I am surrounded by beauty. The still aqua water lies like a sheet of smooth glass, stretching farther than the eye can see. Sharp, craggy rocks jut out from a dense line of trees along the shore. As we travel slowly by motorboat up and down Lake Laberge, we are encased in raw, natural history—brought to life by our guide, Mark Stenzig, who recites The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Service.

“…But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.”

If there is a more fitting introduction to the Yukon, I can’t think of one. It’s day two of al- most a weeklong adventure covering The 11th Annual Yukon River Quest (YRQ): Race to the Midnight Sun—an epic 740-kilometre canoe and kayak race beginning in Whitehorse and ending in Dawson City.

I’ve travelled 5,500 kilometres from Toronto to be here with a handful of other media. But racers have come from across the globe to take part in what is the longest race of its kind. Some seasoned veterans arrive well in advance to rest and set up, aided by friends and family. Others cut it fine, like the teams I am following, who pull in with just over a day to spare, kayaks strapped tightly to a rented SUV and no entourage in sight.

I met Peter Whaley, Jamie Playfair and Matt Gunning a few days earlier at one of the rest points in their long journey from Halifax to Whitehorse. Just three regular guys looking to finish the race within the four allotted days. Twenty hours into their drive, they are giddy with fatigue but pumped at the thought of racing with 72 other teams made up of 171 paddlers—each of whom will be navigating the same historic wilderness route of the Klondike gold seekers, in search of their own gold.

Night air cascades down the Giganta Mountains and out to sea. It’s a cold and starry launch at 4:48am onto the blue- sparkling water. The bow cuts a neon line and paddle blades punctuate the bioluminescence. A shooting star slashes the heart of Scorpius and is forgiven. cancer the crab hides quiet over my shoulder in a crevice of the sky, in the company of mars.

Walk with hips. Push forward, extend the catch. Pop the exit.

Away from the mountain wind, I’m sweating now, working the technique, mesmerized by the sparkles of my passage and the occasional reflection of Antares on a broken piece of sea. In the star shadow of Danzante Island, waves on shallow rocks make flames of leaping blue. Fish stir nebulous galaxies in the deep.

First leg: four nautical miles, 56 minutes.

Scorpius’ tail is lost in the pre-dawn glow where the moon should be showing its last thin crescent. Another shooting star writes its story on the night page with disappearing ink and is forgotten.

Morning paddles around Danzante Island are my training runs. Start in darkness, transition into day, timing the loop so the sun is never in my eyes. Eleven nautical miles, almost three hours of paddling in paradise before breakfast. It’s exercise. It’s meditation. It’s freedom. It’s a celebration of nature and health. A song of thankfulness belted out from every muscle of my body, to the rhythm of the sea.

An orange cream horizon is broken by distant islands, monserrate and catalina. Over monserrate a light appears, a fire, growing taller. I turn to watch a fragile, curving tower emerge from the black island silhouette. I cheer for its perfection. The crescent moon climbs, chased by dawn, and I paddle on.

Second leg: four nautical miles, 53 minutes. Slight current assist.

A fin breaks the water close to the rocks. Dolphin. A pod of them. Several little puffs of breath, backlit in front of a shadowed cliff. A baby surfaces beside its mother, an arc of grace and playfulness. I stop paddling to drift and they come around on both sides, moving slowly in the same direction. One grey adult floats on the surface for a few moments, curious. They swim along with me, then outpace me, then circle away. What fluid power. What simplicity to move like whispers through the water carrying everything they need without a single drybag.

Somehow I never struggle to justify my existence when I am on the water. Later in the day I will sit behind a computer in the office growing a sallow-eyed patina of grumpiness despite intentions to the contrary. But right now, this is soul food. This is contentment.

Contentment is a lifestyle, a choice. It feels like joy, ripened slowly on the vine. Contentment is a state of mind cultivated gently out of rocky soil. contentment is acceptance that what is, is just right.

I turn for home, around the north point of Danzante. The mountains before me glow with sunrise. Posture up, hands high. Work the core. Time melts away and the feeling inside is right.

