On several mornings and some evenings for the past two weeks, I have remained about 280 miles from my garage and my bikes, and so my quest for solitude and movement have been fulfilled instead by a paddle and canoe rather than the powerful steel and rubber of a motorcycle.
I traded the frenetic sounds and chaotic traffic scenes of the city streets for those of an incredibly serene lake, the softening morning and evening calls of loons, the nearby warning splashes of beavers as they busily prepare for the fall and winter months, and ... well, you get the idea. Just lovely.
In movement there is truth, and the paddle and canoe had no less to teach me than the throttle and bars, it seems.
At first, there were the practical lessons of balance while moving a solo canoe across the lake. The immediate and obvious imbalance (of a single person in the back of a canoe) I quickly resolved with a stuff sack full of river rocks pushed far up the bow. The rocks kept the full keel line mostly in the water from bow to stern, and gave my canoe the ability to track straight lines with every stroke. The other lessons, however, only came with some effort.
I next learned appreciate how movement across a windy lake is really a dance with four things:
the wind itself,
the 'sail' that the large broadside of the canoe presents to the wind,
the paddle stroke, and
the bow point or tip direction of the canoe.
Although I am powerful enough to stroke through a strong crosswind and keep the canoe generally swinging across upwind and downwind vectors in my desired direction of travel, all the wild swinging left and right was wasting a lot of energy and seemed pointless. A much better strategy turned out to be to just let the wind have its way, and keep the tip of the canoe pointed directly INTO the oncoming wind blast. With the wind traveling evenly across both left and right sides of the canoe, moving forward directly into the wind was mostly the same on a windy day as on a still weather day. Progress forward was easy, even if the direction wasn't perfect.
Only once I reached a convenient wind shadow cast by an upwind cliff or hill or grove of trees would turning crosswind likewise be effortless, and then I would just let the crosswind push me to my final destination. Once you're upwind, you have the advantage over both wind and position, and you can use both to your advantage.
Then came the less obvious lessons that only several hours of paddling would teach a novice: how to use a bent paddle to its fullest advantage. At first I thought the bend in the paddle was simply to keep the paddle more vertical and facing the mass of water as I pulled through each stroke on either side of the canoe. Without knowing more about this, and because I was going alone, even on a windless day the canoe was still constantly swinging its bow left and right, left and right, as I struggled to keep it generally tracking in any given direction by paddling from both left and right sides as evenly as possible.
But then something awesome happened: I finally got tired of paddling!
As the muscles powering my paddle stroke weakened, a few of these strokes just plain ran out of steam before I reached the full length aft. As more of my strokes got sloppy and stopped short, I started noticing the bent paddle itself acting as a kind of 'rudder', one that applied a small sideways force vector to the canoe (mostly depending on how sloppy my power stroke turned out to be).
The next morning, I decided to try to apply this sideways force vector to the paddle intentionally, and well, voila! I was now able to paddle from either side of the canoe and keep the bow moving perfectly straight through the water. I could simply paddle and control the canoe perfectly from either side with a simple twist of the wrist near the end of my stroke. My paddle was now acting as both motor and rudder simultaneously as I moved it through the full length of each stroke, and this meant I was suddenly MUCH more efficient at moving the canoe forward, regardless of prevailing weather.
Awesome!
So, these were the practical lessons - but what of the bigger meaning of all this? That is what I asked myself as I cast a rod into the crystal clear blue lake and drifted along on many mornings.
Well, we all get pushed around by the 'winds' of life - all of us, without exception.
If we try to steer away from the eye of the storm, either left or right, even just a little bit, we just end up creating more work for us as we try to move in any such direction and get pushed even further off-track by powerful forces. The fastest and surest way through any difficult wind is to charge directly into it. I really think that's true for life in and out of the canoe.
As to the tool I already had in my hand, the paddle itself, I think we often underestimate how life's experiences teach us to use the tools we have at our disposal differently and, in particular, much more effectively. That's the real benefit to any substantial experience, I think - experience teaches us to be better and do better with what we already have.
The other lesson I learned, on a personal level, is that the movement is more important to me than the environment. I am learning that movement facilitates the lessons I need to learn, regardless of the medium I am immersed within.
So... I frankly learned a lot (just as much?) from a simple canoe and a wooden paddle on a quiet lake, as much as if I had just put to ponder a couple hundred miles on Sunshine or Burt across crowded cityscapes and countless rural bends.
Movement really *is* the thing.
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