Get The Kids Paddling

February 5, 2019

Doug MacGregor in a kayak practicing his roll

Last fall I attended the first Get Kids Paddling conference. There were representatives from the largest school boards, national nonprofits, international boys and girls organizations and academics from the most prestigious university outdoor programs.

You get the idea. These people care. They would seemingly have the means to make a change, if systemic institutional and cultural change is even possible in these overly protective and litigious times.

After a day of lectures, presentations and breakout groups we left the room agreeing to form a coalition to advise the development of policies implemented by regulatory bodies writing the physical education guidelines for school boards.

Starting a canoe club

As this school year was coming to an end, my son, Doug, had the idea of organizing a canoeing day grade eight class trip. I need to set the stage for you. Access to a quiet flatwater section of river is only 800 meters from the school. The Paddler Co-op, a nonprofit paddling school, is based three kilometers from Doug’s classroom. It doesn’t get any easier.

Doug knows money is tight in his tiny country school. He approached a vested corporate sponsor about covering the cost of the canoeing program. He called the Paddler Co-op for a quote and I agreed Paddling Magazine would cover the full course fees for the entire class.

Doug knew school buses would be a prohibitive expense, so he devised a plan and got his teacher onboard. The students could be dropped off at school early so they could walk an hour to the paddling school.

For the mandatory swim test, Doug had his teacher document swim test evaluations performed by lifeguards at a wave pool during an earlier school trip. Clever little fella.

Armed with initiative, the support of his teacher and a list of obstacles already overcome he approached his principal with his slam-dunk proposal.

When he left her office he was fighting back tears. In his hands was a copy of the six-page physical education safety guidelines for elementary canoeing curricular.

The very guidelines members of the Get Kids Paddling coalition believe is crippling their ability to get kids on the water.

Doug was told he must satisfy all 132 bullet points in these guidelines before his principal would take his request to her superintendent—she wouldn’t support this program and wouldn’t sign off on the activity without school board approval.

I don’t care what activity is being proposed if a student comes forward with this much initiative, our administrators need to play ball. Self-starting student ambition like this needs to be fostered, not crushed by bureaucracy and risk-averse, lazy-minded administrators.

So, Doug and I set about satisfying the requirements. Except as written they are impossible to achieve. For example, the guidelines read: “Prior to canoeing, a prerequisite test must occur in a pool, shallow water, or sheltered bay for which students must demonstrate to the instructor canoe skills, including: pivots, draw and pry strokes, sweep strokes, forward and reverse strokes…” Etcetera, etcetera.

So, how the hell can students demonstrate strokes before they go canoeing, if they can’t go canoeing until they demonstrate these strokes?

As I write this, Doug is attending summer camp for his eighth summer. He’s been canoe tripping and running rivers with me since he was in diapers. He grasped the fundamentals of canoeing long before he could spell canoeing.

A few months ago, Doug and I attended the East Coast Paddlesports Symposium in South Carolina. Doug enrolled himself in on-water clinics. He learned Greenland rolling skills with Helen Wilson. And he toured Charleston Harbor with ACA instructor trainer Josh Hall. He doesn’t know these are respected paddlers at the top of their fields. To Doug these were just passionate and empowering role models.

Doug wasn’t putting together the paddle day at his school for himself. Like the Get Kids Paddling coalition and his mentors at the symposium, Doug was hoping to get the other 19 boys and girls paddling. He has dreams of starting an outdoors club at the high school.

I have one more reason to get kids paddling to add to the list:

So kids can get other kids paddling. We need to tear up the bullshit restrictions we are placing upon them, feed their dreams and stay out for their way. If we’re lucky we’ll get to go with them. At least until adult supervision is no longer required.

Scott MacGregor is the founder and publisher of Paddling Magazine.

A 17-Year Olds’ First Solo Trip Terror

Tim Shuff

February 5, 2019

People kept saying I was foolish and stupid and irresponsible to quit my job every spring to go roaming in a canoe…but come spring, I’d leave. I had no sense of rebellion. I just had to go canoeing.

Where others would choose Shakespeare or Winnie the Pooh, I quoted those words from famed canoeist Bill Mason in my high school yearbook.

As an earnestly outdoorsy teenager, my dream was to do a solo canoe trip. When I finally went, I realized I’d had no idea what it would be like. I hadn’t yet learned that’s how dreams are.

My chance came in 1989 when I was 17 years old. I had been preparing for years. At 15, I built a 13-foot solo cedarstrip canoe (see all solo canoes in the Paddling Buyer’s Guide). The day I turned 16 I applied for my driver’s licence. All winter I bored my parents with unsubtle hints about what I intended to do with the newly minted licence in my wallet. They finally agreed to loan me the family Oldsmobile three days after exams for a solo canoe trip in Algonquin Park.

I felt like a hero driving up Highway 11, the canoe firmly tied down, Neil Young, David Wilcox and The Cult blasting on the stereo. I had my own canoe, a car and three days of food and camping gear. I was free.

At the put-in, my fantasies were assaulted by a cloud of blackflies. The bugs made the first portage part backwoods blood donor clinic, part primal therapy. Going solo means there’s nobody to share the pain.

