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.