Ginni Callahan is a sea kayak guide on the Sea of Cortez, Mexico, in winter and on the Columbia River and Oregon coast in the summer. She owns Columbia River Sea Kayaking and Sea Kayak Baja Mexico. 

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2010 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

I love kayaking. Which is great. But I also love kayaking gear, which is a love with far more sinister consequences. In fact, at a recent social gathering (people referred to it as “an intervention” for some reason) my friends even claimed that I love kayaks too much, and that the desire to acquire more and more boats can be a slippery slope.

Classical addiction in individuals is characterized by “compulsive desire, loss of the ability to control the dose, and persistence despite ad- verse consequences to themselves and others.” A classical addiction to gear manifests itself as what I now refer to as GAS, or Gear Acquisition Syndrome.

You know you have GAS when:

• You own enough kayaks and gear to run a commercial kayak touring company, despite the fact that you do not own a commercial kayak touring company.
• You keep purchasing more and more kayaks, but never sell one.
• Your backyard’s perimeter is effectively fenced by kayak racks.
• You stock more boats and gear than your local paddlesports retailer.
• Other paddlers come to your house to “see the fleet” as if visiting a major museum collection.
• You find yourself in desperate negotiations with your bank manager, seriously trying to sell him on the idea of accepting a kayak in lieu of the more traditional cash mortgage payment.
• Your wife routinely shouts things like “it’s me or those damned boats!” before departing on protracted visits to her mother.

Consider my own behaviour as a case study. I was recently browsing used kayaks online, as I often do. I find idly skimming through the ads both interesting and oddly soothing. Used-Victoria.com, craigslist, MEC’s Online Gear Swap—they’re all good for a quick fix. I wasn’t jonesing for another boat (after all, I have a garage full of them), but it’s always interesting to know what’s available. And besides, it’s a totally harmless diversion. I waste a little time, but I’m not buying anything, right?

Then I noticed a classic Nordkapp for sale. I’d always been curious about the original Nordkapps. Some say that once you’ve tried one you’re hooked for life.

It was like showing a marijuana cookie to a Grateful Dead fan.

I revisited the ad the following day purely as an act of academic curiosity, and amazingly, a full 24 hours later, the ad was still there. And the price had actually been reduced!

Reduced? This was like what crack did for cocaine prices. my pupils dilated, my pulse raced and I broke out in a cold sweat.

I thought that perhaps I just might call the seller, if I had time. Even though I wasn’t going to buy anything.

As luck would have it, I did happen to have a lull in my day in which to call the seller repeatedly, and after a great many attempts I finally managed to talk to him and arrange a time to see the boat. Purely out of curiosity, understand. I did not wish to waste the gentleman’s time. After all, I wasn’t in the market for another boat.

I cut work and headed over.

Now, it’s obvious that travelling across town, with cash in hand, in a vehicle equipped with racks, to see a used kayak that is for sale, but with no intention of purchasing it, is an awful lot like going to a whorehouse and expecting only to get kissed.

I of course bought the boat. But as we huddled in this man’s dingy garage and I laboriously counted out a stack of crumpled bills and change that I had filched from our holiday savings jar, I had a moment of clarity.

Acknowledging the fact that you have a problem is the first step.

To paraphrase what they say at AA meetings: “Hello, my name is Alex, and I love kayaks”. 

The traditional image of sea kayaking is idyllic floats on mirror-calm water. Filmmaker Justine Curgenven famously began This Is The Sea, tongue in cheek, with “Ah, sea kayaking. Old men with beards, enjoying nature.” But that’s all changing.

A rough-water trend has been growing con- tinent-wide. Take the Lumpy Water Sympo- sium, a new event organized last October by Oregon’s Alder creek Kayak and canoe. Held amidst a nasty recession, with equally nasty conditions—strong winds and big choppy surf—the event sold out, with a waiting list. And it was dominated by new folks.

Nor is the trend limited to the West Coast. The Maine Island Kayak company has an intermediate-level Rough Water Symposium planned for June 2010 in Rhode Island. Ontario has the three-year-old Georgian Bay Storm Gathering as well as Naturally Superior Adventures’ Surfing Superior confluence. British Columbia’s Coast Mountains Expeditions is planning their first-ever “whitewater sea kayak” festival in Surge Narrows in June of 2011.