I picked up my pace and forged on. Spurred on by the flies and an increasing angst I had yet to notice, I blazed through the first day of my route in a matter of hours and reached my scheduled campsite by lunch.

My leisurely schedule worked well. Too well. It completely backfired

That’s where things started, imperceptibly, to unravel. I had imagined it would be hard to do all the camp chores myself. So I had planned a short route with more time than usual to do all the tasks that are normally shared among a group.

I had also allowed time for the quiet contemplation of nature’s majesty, since everybody knows that’s the great reward of solo tripping. Bill Mason likened the wilderness to a church, and I expected the solo experience to be a kind of rapture I would want to revel in.

[ Also Read: Why Your Next Canoe Trip Should Be Solo ]

My leisurely schedule worked well. Too well. It completely backfired, in fact. Eating lunch at my first campsite, I faced the challenge of what to do with the remaining 10 hours of daylight. Might as well continue paddling—just a little bit further.

Before long I arrived at the campsite I had planned for night two. This time I set up camp. I chose the site carefully—an island that was too small for bears—and set my tent right by the fire pit. I laid out my sleeping bag and my clothes. No, the clean underwear over here, next to the flashlight and the toilet paper, and a jackknife in the right tent pocket. That’s right. Then I unpacked my food and cooked some pasta, washed my dishes and put them away and hung up my food. I gathered a pile of firewood and looked at my watch.

It was only 4:30 p.m. and the sun was still high. It was one of the longest days of the year. Better make sure I’m ready for dark.

so I panicked. And then an impulsive, subconscious calculation told me what was clearly possible if I just kept moving

So I gathered more firewood and broke it into foot-long pieces. Then I stacked the pieces into piles sorted by diameter. Then I sat down and settled in for some of that quiet contemplation I’d been looking forward to. Ohmmm. Which is when I discovered that my skittish 17-year-old mind had no interest in quiet contemplation.

The wilderness was like a church all right. EXACTLY like a church, like a huge creepy vastness haunted by an otherworldly stillness. I might as well have locked myself up in an empty Notre Dame Cathedral with a “do not disturb” sign on the door. The thought of five more hours of ear-ringing nothingness, to be followed by more of the same in total darkness, felt to me like being slowly asphyxiated by silence.

I am going to die.

And so I panicked. And then an impulsive, subconscious calculation told me what was clearly possible if I just kept moving.

[ Also Read: The One Real Risk Of Solo Paddling Adventures ]

Within 20 minutes I had broken camp and was back on the water, now entering the territory of day three. Another portage, a few more klicks of paddling and I was back to the car. I threw my still clean gear into the trunk and tied the canoe down in a fly-addled frenzy, then sped away with the windows down to blast away the bugs.

By nightfall I was exiting the drive-thru, a Big Mac warm in my palm, and before midnight I pulled back into the driveway at home. My parents were asleep and I found my sister on the couch watching The Arsenio Hall Show.

Just act natural.

I walked in and sat down. When she asked me what I was doing there, I said, I finished my whole route. So I decided to come home.

[View all the new boats and gear in the Paddling Buyer’s Guide]

Tim Shuff eventually slowed down and enjoyed a solo trip of 25 days, measured by time, not distance. This story originally appeared in the 2008 issue of Canoeroots. Recirc is a new column sharing some of our favorite stories from the first 20 years of Rapid, Canoeroots, and Adventure Kayak.

Just me, myself and I. | Featured Photo: Mike Monaghan

Kayaker Matt Pruis’ 20-Day Race To Alaska

Kaydi Pyette

February 5, 2019

First place gets $10,000. Second place gets a set of steak knives. Those are the only two prizes for racers in the 750-mile Race To Alaska, a sprint up the Inside Passage open to any type of non-motorized craft.

Kayaker Matt Pruis completed the race for a second time on July 7, 2018, just one of four kayakers to do so in the race’s four-year history. Only 53 percent of racers complete the arduous journey.

According to United States customs officers, Pruis’ 2017 speedy journey tied with an unknown non-racing paddler from Idaho, setting an unofficial 20-day speed record for the 750-mile journey from Port Townsend, Washington, to Ketchikan, Alaska. Though he says he learned a lot from his first race, this year was still challenging. Pruis battled winds, swells and exhaustion. Pruis paddled it all strictly under his own steam, refusing even a sail.

“I like the challenge of that. Maybe it’s dumb stubbornness,” he says.

Why Race To Alaska?

It’s a tremendous adventure through a fantastically beautiful landscape. The race itself is a fun group, a collection of classic northwest mariner offshoots—people from all over, but with a Northwest flavor. Three or four teams are racing hard to win; everyone else is there for the journey. And when you’re doing it, there are all kinds of people who are supporting you and cheering you on. It’s something bigger than just yourself.

What Was Different In 2018?

My gear. This year I set up for an elegant dance between paddling and some portaging to explore more country. Last year was about testing navigation and whether I had the skills to complete the race. This year, I just wanted to have as much of an adventure as I could. I knew I wasn’t going to win so I didn’t have to worry about my time. Unfortunately, my kayak cart broke on the third portage. That was the most challenging part of the race for me, and it took a few days to get right about it and engaged again.

