1 thought on “Paddling”

  1. Most kayakers are fair weather, easy-day boaters. They are not the thrill seeking, moving water, show boaters you see going over waterfalls in the magazines and YouTube videos. They are just regular folks enjoying a day off. It drives me crazy that when anyone in the media wants a sensational photo of paddling they go straight for the extreme, helmet clad, crazy boater that is about to make a hundred foot descent, and in the process dislocating his shoulder or whatever. This is a misrepresentation. It is not what most paddlers do, just like climbing vertical cliffs is not a true depiction of what backpackers do in the wilderness.

    One time at work I told a couple of engineers in the hallway that I was a kayaker. They immediately jumped to the conclusion that I thought that going over a waterfall was a cool thing to do. When I explained to them that going over a waterfall in a heavily loaded sea kayak was not at all what I considered the sport to be about they looked puzzled. “I’ve got 2 gallons of water, 4 days food and all of my clothes and sleeping gear in there. I’m not going over a waterfall. That’s utter idiocy.” It shut down the conversation.

    In the early 2010s I was featured in a Wenonah canoe advertisement going through a small drop on a creek in a Wenonah Rendezvous, a Royalex canoe designed for moving water. I gleefully took that copy of the canoe magazine around to my friends to show them my featured mug in the Wenonah ad. On the opposite page however was a picture of a kayaker poised to make a drop over a waterfall. The misconception just could not be escaped.

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