Fate And Friendship From The Seat Of A Kayak

September 25, 2014

My good friend Tom O’Connor first paddled into my ocean more than a decade ago. Self-help gurus often expound on the powerful effects the company you keep can have on your life, counseling disciples to ditch those friends who drag them down, and hold tight to those who lift them up. For me, kayaking has been the gateway to those naturally buoyant characters— enabling me to cultivate friendships that reinforce the things most important to me.

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Fate and friendship from the seat of a kayak

I first became acquainted with Tom (whose name I’ve changed to avoid embarrassing him) through email, when I was working as the editor of this magazine and he was one of many aspiring writers sending me queries about his paddling adventures. Then, one summer I bumped into him on the water.

We were both out for solo kayak trips, and when our paths crossed and we drifted together to chat for a few minutes, it seemed like the most logical thing in the world. Of course we’d run into each other in the middle of nowhere, in kayaks, and immediately start talking as if we’d known each other all our lives.

Paddle beside me and be my friend. | Feature photo: Ryan Creary

Tom moved to the West Coast for journalism school while I was living there, so we often got together for trips. I remember a dozen rounds of cribbage scores scribbled on tattered paper in the dripping winter rain. Naturally we both thought this an acceptable way to spend a February weekend—kayaking in a temperate rainforest, test paddling a leaky demo boat in a five-meter swell, stopping to bail every half hour. Tom was reviewing a hammock that clearly wasn’t made to withstand horizontal winter rains, leaving him to wrap himself in garbage bags every night. Hilarious. We laughed about it then and we laugh about it now.

In thrall to the outdoor culture of the West, I stayed there as a long as I could and then bemoaned the circumstances that brought me back east. Meanwhile, Tom confidently concluded that the maddening city and the wet coast weren’t for him. And also that he didn’t need to finish his master’s of journalism to be a journalist.

He dropped out of studying writing to actually write—something that never occurred to me in half a decade of grad school. When they tried to offer him a fast-track way to finish the degree, just so they could have the honor of calling him an alumnus, Tom politely declined.

He happily moved back to his small northern hometown and built a successful career writing about the land of his roots, wasting no energy wishing to be elsewhere. And that was where our paths ramified in wildly different directions, although we still keep in touch by email and meet once or twice a year to go kayaking.

What would Tom do?

Tom sends emails like people used to in the ‘90s, eschewing social media in favor of proper reports on his ever-wilder adventures. He orders boatloads of books at deep discount off the Internet and updates me on what he’s been reading. All the hours I squander in city traffic, doing dishes or the family’s laundry, he must spend reading. Which might explain why, though he’s a decade younger than me, Tom so quickly surpassed me in wisdom.

Once, after I emailed him that I didn’t know how I’d forgive myself for sacrificing a great travel writing opportunity to stay with my family, he wrote: “Forgive yourself by making the most of this time with your daughter and wife. It sounds hokey, but time goes by way too fast—especially when kids are involved. Do something special with them and write about it.” This was a guy in his mid-twenties offering advice to a guy in his mid-thirties.

Person on a moped with kayak strapped to the back

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Tom’s life has become my compass for how to live simply and focus on the most important things. Last time I drove out to the sticks to visit him, I came home wrung with doubt about how I was spending my days and resolving to apply a What Would Tom Do (WWTD) principle to my life. He so unselfconsciously embodies the dirtbag ethic of living more richly with less stuff, not out of any sort of righteous commitment, but simply because he couldn’t imagine living any other way.

WWTD means not constantly stressing about money, because none of the things I truly love are expensive. Not feeling bad that I don’t have a fancy house with more than one bathroom, or a vacation home like some of my friends (Tom believes second homes are a waste of resources, not surprising since he spends so little time in his first one). WWTD means owning little else but a garage full of kayaks and canoes and a basement full of skis. WWTD means investing more in life experiences and close friendships than in conventional definitions of getting ahead.