When Did You Have The Best Experiences?

The wildlife was outstanding this year. I can’t count how many humpback and minke whales I saw breaching, feeding and slapping their tails. In such a tiny boat I started to wonder if I might fit in those giant mouths. Second best aspect is the people. There’s a community of incredible sailors who aren’t part of the race but know it’s going on, people who were watching out for me, and that was fantastic.

Who Should Race To Alaska?

The race is such an amazing experience because you have the opportunity to visit these places but also test yourself against the environment and your decision making. Know your limits coming in. Research and understand the tides. And go with a team—racing solo is a much higher risk though it’s very doable. What I missed most is being about to look over my shoulder at someone and say, “Hey, did you see that?!”

Where To Next?

My TRAK kayak was the only boat in the race that could be folded up, checked on an airplane as baggage and flown home. Instead, my wife, youngest daughter and I took a ferry to Kitimat, British Columbia for 10 more days of sea kayaking.

Paddling Awareness Projects: Love ’em or Loathe ’em?

Kaydi Pyette

February 5, 2019

man paddling in the distance from a beach

At the time of writing this article, it’s May. Perhaps you’re aware it’s Arthritis Awareness Month, Hepatitis Awareness Month, Food Allergy Action Month and Clean Air Month.

The month of May is also home to National Wildflower Week, Screen-Free Week, Teacher Appreciation Week, the National Twilight Zone Day, National Bike To School Day, National Frog Jumping Day and World Naked Gardening Day.

Hold on, I’m not done.

May Boasts 29 Internationally Recognized Awareness Days

In the 31 days of May, there’s a whopping 175 additional awareness days and observances recognized in the United States, according to Nationalcalendarday.com. The date of May 31 is known as both National Smile Day and Necrotizing Fasciitis Awareness Day, among others.

May isn’t an outlier. Nationalcalendarday.com tracks a whopping 1,500 national awareness days, weeks and months jammed into the same 365-day, 52-week and 12-month year you and I plan our lives around.

In the Paddling Magazine editorial office, we’ve been getting pitches almost daily from adventurers embarking on one type of awareness-raising expedition or another. We’ve received queries from paddlers looking to raise the profile of important issues like plastic pollution, habitat destruction, poverty, gender equality, autism, fishery health and diabetes. Just to name a few.

You’re probably familiar with expeditions just like this. Heck, there’s even a few profiled in the pages of this very issue. It’s not just paddling expeditions bingeing on awareness—through social media and news outlets, we see a slew of awareness-raising campaigns, events and days bundled up with pithy hashtags for every conceivable topic.

Thanks to hashtag activism, we’re living in what some have termed the golden age of awareness raising.

I Respect Everyone Paddling Off On Awareness-Raising Journeys

—I support any and all reasons to get on the water, anytime and anywhere.

The problem is for any paddler looking to make change, awareness-raising alone often hasn’t proven to be an effective solution. For real change awareness must turn into action, and most of us get lost in the intervening chasm.

In the 1980s, social scientists popularized the information deficit model. It’s the notion stating if only the public had the right information, conveyed in a way we could understand, we’d make better choices. But we all know it’s not this simple.

If it was this simple, we’d eat more kale. I’d stop spooning Ben & Jerry’s before bedtime. North America wouldn’t be crushed under an obesity epidemic. No one would smoke. Texting while driving wouldn’t be a thing.

We’d all meditate daily and exercise for 30 minutes or more, five times a week. And we’d stop looking at our damn smartphones because we know doing so makes us more stressed out. And these are just the simple changes we could make for our own personal benefit. Just being educated isn’t enough to catapult us into doing anything about it.

Take, For Example, The Cause At The Crosshairs Of More Than Half-A-Dozen Awareness-Raising Expeditions Queried In My Inbox—The Problem Of Plastic Pollution In The Ocean. Here are some startling facts: More than 40 percent of plastics are only used once, then trashed. Plastic makes up approximately 90 percent of all trash floating on the ocean’s surface. And it’s estimated 88 percent of ocean surfaces are polluted with plastic to some extent. Terrible, right?

According to Google News, plastic pollution has been the topic of more than 2.6 million news articles. There’s been 1,600 news reports in the mainstream media about the garbage patch twice the size of Texas circulating in the Pacific Ocean. The average citizen with even a passing interest in current events would have to be wilfully avoiding these stories to be unaware plastic isn’t so fantastic. I’d argue the average water lover and sea kayaker is likely even more aware of the threat plastic poses to the world’s oceans, even if they’re unaware of the horrifying global statistics.

Awareness Raising Is A Woolly Business—

what does awareness mean anyway, how do you know when you’ve raised enough and how do you measure its success? The real aim of a successful campaign should be to pair awareness with action-based solutions. This is what good marketers do, and they achieve it by creating an emotional connection between consumer and product with a strong call to action. It’s what so many awareness-raising expeditions fail to do.

On her 1,000-kilometer journey around Wales (featured on page 174), paddleboarder Sian Sykes did more than raise awareness—she asked the hundreds of people she met on her expedition to make an on-the-spot pledge to stop using one single-use plastic item. Providing a first-person connection and a solution begins to bridge the cavernous divide between knowing there’s a problem and doing something about it.