This isn’t the first time that sea kayaking has ventured down the rough-water path. The legendary Gales of November gathering, organized by Stan Chladek on Lake Superior’s North Shore, just celebrated its 24th anniversary. Fifteen years ago we had the Tsunami Rangers, a frenetic group of california pad- dlers wearing motocross body armour and addressing each other by naval rank. But the old-school focus on extreme sea kayaking and the resulting carnage never caught on.

So why the renewed interest in the rough stuff? Some attribute it to the popularity of video productions by the likes of Justine Curgenven and Bryan Smith, or the growth of the British canoe Union’s instructional system, influenced by its homeland of strong tidal cur- rents and exposed waters. Other factors include the growing variety of nimble, highly rockered boats increasingly available in plastic that ap- peal to budget-conscious rock-bashers. As with any trend, it’s tough to sift cause from effect.

Busy schedules may also be a factor.“People seem to have less time to take extended trips, so they compensate by packing a lot of paddling excitement into a smaller challenging, thrilling and satisfying daily package,” says David Wells of Naturally Superior Adventures.

Also, where the Tsunami Rangers and the Gales of November were invitation-only gatherings of elite professional paddlers, this new crop of events isn’t just for the top level. “The biggest reason we had success was the inclusive nature,” says Paul Kuthe, an instructor at Lumpy Waters whose talents appear in Bryan Smith’s Pacific Horizons and The Season. “We provided something for all skill levels and made sure people knew that they would be successful whatever their goals.”

Not everyone agrees that the rough-water trend is the future of sea kayaking. Dave Slover, owner of Alder Creek Kayak and canoe, notes that “of the thousands of boats we have sold over the years very few people move on to paddle in rough conditions.” But kayaking in general is growing. According to the Outdoor Industry Foundation, the number of kayakers nearly doubled from 2006 to 2008. So even if the percentage seeking aerated water remains the same, it’s on a sharp upward trend that may be approaching critical mass.

And with much of the North American coast guarded by surf, rough-water experience opens a huge door. The next question is: What does it take to nurture and sustain a strong rough-water sea kayaking community?

The obvious elements are access to condi- tions and good instruction. But there’s more. “Successful rough-water communities develop when opportunities for growth and skill build- ing are combined with beer and socializing,” says Kuthe. “Kayaking is similar to Harley motorcycle gangs in that the people that par- ticipate don’t just think of themselves as people that kayak. They are kayakers.”

So venturing into rough conditions may forge sea kayaking from recreation to passion and then to identity. Keep it up and maybe someday we’ll need leather jackets as well as drysuits.

“It always annoys me when people think of sea kayaking as boring,” Kuthe says before leaving for yet another rough-water symposium under the Golden Gate Bridge, where he’ll no doubt show people otherwise. 

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2010 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

For nearly 30 years, the great rivers, lakes and forests in my beautiful home province of New Brunswick have been telling me stories. They tell tales of patient grandfathers, with their grandsons, baiting hooks and cleaning fresh trout, that teach about love and family. They also tell despicable stories about polluters and the ugly things poachers do with spotlights and axes and .410 rifles.

If you listen close enough, the Canadian landscape will reveal to you the truth of your own humanity. For nearly 30 years, I did not listen. In fact, it wasn’t until May 18, 2008, that I was forced to sit up straight and pay attention.

As I was coming about to help my best friend, Jay, who had capsized when a quartering wave caught him trying to fasten his stern hatch, I too flipped over and plunged into the six-degree water of the Kennebecasis River in Rothesay, N.B. where we stayed, clinging to the hulls of our kayaks, for nearly 45 minutes.

When their efforts to help us climb back into our boats failed, my wife, Carrie, and Jay’s wife, Danielle, through their tears, paddled hard into the wind and made for shore in their tandem. By the time the rescue boat reached me, my muscles had begun to seize up and my speech was impaired. The ambulance attendant told me another 20 minutes in the water could have been fatal.

