Six months before I first sat in a sea kayak I was on the phone with harbourmasters organizing food drops along the shores of the Great Lakes. All our gear and charts had been ordered, and our new boats were scheduled to arrive in Thunder Bay the week the ice usually breaks up on Lake Superior. It didn’t seem that strange to me, but friends and family wondered what motivated me to plan a three-and-a-half month expedition without ever having paddled a sea kayak.
The inspiration for paddling home from university was surely a result of being enrolled in Lakehead’s Outdoor Recreation program and being surrounded by highly motivated, adventurous peers. Even the city of Thunder Bay is a mecca for enthusiasts: with its own chapter of the Alpine Club, a healthy ski community, and is a stop for travelling adventure road shows. The Banff Festival of Mountain Films is a sellout in the city’s largest auditorium; Waterwalker packs the first-year psychology lecture hall and Warren Miller is an annual social at the Exhibition hall. Outside after the shows, climbers are freeing 5.10a stonewalls and skiers are doing backscratchers off the roofs of cars. The motivational powers of motion pictures (and in the latter case, a dozen cans of Blue) is as strong as the commitment to outdoor adventure sports.
Also on campus are less glossy presentations, presentations announced by photocopied signs reading, “SLIDE SHOW TONIGHT… Room SN 210… Olav and Ali’s Trip”. Word spreads like water on GoreTex. It was these intimate presentations that best captured my imagination. Holding the projector clicker was a fellow adventurer, someone like me who decided that canoeing across Canada, sea kayaking around Lake Baikal, or skiing to the North Pole was something cool to try.
These humble presentations were relevant, and honest. Their high seas, minus 40-degree temperatures and 27 days of rain were real—not made for TV. More admirable than their attempted trips was that they took the time after- ward to share their experiences—to motivate hundreds of others. Adventure travel will never die so long as stories are told while photographs are projected on small screens. Many of these people write books; some just return to their daily routines of school or work.
When you open the first page of Adventure Kayak’s first ever photo annual, imagine that you are sitting down to watch a slide show. But, this slideshow is different: it has one photo from two-dozen trips, in almost as many countries. I suggest keeping a pen and paper handy, you’ll want to be jotting down notes, planning your next expedition.
This article first appeared in the Fall 2004 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.