There’s No Shortage Of Examples Of Paddlers Taking Matters In Their Own Hands. Last year Michael Anderson and Paul Twedt picked up 1,000 pounds of garbage—mattresses, glass bottles, Styrofoam and a hell of a lot of plastic—on a 300-mile trip on the Minnesota River. The duo’s mission was furthered by America’s Adventure Steward Alliance and another 2,200 miles of the watershed was cleaned up removing another 5,300 pounds of trash. Paddlers across the country were inspired by the story to clean up their own local waterways.

To tackle a proposed sulphide ore mine on the edge of the Boundary Water Canoe Area Wilderness, explorers Amy and Dave Freeman lived in the BWCA for 365 days, sharing their trip by canoe and dog sled with school kids across the country via their virtual Wilderness Classroom platform. They reached grown-ups through their blog, podcast, videos and social media. Their awareness raising had a very specific goal and outlined some of the steps needed—sign a petition and contact your representatives—to save the Boundary Waters.

Awareness raising works to an extent. Informing people of a concern is the first step to changing how institutions handle an issue. Usually, raising awareness is the first activity an advocacy group engages in. When people don’t know there’s a problem, how can they fix it?

Change Starts With Awareness

Then solutions are needed. Which could encompass everything from fundraising, protesting, volunteering, lobbying, researching, policy making, citizen science and working with already established organizations—the list goes on. We’re hungry for easy solutions to make a big difference. Just clicking share doesn’t often count.

In the golden age of awareness raising, it’s certainly not awareness we’re lacking. We’re saturated with it. Without deed to back us up, raising awareness is little more than a hashtag on a plastic boat lost in a sea of 500 million tweets per day.

Kaydi Pyette is the managing editor of Paddling Magazine. She has given up the use of single use plastic water bottles. The frogs she’s been training for National Frog Jumping Day are living in habitats created with natural and recycled materials.

Why We Must Paddle Away To Protect Manatees

Kaydi Pyette

February 5, 2019

Six years ago, a National Geographic expedition took photographer Paul Nicklen to Florida’s Three Sisters Springs on the Crystal River, 70 miles north of Tampa. He was there to document the interaction between an increasing number of tourists and the river’s migratory manatees. The river is prime habitat thanks to more than 50 active springs keeping the water a constant 72°F, warming the manatees through winter months.

Manatee-seeking tourists and swim-with-the-manatees tours are a big business in Florida, generating between $20 and $30 million a year.

More than 40 tour operators work in the Crystal River area, alongside manatee-themed gift shops and restaurants. In addition to all this income, manatee tourism has generated some controversy. Manatees annually attract 450,000 people to Florida, most to the Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge. In March of 2016, an estimated 1,200 snorkelers visited the refuges’ Three Sisters Springs Sanctuary in one 24-hour period.

While manatees are curious and some engage with tourists, most prefer to spend their days catching some shuteye.

Manatees spend half the day napping—and hoovering down 10 percent of their body weight in aquatic plants. Motorboats are not allowed inside the Three Sisters Springs Sanctuary, however canoeing, kayaking and swimming with the 10-foot-long, 1,500-pound docile creatures is legal so long as the animal isn’t being touched or harassed, and people stay out of the buoyed restricted areas.

What people fail to acknowledge is the manatees are not here for our amusement, they’re here for their survival, says Matt Clemons, board member of Savethemanatees.org and owner of local outfitter Aardvark’s Florida Kayak Co., which offers small group kayaking tours, but not the more lucrative swim-with-the-manatee tours. In the colder months, when the manatees rely on the springs for survival, they can’t leave the warm water to escape the tourist swarm if stressed—if they do, they’re in danger of cold exposure and boat traffic, both a major contributor to manatee mortality.

Many of Florida’s 6,000 manatees bear scars from collisions with motorboat propellers, says Clemons

“The way we justify this type of tourism is to say if you allow people close access to the animals they will want to better protect them, but there’s no scientific studies that actually prove it,” says Clemons. “The data here is showing the more acclimated to humans the manatees become, the more likely they are to put themselves in harm’s way.”

In the six years since Nicklen took this photo, ramped up conservation efforts, restored habitat and motorboat speed limits near the springs resulted in a record number of manatees in 2016, and the animals were removed from the endangered species list.

The best way to appreciate manatees is from a respectful distance.

Natural manatee behavior can be disrupted by humans who approach manatees too closely. People should never approach, chase, surround, touch, disturb, ride or poke manatees,” says Clemons. “By observing manatees at a distance we have the best chance to observe natural behaviors, giving us a glimpse into their lives.

To get this shot, Nicklen was scuba diving in approximately eight feet of water, shooting with a Canon 1DX in a Nauticam housing. He used two strobes on camera arm extenders to crosslight the manatee.

Paul Nicklen is a National Geographic photographer and co-founder of SeaLegacy, an organization dedicated to protecting oceans via visual storytelling. www.sealegacy.com.