If Tom were a petty person, it might have split a rift between us when I admitted that I spend upwards of $1,600 a month on groceries. At my house we sometimes treat ourselves to a $30 salmon fillet from the sustainable fishmonger and an $8 pint of handmade local ice cream, topped off with a premium microbrew or a $22-a-pound, locally roasted, single origin coffee.

a group of whitewater kayakers walk through the forest carrying their boats

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Last time I stayed at Tom’s house we filled our plates with samosas and hummus he’d bought from the culinary students at the local college, adding some rice from his pantry. He pulled a few beers from the back of his fridge that somebody had given him in exchange for a favor. Then he asked, “Do you want to share a tea bag?”

Success is found in following your heart

I joke that Tom is more successful than me at living the life I always wanted. Somewhere along the way he morphed from being my friend to being something more, a touchstone to a roaming existence of wilderness adventure that I once aspired to, the dream of a successful outdoor writing career and all the freedom and excitement that implies.

Even if I can’t keep up to Tom himself, I will always keep up our friendship. His stories are an inspiration; reminding me those dreams aren’t really impossible, they just required different choices than the ones I made. Choices that for me would have been daring and radical, but for Tom came as naturally as breathing.

Waterlines columnist Tim Shuff is a former editor at Adventure Kayak and embraces both the playful and serious sides of paddling.

Cover of the Summer 2014 issue of Adventure Kayak magazine This article was first published in the Spring 2015 issue of Rapid Magazine. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions, or browse the archives.

Paddle beside me and be my friend. | Feature photo: Ryan Creary

What’s In the Canadian Canoe Museum

Canadian Canoe Museum

September 16, 2014

“It’s astonishing just how sophisticated these kayak designs are,” says Canadian Canoe Museum curator Jeremy Ward, gesturing to a wall of elegant Greenland kayaks. “If you look at the influences of these very traditional forms on contemporary touring kayaks, you can see all of the design hallmarks.” The narrow beam, low volume and hard chines that today allow efficient touring and rolling, were originally designed to make the Greenland kayak the ultimate hunting craft. “If you’re hunting narwhal, beluga or seal with a harpoon, to get close enough you need a long, narrow, fast kayak, which is inherently unstable,” explains Ward. “One hand throws the harpoon while the other holds the paddle out to the side to stabilize the kayak.”

Across the room, a display of baidarka from the Western Arctic and Aleutian Islands further illustrates how hunting habits influence kayak design. “Baidarka is not an Aleutian word, it’s Russian,” says Ward. “During the Russian fur trading period, baidarka were used to access the kelp beds and hunt sea otter. This is a very rare three-person baidarka from the late 19th century that may have had a Russian agent overseeing the hunt in the middle cockpit with a paddler at either end.”

The gunwale of this circa 1930s East Hudson Bay kayak frame is composed of several pieces of smaller wood joined together, illustrating the resourcefulness
of early builders and their clever use of available materials. “Working above the treeline, assembling pieces of driftwood into a kayak frame is a tough job,” explains Ward. “You’d be accumulating wood over a long time to get enough to put together a framework.”

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The skins of ringed seals, like this one, were preferred for covering the kayak frame. The cleaned skins were stitched together along waterproof, overlapping seams using braided sinew or, in more recent times, scavenged materials such as dental floss or sewing thread. Once the skins were joined into a sheet, it was stretched tightly around the kayak and sewn along the top.

“We had an Inuk visitor from Greenland who was an avid competitive kayaker, and he said ‘You need to take the skins off of these boats,’” Ward recalls. “When you look at the frame stringers, you can actually see the hull is being compressed by the shrinking of the skin over time. From a traditional user’s point of view, the skin was something that would get worn out or rot, and you would just remove and replace it. But for us to remove the skin is to take away the female contribution to the hull. Typically the framework was made by men, and the skins were sewn together in a stitching party by women. It’s a real community effort to make one boat.”

Along with ever-changing displays, the museum offers hands-on programming for visitors. This model kayak frame is one of five kits created by museum staff for school programs. “We based the design on a Copper Inuit kayak and used mortise and tenon joints and artificial sinew lashing so the kit can be assembled and taken apart many times,” explains Ward.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2014 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine and get 25 years of digital magazine archives including our legacy titles: Rapid, Adventure Kayak and Canoeroots.