The weather absolutely sucked: torrential rain, skyscraper waterspouts blasting across the inlet, the nearest lighthouse reporting hurricane force gusts. The wind steam-rolled our kayaks down the beach and filled our cockpits with sand. It was so awful that I took out my waterproof camera and snapped a photo, the one printed above. You could’ve almost bet that it would never appear in a magazine.

you don’t see this side of kayaking in our photos very often. In so many places where we paddle, we spend days upon days en- cased in clammy nylon, yet the cliché is the blue-skied slide show that makes everyone say, “You had such beautiful weather!”

To collect photographs is to collect the world, writes susan sontag. and we like to collect beautiful things. “Rain, rain, go away,” we say, and you can see it in our snapshots. Magazines have more fashion photos of sexy beauties and more travel photos of sunny days.

TAKING THE BAD WITH THE GOOD

There’s another reason we have so many fair-weather photos. It’s not just because nobody wants to get their camera wet. It’s because we kayakers can see blue skies and sunsets as what they really are to us—rare moments well earned. We remember the time the sun came out after 72 hours of rain, how good it felt to leave the tent and not get our clothes pasted to our skin. Those are some of our happiest moments. We photograph them because, as the writer Eudora Welty observed, “a good snapshot stops a moment from running away.”

Fair enough. But there’s a risk that every golden image hides the soggy truth that you’ve got to take the bad with the good.

As a skier, I have a theory about bad snow days that also applies to rainy paddling days. I think it’s a numbers game. The more crap days you endure, the more priceless pearls you find. You’ve just got to put in the time.

I don’t ever want to forget that yin and yang, like when I go camping again after months indoors and experience the shock of discomfort: “hey, it’s cold out here. It’s wet, the ground is hard, there are bugs. Why am I here?” I’ll bet it’s just this temptation to flee to the nearest holiday Inn when it dumps on day 1 that turns most people off wilderness, which is too bad because the outdoors needs all the friends it can get.

Next time you’re out in a gale, snap a few photos so you remember the whole story. 

This article first appeared in the Fall 2007 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

Recently I found myself wondering if I was leading a spiritually bankrupt existence. Should I have god in my life? And if so what god? Lord knows there’s a baffling selection. How could I possibly choose?

As with most things, I decided to relate my quest directly to kayaking, posing the following spiritual conundrum: which god (or the given religion’s representative) would make the best paddling partner?

Almost immediately, I ticked Buddha off my list. He clearly wasn’t in the best shape and he’d probably rather sit on the beach and chill than go for a paddle, which is cool, but I guess Buddhism isn’t really for me.

Next I considered Zeus. In Greek mythology he’s the god of the sky, and way too into thunder and lightning to be safe out on the water. He also has an incredibly checkered sexual history, having shagged just about everyone in ancient Greece. Renowned for his erotic escapades (including at least one pederastic relationship), he’s the last deity you would ever want to introduce to your partner, sister, grandfather…anyone. If I were looking for a horn-dog with a god complex, I would hire a kayak guide. Scratch Zeus.

Then I thought, what about Jesus? Great guy—the Son of God and an avid fisherman too. But picture it—you’re in big seas, a couple of miles offshore, desperately trying to get around a headland…and He keeps getting out of His kayak to stretch His legs. You’d feel ridiculous sitting there in your boat with Him striding around atop the angry seas in His goofy sandals. And what about all that kneeling to pray? Seems squarely aimed at canoeists, not kayakers. We sit, we don’t kneel. Forget Jesus.

Mohammed is terrific, but these days he always seems to draw an angry crowd of pissed-off Americans with guns, which is a huge drag. And besides, Islam is predominantly aniconistic, meaning that no visual representations of Mohammed are permitted, so holiday snapshots are right out.

EXPLORING THE INDIAN FAITHS

Next I started exploring Indian faiths: Vishnu and Shiva for instance are very groovy gods, but then it hit me—this was my personal epiphany. I know who the greatest paddling god is! It can be none other than Ganesha. In Hinduism, Ganesha is, according to my spiritual resources (i.e. the Internet) “the Lord of success and destroyer of evils and obstacles. He is also worshipped as the god of education, knowledge, wisdom and wealth.” This is one good guy to have on a trip.

Ganesha is described as having “an elephantine countenance with a curved trunk and big ears, and a huge pot-bellied body of a human being.” Okay, so like Buddha, he doesn’t live at the gym, but he’s the Lord of success, so no problem. And Ganesha has four arms, so we’re talking at least twice the power on a forward stroke, and bombproof braces. Imagine a combination of a low and a high brace both executed at the same time!

Even if he did capsize somehow, if he missed his first roll attempt, the second would be started before he even finished the first. Besides, if he wasn’t into rolling right away, he could just stick his trunk out of the water and breathe as long as he wanted. He could probably even reach his front hatch with that thing—definitely handy for getting at snacks.

Just imagine assisted rescues. While one set of arms would stabilize your kayak, the other would be manoeuvring the boats. He could pluck you from the water with his trunk, whip you back into your seat, and vacuum the water out of your cockpit with his trunk’s powerful suction. Ganesha must be the only paddler with his very own built-in snorkel and bilge pump. And remember, if a god rescues you, then brother, you are SAVED!