The Happy-Sad Phase Of Paddle Travel

Scott MacGregor

February 5, 2019

a tent and canoe on an island with a sunset in the background

In the academic world there exists a model outlining the five phases of the recreation and tourism experience. Researchers have come to understand how our overall satisfaction of a paddling trip depends on the degree to which our expectations are met or exceeded in each of the different phases. But hang on; I’m getting ahead of myself.

The first phase of paddle travel

Is The Planning And Anticipation Phase. It may begin with this Paddling Trip Guide issue of Paddling Magazine, in fact that’s sort of my goal. This stage builds the hype. We set goals and create expectations often months and sometimes years in advance.

Phases two and four

These are the travel to and travel from phases. From a tourism economic perspective, the travel stages are big business. For us, done right, these two phases can be as important as the adventure itself.

Phase three

This is the easy one—the actual trip. So long as the adventure meets our physical, social and intellectual needs we pretty much are going to have a good time. We usually do.

Phase five

This is the reason we buy souvenirs and hold potluck suppers.As time passes after the trip we tend to heighten the good memories and forget about the bugs, wind and rain. This recollection phase is why you are already planning your next adventure.

Who am I to argue with experts with doctorates, but I believe they are missing a crucial sixth phase.

Paddling trips offer an intense and emotional life-changing experience but often end abruptly, dropping us back into Monday morning traffic surrounded by people who, for the most part, frankly don’t get it.

When I worked as a commercial guide, we planned last night campfires to help our guests begin the transition back to real life. We handed out certificates of accomplishment and we shared trip stories. We talked about the feelings they would experience tomorrow.

This sixth phase is typically a happy-sad period

Happy because dreams came true. Horizons were broadened. Challenges crushed. Confidence boosted. Friendships strengthened. But sad because it is suddenly over.

Managed poorly, this post-trip phase of reintegration back to normal life can spiral into post-trip depression. Post-trip stress disorder is triggered by intense emotional or life-changing events, like wilderness trips by canoe, kayak and standup paddleboards.

Symptoms are similar to other acute forms of depression, including: fatigue, irritability, mood swings, inability to concentrate, increased desire to be alone and loss of interest in things you usually enjoy.

While only recently identified in psychology journals, post-trip blues has probably existed since the beginning of paddle travel.

Voyageurs felt it returning from travels with the North West and Hudson Bay Company. Inuit peoples suffered returning to their villages from the narwhal hunt. I watch my children mope around for days after arriving home from summer canoe camp.

While we return from paddling adventures feeling different and new on the inside, the world to which we’re returning is both unchanged, and yet smaller and less relatable. Early research on post-trip depression focused on international travellers returning after year-long walkabouts. Researchers later discovered what we already know, it doesn’t have to be an extended trip or experiencing a different culture to trigger post-trip blues.

I’ve experienced the post-trip blues after just a weekend canoe trip with my kids. We’d share so much together in just three days—returning to toys, tantrums and telephones would bring about a good cry, wishing life could always be as good as it just was on the river.

Clinical psychologist Linda Blaire recommends scheduling your return home from a big trip on a Friday.

“It takes a good three days to wind down, so likewise it will take you a bit of time to re-immerse yourself in real life,” Blair writes in The Key to Calm: Your Path to Mindfulness and Beyond.

Great advice for extended trips, but what do we do when the trip itself is from Friday to Sunday?

There’s a reason why we linger at take-outs, putting off the long drives to Sunday dinners. Sometimes a beer on the tailgate and 20 more minutes of camaraderie is all the happy-sad buffer we need. Sometimes it is the long, lonely drive home with the right playlist. For an extended trip, my happy-sad recovery place is my gear room. The hanging, folding, scrubbing and stuffing of gear is my therapeutic buffer. I’m also packing away my memories. This phase is both closure and preparation for life’s next adventure.

Most of us returning from paddling trips have temporary difficulty adjusting and coping upon our return. With time and good self-care, we usually settle in. If the symptoms get worse, last for months, or interfere with your day-to-day functioning, I suggest another alternative. Turn to pages 62, 120, 162 or 182, and self-medicate by beginning the cycle all over again. Repeat as often as required.

Scott MacGregor is the publisher and founder of Paddling Magazine.

The World Is Different. Paddle Forever

Scott MacGregor

February 5, 2019

“I’m not about to sit here in my duct taped plastic desk chair and predict the future of this magazine, but I do have a few ideas,” I wrote 20 years ago in my very first Off The Tongue in Rapid. I was 27 years old. The editorial was written, like this one, the night before the magazine went to press. I didn’t have a five-year plan. Hell, I didn’t have a one-year plan.

I couldn’t have then imagined my dream would evolve to include Adventure Kayak, Canoeroots and the Reel Paddling Film Festival. Kayak fishing wasn’t really a thing yet, so the idea of Kayak Angler certainly hadn’t crossed my mind. And standup paddling was still something kids were taught never to do in boats.

We Originally Created Paddling Magazine Back In 2013

The great content we were producing for Rapid, Adventure Kayak, Canoeroots and Kayak Angler was only being enjoyed by readers of those individual magazines. Too bad, we thought. So we took the best stories from the four titles, wrote a bunch of exclusive stuff each month and published it to our apps.

