avoid disturbing their bobbers. The lake was mostly still, reflecting the golds and russets of the last of the fall color of the oak and maple trees along the shore. An occasional late brilliant sumac leaf or the red berry clusters of highbush cranberries stood out against the more muted colors. In some stretches, out in the open water of the lake and around certain bends, the wind churned up the water to make the low light of the late afternoon sun glisten like gems on the surface of the water. It was so beautiful I wanted to cry. Or call someone and tell them about it! I’d just put my camera away because it was getting a little too dark for really good photos and I wanted to mess around with some paddling practice before I headed back, when I came to a place where the shore swept back into the hill, where a stream had carved out a v-shape in the shoreline. Years of deposited silt had left little islands that reeds had colonized. I was paddling around the bend toward the reeds when . . . SPLASH . . . something made a terrific noise and made waves that rocked my boat. I turned just in time to see where the rings of waves were centered, and a row of bubbles coming straight at me on the surface. There was a beaver about to swim directly under my boat! I waited and watched for it to surface, finally giving up and paddling back to where the beaver had entered the water. I could see where it had been at work by the light color of the wood chips against the dark of the leaf litter on the ground and eventually found the small tree that it had been working on, and a few smaller branches with the characteristic cone-shaped chewed ends. I investigated the delta deposit with the reeds and then turned my boat to paddle back out to the main part of the lake when just about a dozen yards ahead, the beaver popped to the surface, swimming away from me. I paddled along, keeping the distance, matching its pace for a wonderful minute or two, when it saw me and slapped its tail on the surface before it dove beneath the water and disappeared. I paddled with a beaver! It doesn’t get much cooler than that!

Kentucky: The Canoe Trip

I can’t swim. Have I mentioned that before? I am sure I will again. Part of the previously mentioned backpacking trip with the Boy Scouts to Kentucky wilderness was a canoe ride down the river. It was supposed to be our rest day: Get in the boat in the cool water and paddle a bit to guide the boat downstream with the current and get out at the landing refreshed to complete the backpacking trip. Huge joke: Low water levels turned it into a canoe drag. Get out, drag the canoe through the gravel while slipping and sliding and trying not to get too much more water in the canoe on the already soaking backpacks. Get in, paddle a few feet, get back out again, drag the canoe some more. Glare at the person who planned the trip. Drag the canoe some more. Here’s how much of a bad mood I was in for this part of the trip: I took no pictures. Finally we got to an area where the water was deep enough to paddle. Nasty trick. The deep spot was only due to a steeply walled and narrow ravine with a log that had fallen over the river, spanning the width completely, and causing the water to dig out the river bed below to create a really deep area. I could tell by how dark the surface looked. I was afraid just being in the boat in such deep water. Others ahead of us had already climbed onto the narrow slippery bouncy log and lifted their canoe over and gotten back in, and were waiting for us. I said there is NO WAY I can get out of a canoe into that narrow log. Not gonna happen. Can’t do it. You can’t MAKE me. The other adult in the crew who was standing on the log said “What are you going to do? Climb the banks to the road? “ I looked up at the impossibly steep banks. Um, no. “Paddle back against the current and drag the canoe back to the put in?” Well, not that either. “Die here?” Well, obviously not THAT one. “Well, then GET OUT and get up here so we can lift the canoe over.” I paused. “Look”, he said, “You are wearing a life jacket. Even if you fall in, you will float. We are all trained in life saving and CPR. No one here is gonna let you drown. Just don’t thrash around a lot if you fall in. Make it easy for us. Now get out of the boat.” Okay. It was terrifying but I did it. Got back in without capsizing it on the other side too. The boys cheered. I can do anything now.

I Love My Boat!

I have my own boat. It is a Compass 12.5 by Native Watercraft. You can search for it and read about it and see pictures. I love my boat. I am afraid of water. I really am. I cannot swim. But I love the water. I love the rhythm and the sway of it. I love the smell of it. I love the way sunlight sparkles off the waves and I love the way reflections glow when it is calm, doubling the beauty of the nature along the shoreline. I love water birds and beaver and otters and turtles and snails. I love the physical sensation of paddling and feeling the boat push forward. But I cannot swim. I am afraid of the water. So why did I want a boat of my own? What is a fear but a thing to conquer? This one needs to be conquered. The only way out of the fear is into the fear, into the water. My boat weighs 26 pounds. I can lift and carry it on my own. I can put it on top of my van on my own and tie it down on my own and drive to the lake on my own and carry it to the water on my own and get into it on my own and paddle it . . . on my own. No waiting for an agreeable companion with a similar schedule and interest to help carry a heavier boat and paddle their end. Independence. The chance to work the fear on my own, at my own pace, on my own terms, in my own time. The first time I got into my boat, it took me an hour. To work up the nerve to even sit in it. And just as I got in, in the calm little bay at the end of the lake, water skiers showed up. And suddenly, the calm water was waves. Someone shouted to me to turn into the waves and face them so I would not feel the boat was going to be pushed over. Well, that would mean I had to know HOW to turn the boat, now wouldn’t it? Calm the panic, slow the breathing, still the racing heart and think. Paddle. Turn. Steady. You sit down low in my boat. It is open like an canoe, but you sit on a seat in the bottom, not up by the rim, so your center of gravity is lower and it feels more stable. You paddle my boat with a kayak paddle, so there is no switching of the paddle from side to side, merely a dipping of one side or the other. So that first time, I practiced steering to face the waves and I practiced keeping calm. When the skiers’ boat left the bay and the waves calmed, I turned a few circles and tried a few straight runs. Slowing and stopping. And every time I felt the panic, I just stopped and waited for it to pass. And it did. And I worked it all some more. Until I got brave enough to take a run along the shore. Before I had to give it up for the season, I went out three separate times one week in south central Wisconsin. The docks and boats were mainly off the lakes and there were no skiers, only a few fishers in their flat slow boats. One day, there were snail shells floating in the water, and I practiced steering along side them to scoop them up. One day, there was a beaver on the shore that dove into the water and swam under me and surfaced a ways ahead. I paddled along side him for maybe 50 yards before he made another dive. I paddled with a beaver! I! Paddled! With a beaver! There were kingfishers and herons and hawks. Dragonflies and frogs. Autumn foliage on the banks, red berries of sumac and highbush cranberry, tan stands of cattails, and finally, sunsets reflected on the water. I love my boat. I am still afraid of the water, but less so. I love the water.

Things in Water