Not everything about paddling with Ganesha is going to be easy. It will definitely be a challenge to find a sunhat to fit that elephant head, and the four-armed paddling jacket is almost certainly going to be a special order, but for me, my spiritual journey is at an end. My personal paddling god is Ganesha, the “Lord of success and destroyer of evils”—and a wicked kayaker too. Amen!

Alex Matthews is a Canadian sea kayaker who contemplates the pantheon from a secret location where offended readers won’t be able to find him. 

This article first appeared in the Fall 2007 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

Midway through his solo attempt to circumnavigate Ireland, the scariest thing Sam Crowley had encountered didn’t involve big seas, surf or tidal races. It happened, in Crowley’s words, “on a two-way lane about the width of a bicycle path with a speed limit of 80 kilometres per hour.”

“In many ways it’s safer on the water than on the roads,” says Crowley, a sea kayaker from Marquette, Michigan.

Catching up to Sam by phone in July, it’s not hard to imagine the easygoing, soft-spoken Crowley sipping Guinness in an Irish pub as he talks (with a bit of prodding) about the first quarter of his 2,200-kilometre trip. Despite the fact that he’s been windbound on the southwest corner of the emerald isle for nearly two weeks—all told he’s paddled 18 kilometres in the past 12 days—he’s still optimistic he’ll complete his clockwise circumnavigation before the end of the summer.

If he ever gets back on the water, the next task is an arduous crossing to Skellig Michael, a cliff-bound island with an abandoned 1,200-year-old monastery. Crowley says getting ashore there will involve a “Derek Hutchinson-style seal landing on a concrete pier.” From Skellig Michael, Crowley will continue north up the west coast of Ireland.

If you can convince him to tell you about it, Crowley has an impressive paddling resume including countless British Canoe Union and American Canoe association awards. Crowley and his partner Nancy Uschold run a sea kayak instruction company in Michigan’s upper peninsula. But what really stands out are his many extended trips on lake superior, a crossing of the Baltic sea from Helsinki, Finland, to Stockholm, Sweden, and a circumnavigation of Moresby island in the Queen Charlottes of Canada’s pacific coast.

While Crowley says the Ireland trip was the culmination of five years of planning and “warm-up trips,” the logistics were quite simple: he shut down his sport massage business for the summer, picked up an explorer sea kayak from Nigel Dennis in Wales, took a ferry to Dublin and started paddling.

He says the biggest difference between paddling around Ireland and his previous trips are the people.

“I’m used to places where you don’t see anyone,” says Crowley from a barstool in the town of garnish. “Here you camp on a beach and it’s like a promenade. But the people are so friendly. Earlier tonight a fellow took pity on me and brought me up here for a pint.”

Crowley says the rural Irish people he’s met have taught him the most. “Mostly I’ve learned not to try to keep up with 70- year-old drinking Irishmen, even if they’ve had a head start.” 

This article first appeared in the Fall 2007 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

With utmost respect for my favourite writer, I must disagree with his cranky opinion of backcountry cuisine.

I admit you can take gourmet eating too far. In my restless twenties I went on a guided kayak tour and was appalled by the excesses of what surly guides call a “float and bloat” trip. I remember grilled steaks on the first night, fresh peach shortcake with real whipped cream for dessert. Lunch featured a spread of hard and soft cheeses, charcuterie and two kinds of smoked fish, followed by fresh fruit and homemade chocolate chip cookies. As if that weren’t enough, halfway through the trip the guides paddled back to base to restock the larder and returned with Häagen-Dazs packed in dry ice. With so much time devoted to cooking and eating, we spent all seven days within an hour’s paddle of our starting point. We ate more calories than we burned and put more mileage on our silver- ware than our paddles. i like eating more than most, but that’s not my idea of a sea kayak trip. Edward Abbey would have been appalled.

I respect the gustatory minimalism of the hard-tripping ascetic I once was, but as years go by and my trips get shorter, I am coming around to the gourmet camp. I still have good friends who subscribe to the “food is just fuel” philosophy, but my tastes are diverging from theirs. If you dropped in on a recent trip and watched us unpack our respective lunches, you would see me carefully preparing an open-faced bagel sandwich with smoked oysters and cream cheese while my friend is happily scarfing cold baked beans from a can (“No Name, 66 cents!”).

MAKING THE MEALS COUNT

I see gourmet eating not as an end in itself, but as a reward for a hard day’s paddle, a complement to the fine scenery and amiable company of a trip. Kayak trips are one time in my life when I’m working hard enough to be truly hungry, and since I spend a good half of my time on the water thinking about my next meal, I like to make those meals count.

If I once underestimated the importance of gourmet camping, that all changed six years ago when I went paddling for the first time with my girlfriend. Determined to impress, I pulled out all the stops and served marinated chicken and fresh-baked pumpkin pie on the first night. She still tells the story about how I won her heart with that meal (and complains how my cooking nowadays rarely measures up). We’re getting married a few days after this magazine goes to press. For our honeymoon we’re going on a paddling trip and bringing plenty of good food.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2007 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.