Paddling Magazine has grown to become our most successful digital title. It is our top-selling single issue and has the most digital subscribers. How can this be?

Things are different now

Years ago whitewater rodeo teams drove pimped-out white limos. Sea kayaking was stuffy, but huge. Recreational kayaking didn’t yet exist. Paddlers at the time put themselves into one camp and one camp only. They read only one of our magazines.

Today, Jackson Kayak’s company president, and the most decorated whitewater athlete of all time, Eric Jackson now spends as much time landing largemouth bass as he does landing whitewater freestyle tricks. Dagger makes touring kayaks. Canoeing is booming again. Perception doesn’t make whitewater kayaks at all; it makes recreational kayaks and paddleboards. Wave Sport is gone. Necky is gone. Liquidlogic put a hatch and a skeg on a whitewater kayak and called it a crossover.

The World Is Different Now

Millennials, the next generation of paddlers, don’t like to pigeonhole themselves like we did years ago. As a cohort they are less likely to be hard-core enthusiasts of anything, rather doers of everything. They too are more likely to read Paddling Magazine.

This spring we launched a readership survey. We asked thousands of subscribers and friends on social media why they paddle. We expected wildly different motivations from longtime readers of the different magazines. But the most popular reasons were pretty much the same. Fun. Freedom. Adventure. Exploration. Connection.

Yes, things are different.

There is a fantastic alumni of editors who have been making our magazines, newsletters and websites for the last two decades. There are canoe and kayak companies, gear brands and outfitters who have advertised in every single issue. We have readers who tell me they have every single issue we’ve ever produced. Some of these folks are going to ask me why this evolution has taken so long. Others will be sad with this change. Some may have already stopped reading this editorial to begin writing me letters.

Nobody Likes Change. I Get It. I Get It More Than Anyone. Rapid Media Is My Life

We’re bringing our long-time columns and your favorite writers together into distinctly branded sections of Paddling Magazine. You get your favorite magazine plus at least two more.

We created this model six years ago when we launched our Paddling Buyer’s Guide—the largest and best-selling paddling magazine of all time. And again this year when we launched our Paddling Trip Guide, on its way to becoming another best-selling paddling magazine.

I didn’t know when I walked into the Lone Star Bar & Grill that friends would suggest a couple young raft guides should start a whitewater magazine.

I Also Didn’t Know After The Recent Early Summer Issues Of Rapid, Adventure Kayak And Canoeroots I’d Soon Be Putting Them Together Into One

I may have written nostalgic eulogies for each. I certainly would have printed a few extra copies. What I do know is, when I get new ideas in my head I can’t let them go.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling book Blink he writes about successful army generals making strategic decisions with limited information. In war games, these army generals go with their gut feelings to beat super computers crunching millions of factors with thousands of possible combinations and permutations. Moving, is always better than not moving. Once the plan is rolling it’s possible to change course when new information crosses the war room or editorial table.

I don’t have all the answers. I never have. But this move feels right in my gut. I’m excited about the new Paddling Magazine.

Twenty years ago in that first Off The Tongue editorial I also wrote, “As Rapid matures it will take on many different forms, constantly changing, evolving and striving to be the best paddling magazine possible.” Maybe things aren’t changing all that much after all.

Paddle Forever

Scott MacGregor is the founder and publisher at Rapid Media.

How David Jackson Became A Paddling Cliche

David Jackson

February 5, 2019

David Jackong walking away from his yellow canoe beside a lake in Canada

In the final moments before sunrise, little plumes of smoke escaped my coughing fire, billowing into the morning mist. Steam from my cracked coffee mug drifted and swirled above the inky river spilling past the little outcropping of rock serving as a home for one brief evening.

I hadn’t bothered to set up my tent. The poles were broken anyways, and the nights were free of bugs in the crisp, early October air. My gear lay heaped and exhausted beside the overturned canoe, which had warded off a heavy and wet fog overnight. I took a final sip of coffee and scoffed at the cliche that was my campsite.

I recalled romantic dreams of my youth—the overturned canoe for shelter, a blanket of stars, the solo paddler alone in the dawn’s fog.

David Jackson questions what is Cliche

But At This Point, What Was Cliche? More than six months earlier, the Pacific Ocean faded behind me as Mike Ranta and I hauled our canoes toward the towering continental divide. He was on his third coast-to-coast solo canoe expedition and I was on my first. A shadow beside a living legend, I was a conduit and lens to share his journey with the world.

Luck, however, was nowhere to be found on this trip.

Through British Columbia we portaged over 1,000 kilometers and paddled just 200. In the prairies, Lake Winnipeg took 30 days to traverse in pitiless winds. Times were idyllic through the pristine Boundary Waters, but Lake Superior was angry with our late summer arrival, and she let us know it.

After two weeks of delicate and sometimes life threatening maneuvers through gales and squalls, I listened to what I knew each hammering wave echoed. On a year marred by unpredictable weather events and with fall fast approaching, this was no place for two tiny canoes.

My father arrived to Superior’s north shore, plucking me from the fitful lake and dropped me on the shore of a windy Lake Huron.