Though it’s almost impossible to glean all that nature has to teach when you’re wrapped up in the present moment of a life or death situation, time can reveal many life-lessons to you about the role our human potential can play within the environment.

For instance, time has provided me with the opportunity to hear Jay’s story of how when the rescue boat stopped to pick him up, he waved them on, telling them to get me first. It has allowed me to watch carrie bravely relive those desperate minutes as she told her story of their stoical, two-kilometre race to shore and the helpless feeling of leaving Jay and I clinging to our kayaks in the middle of that churning river. Furthermore, in the two years since it has happened, I have learned to be more present with the people in my life, particularly with my wife. I’ve discovered that our bond has strengthened because we’ve shared an experience that was so rife with raw human emotion. I don’t remember a time before when either of us had ever been so disarmed and so present with one another. The only other time that has happened since was when our son, Hunter, was born almost a year later.

Henry David Thoreau wrote that “we are enabled to apprehend…what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us.”

I believe that our environment provides opportunities for us to explore the nuances of our own humanity, to discover truthful narratives about ourselves as we evolve within the landscape and, hopefully, by listening to the stories, we might all discover those qualities of beauty and nobility. 

Foodies know that faster is not necessarily better, but do kayakers?

Carlo Petrini founded the Slow Food movement in Italy in 1986 to recapture the pleasure of eating from the incivilities of fast food culture, to “seek a slower and more aware pace of life.”

According to the movement’s founding document, The Slow Food Manifesto: “We are enslaved by speed and have all succumbed to the same insidious virus: Fast Life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes and forces us to eat fast foods…. Homo Sapiens should rid himself of speed before it reduces him to a species in danger of extinction.”

Maybe it’s time for a Slow Kayaking Manifesto. There’s no better time than now, in this issue where we have a feature focusing entirely on going fast.

Hey, I’m not saying I know how to relax. Just ask my wife. She’d tell you to rip out this page and use it to fertilize your vegetables. I have a long history of speed addiction, on and off the water.

That’s why I know that we need to be extra careful not to always carry the hamster wheel mentality of our work lives into our recreation.

In these days of adventure racing mania and the media obsession with speed expeditions (always easier to report on than just another great trip) I think we need to pause to remem- ber the value of going slow.

This summer we are witnessing yet another record attempt around Vancouver Island, with the indefatigable Joe O’Blenis setting out to beat Brit powerhouse Sean morley’s 17-day circumnavigation.

Then we have Freya Hoffmeister for whom it wasn’t enough to be the second person in his- tory, and first woman, to kayak around Australia. She called her expedition a “race” and set out to beat a time set by only one other kayaker a quarter century ago.

Why should the people who go the fastest get all the attention?

Wouldn’t it be better for our sport to be known for its lifestyle, the way surfing is with its culture of Jack Johnson tunes, board shorts and scruffy kids on skateboards—a culture of leisure?

Leisure is the polar opposite of trying to paddle as fast as possible around a landmass. It’s a near spiritual state of mind—a state of play, a creative and meditative mindset. It’s apart from and opposite to the ultra rational state of mind that dominates our everyday lives—in which time is better spent at a desk earning money than it is walking outside breathing fresh air— and dominates our society that values fast cars more than the clean efficiency of bicycles.

I would rather people look at sea kayakers and say, “I want to live like that” than “those dudes are crazy!”

Yes, partly I’m just jealous. When I read about morley or O’Blenis racing around Van- couver Island, I wish I could be there with them. Taking time away to do nothing but paddle is a dream. I’d love to know how fast I could go. And even at top speed, kayaking is still leisure.

But let’s also celebrate our slow side.

In the words of The Slow Food Manifesto: “may suitable doses of guaranteed sensual pleasure and slow, long-lasting enjoyment pre- serve us from the contagion of the multitude who mistake frenzy for efficiency.”

By all means, perfect your stroke, push yourself to the pleasure of exhaustion, but also take rest days. Kick back and read about somebody else’s epic. The coast will wait for you as it always has.  

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2010 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.