Here’s a short edit of the same run I posted yesterday, but from the vantage of the canoe.
Whether it’s continuous class IV in a creekboat or class II in this new canoe, catching eddies and dodging rocks on a shallow creek is definitely my happy place. It’s like playing an incredibly beautiful video game and the constant twisting and bending and balancing is like a yoga or Pilates workout but without the infinite boredom.
For health reasons, I’ve only been able to paddle moving water a handful of times in the past 10 years, so being on a river was a pretty emotional experience. Like being able to breathe for a few minutes after what feels like an eternity in prison. Beautiful to be out, but hard to go back in the cage.
I really wish I could do more of this type of thing. It’s really gratifying getting to know a whole different branch of paddle sports. As a kayaker I always saw canoes as slow, heavy, bulky, and far less capable, but it turns out there’s magic here that relates to something beyond just the most efficient tool to accomplish a particular task.
Almost because of the limitations that a canoe imposes, it feels like I’m drawn more into the intricacies of how to make the boat and the water cooperate with each other. For reasons that I don’t fully understand, there’s also a deeper sense of peacefulness in a canoe than I have experienced as a kayaker. The exception being anytime I try to paddle one into the wind!
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