I Continued Alone From There, 700 Kilometers By Paddle To My Home Just South Of The Ottawa River. As sunrise began to peak from behind tall pines, I looked at my battered canoe and the duct tape on my swollen hands. I kicked a little at the coals before dousing them in river water, cringing as their sizzle screamed for another breath. It was time to go.

As I loaded the canoe, I wondered which rapids I might paddle up today and which falls I might haul my load around. For the most part, I was alone and mapless on the French River. I was reading the currents and each stroke took me a little farther along the ancient story of its banks.

I loaded my last bag and pushed out into the vanishing fog, rubbing my eyes and mustering a half-hearted smile before taking my first stroke. On The Morning Of My 24th Birthday, I Had Become The Cliche Of My Childhood Dreams.

Digital extra: See more from David Jackson’s journey paddling alongside Canada’s last voyageur, Mike Ranta.

How Investment Preserves Kayaking Destinations

Neil Schulman

February 5, 2019

several sea kayakers at the bay of a lake

We open Antonio’s van and a mountain of gear disgorges itself. Stinky sprayskirts, leftover food, sandy tents, water bags and kitchen gear from 11 people for 10 days on the west coast of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula. We throw it in a pile and eat dinner.

The next day a small army descends on the patio. Carlos leads a systematic washing, drying and re-sorting of every pump, cockpit cover and drybag. Isabel sorts and stows leftover food and kitchen gear. Idalia cleans kayaks, carefully noting every gelcoat ding to be repaired later. Rapid-fire Spanish flies across the patio. Marcos uses gestures to show the sole gringo—that’s me—his system for washing, drying and storing gear. The people flitting about the Loreto-based shared house and kayaking nerve center all have jobs guiding, coaching, managing equipment, tracking rentals and keeping the website and social media of this small locally owned and operated business running.

Only one of the employees is the classic itinerant young sea kayak guide hopping between seasonal stints in Baja, Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. The other 13 are locals with deep ties here.

This means their money—and their love of place—sticks around.

If you want to preserve wild coasts to paddle, follow those paychecks

We didn’t see any other kayaks in Magdalena Bay on our 10-day trip. It’s dominated by a deepwater port and commercial fishing, with a few whale watching tours thrown in. We saw commercial fishermen in pangas and monstrous fishing hulks with onboard helicopters. What should have been ideal beach camps were awash in discarded fishing gear and crab traps, as well as the odd sea turtle skeleton.

Marcos hopes kayaking will one day bring more environmental stewardship to this area where he grew up.

Outdoor lovers and environmentalists have long seen ecotourism as a way to reframe the tired zero-sum debate between preserving wild places and generating jobs. If a community can sustain itself through paddling, surfing or climbing—instead of logging or mining—governments are more likely to see value in those wild places and safeguard them. Costa Rica is an often trotted example. Moab, Utah is another success story—a uranium-mining town in the ’80s and now the outdoorsy capital of Utah red rock.

The economic impact of outdoor recreation is enormous, but decentralized. Despite outdoor recreation consumers contributing $887 billion to the American economy in 2016, it’s hard to convince policymakers and locals alike of the economic magnitude of many tiny transactions, like a tank of gas and a meal on the way to the put-in. However slowly, the tide is turning in our favor.

Oregon just created a statewide Office of Outdoor Recreation. The Outdoor Retailer trade show moved from Utah to Colorado in protest over Utah’s environmental policies, taking $45 million with it.

The 11 kayaks plying Baja’s Magdalena Bay is a long way from there, but it paid for Antonio to shuttle us over the Sierra Giganta and back, and for hotels and meals in San Carlos, and a support panga.

Hopefully, our trip sent out a few ripples toward preserving Magdalena Bay too

As I cleaned gear, a story from a conservation colleague in Portland came to mind. In a committee hearing about clean water regulations, employees from nurseries growing native plants for restoring natural areas showed up. They could have talked about how they cherished wild places and clean water but they didn’t.

Instead, they said they had good jobs restoring the environment, and clean water regulations were essential to keeping these jobs. Politicians—who had heard the old environmental debates a million times—suddenly perked up. When Marcos, Carlos and Isabel describe what they do and why, they can talk the same way. When Deep Throat said to follow the money, he was right.

Neil Schulman has followed the money—figuratively, if not literally—during two decades of conservation work in the Pacific Northwest.

Would You Rent Out Your Paddling Gear For Cash?

Tim Shuff

February 5, 2019

man wearing an orange pfd looking at boats — I get by with a little help from my friends. | Photo: Lior + Lone

Last year an acquaintance of an acquaintance, named Robert, emailed me to ask if he could borrow our three-seater family canoe. I’m ashamed to admit I balked.

I’ve had too many uncomfortable experiences sharing and borrowing stuff. I’m pretty lackadaisical with looking after my own equipment—it’s made to be used, right?

But I’m always worried about what will happen when I loan gear or borrow it from others. I’ve too often received things back damaged, or felt tormented about the wear and tear I inflict on the gear of others.

If I found 100 other people and we pooled our money we’d have an annual gear budget of $300,000.

I once borrowed a new sledgehammer and scuffed the handle with a missed swing, but then felt awkward when I returned the tool with a bottle of wine worth more than the tool itself. Another time I borrowed a friend’s cheap indoor bike trainer and wore it out training for an Ironman. I paid them full price for it and then threw it in the garbage, wishing I’d just bought myself a good one in the first place.

I think sharing expensive outdoor equipment is a great idea in principle – but what happens when high-value items are lost or damaged?

“An outfitter would probably not charge as much for replacement as it would cost me, so there is a greater financial risk to both of us in a private rental,” I replied to Robert.

In hindsight I’m ashamed for being so uptight. I feel like a hypocrite because I know the outdoor recreation community could do a much better job of sharing. The fact outdoor enthusiasts collectively spend $120 billion a year on gear, which sits unused most of the time, is both colossally inefficient and bad for the planet.

Wouldn’t it be smart to have a communal gear garage where all this equipment exists and is owned collectively?

Thanks to a new competitive paddleboarding habit, I easily spend $3,000 a year on paddling gear. If I found 100 other people and we pooled our money we’d have an annual gear budget of $300,000.

It exists in other competitive sports. Why is there no equivalent equipment sharing model for sea kayaking, canoeing or paddleboarding?

This sort of sharing is already being done by organizations. When I was studying outdoor recreation at university, there was a gear library where students could sign out equipment for personal trips. During a month housesitting in Eugene, Oregon, I joined the University of Oregon outdoor club and dropped in on a multi-day rafting trip down the Rogue River—no personal gear required.

Competitive sports like rowing and canoe racing have membership structures providing access to a fleets of club boats. Why is there no equivalent equipment sharing model for sea kayaking, canoeing or paddleboarding?

With the sharing economy taking off, why not develop a web platform to mediate gear sharing, like an Airbnb for kayaks and canoes? This was the plan of the Boston-based entrepreneurs Mike Brown and James Rogers, who launched GearCommons.com in 2013 to help outdoor enthusiasts rent gear to each other. The fledgling company got lots of media traction—everyone thought it was a great idea. The entrepreneurs signed up users with a collective $1 million of outdoor gear available for rent.

The problem was, nobody ever used it.

After two years, the pair abandoned the failed start-up noting a lack of equipment is only the second biggest problem keeping people from getting outdoors. Number one is lack of time.

In a postmortem chronicle of the company’s rise and demise, Brown concludes, “The two-sided marketplace model was high friction and required large amounts of time from both sides; renter and owner—request, approval, emails, texts, pickup, return, etc.” In other words, their solution to the gear problem made the time crunch even worse.

There’s another option out there for sharing called the Library of Things, which is essentially a non-profit rental business centred around the values of community and sustainability. There are examples all over the world, including near my home. What started as the Toronto Tool Library has successfully expanded into SharingDepot.ca, a downtown storefront lending out camping gear, including tents, tarps, stoves and coolers for a nominal membership or borrowing fee.

The idea has potential but most of the gear is suited to first-time or occasional users, not outdoor aficionados, and not likely readers of this magazine.

I want to suggest we all jump on board this idea, set up a library of things for outdoor gear in our communities.

The thing is, I really like owning my own gear.

[ View the largest selection of boats and gear in the Paddling Buyer’s Guide ]

Maybe it’s because wilderness-based recreation has always been partly about getting outside the sandbox of organized sports; for me, having gear to call my own is part of the libertarian appeal. It means I can go when I want with the gear I want.

There’s really nothing wrong with buying the gear you love and use most often. As financial planning guru Gordo Byrn blogged recently, “The best deals I’ve done are where I’ve traded money for time.” And as the GearCommons founders learned the hard way, there’s nothing more time-efficient than owning your own gear.

I think the best way to share gear is to let it happen organically.

Just as we’ve learned the perils of relying on Silicon Valley to mediate our face-to-face friendships, our gear sharing conundrum will not be solved by some tech-savvy millennials and their venture capital backers in a downtown loft, but the system that’s already in place, and always has been.

Another paddler in my neighbourhood recently invited me to demo two expensive new race paddleboards he’d borrowed from the local shop. We were joined by another friend, so between our own boards and the demos we had a quiver of five boards to test ride, no waivers or small print user agreements required.

After paddling for a few hours I had a whole different feeling than the physical buzz I get from paddling alone.

[ Also Read: Why A New Boat Won’t Make You Happier ]

It was a warm glow of connection, of not being the only crazy person this side of Nebraska who is out dodging ice floes on the Great Lakes in February. I also learned about board design and picked up a few paddling tips. This just goes to show how quickly and easily you can expand your gear closet and combat social isolation at the same time.

I propose we build on our existing strengths as an outdoor community and go completely analog, building the million-dollar gear shed the traditional way, through good old fashioned face-to-face relationships.

As for my interaction with Robert, he responded to my reflexive paranoia with true class. After his trip he sent me a picture of his whole family paddling in the canoe he rented. He also invited me to come out paddling and try his surf kayak. I may not be posting my own gear for rent on the internet anytime soon, but the next time Robert asks to borrow my canoe, I’ll say yes.

Tim Shuff is the former editor of Adventure Kayak magazine and works as a firefighter and ice rescue instructor in Toronto. See the Pyranha Octane he borrowed from Paddling Magazine.

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