Messing about
02/01/14 05:26
Years ago, after a wonderful summer water sports camp that involved, in part, loading canoes onto a trailer over and over again to facilitate small group activities of campers, loading and unloading sailboards and sail boats and a lot of other activities, I woke up one morning with muscle spasms in my back. Having never experienced anything like that before, I felt like a character in a sitcom or a cartoon. I was on the floor of the bedroom and couldn’t figure out how to stand up without excruciating pain. A quick call to our family doctor resulted in a prescription for muscle relaxants and a pain medication. My wife picked up the medicine and I took a single dose of each and crawled into bed.
About 20 hours later I woke up with the vague notion that perhaps the dosage on the medicine had been a bit off. I didn’t feel a need to take any more of the pills and just struggled through a couple of months of recovery with an occasional aspirin. I learned to sit properly and to be very careful about how I lifted things. Once healed, the condition didn’t return for several years. I forgot what I did that set it off again, but I ended up in the clinic and after x rays revealed that there were no structural problems ini my spine there was another prescription, this time for a lower dose of the medicines.
More years passed with an occasional flare up of the problem until one year I obtained a prescription for some physical therapy. It was wonderful! The therapist taught me how to exercise the muscle without causing damage and I learned exercises to strengthen my back. These days, when I feel a twinge in my back I have learned to stop whatever I was doing that was aggravating the condition and do my exercises. The days of back pain sending me to bed seem to be over.
When conditions get icy, I need to be careful to shovel our driveway standing in the same direction as the slope. When I try to shovel sideways the twisting motion is not good for my back. We’ve had plenty of ice this year and I’ve felt the twinge. So I’ve tried to be diligent in my exercises.
Rowing is one thing that I am able to do to strengthen those muscles and avoid discomfort. I have a wonderful rowing machine in my basement. Whereas other machines use rubber straps or hydraulic cylinders to create resistance, this machine has a tank of water with a large paddle that goes around in the water. Along with just the right amount of resistance, I get that soothing water sound. The machine has a comfortable sliding seat and rocking foot braces to keep my body straightly aligned as I row.
I don’t have a sliding seat in my boat, but the motion is not that dissimilar to using the sliding seat. People who haven’t rowed much might think of rowing as an exercise of the arms and shoulders, but it is truly a full body exercise. There is a beautiful and fully engaging symmetry to the motion of rowing. The power behind a stroke starts starts in the legs, flows through the core and out the shoulders and arms to the finger tips holding the oars. Of course my rowing machine doesn’t really have oars, just a simple t-handle that is the right size to feel like oars in the hands.
In a boat, the tension on the oars isn’t always equal because one doesn’t always get the depth just right on both sides at the same time, but when you do get a few perfect strokes, they are very gratifying. The boat slices through the water with just the smallest ripple with each stroke. The energy propels the boat farther and faster than you expect. Of course that perfect, fully fluid stroke is elusive and requires practice, but when it occurs, it is a thing of beauty. Working out on the machine is a bit easier and each stroke seems to be balanced and just right.
Rowing is good for my mind as well. It gives me a break from confused thoughts and yet isn’t so mentally demanding that I can’t let my mind wander. Many creative thoughts and good ideas have come to me while I have been rowing. I have practiced sermons and memorized scripture while rowing.
Kenneth Grahame got it just right in a conversation between Mole and Water Rat in Wind in the Willows:
"Is it so nice as all that?" asked the mole, shyly...
"Nice? It's the only thing," said the Water Rat Solemnly, as he leaned forward for his stroke. "Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."
"Simply messing...about in boats -- or with boats... In or out of 'em it doesn't matter. Nothing seems to matter, that's the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don't; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you've done it there's always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you'd much better not."
"Look here! If you've really nothing else on hand this morning, supposing we drop down the river together and have a long day of it.?”
Simply messing about in boats seems to be good for the spirt, mind and body and has been an important part of my quest for balance in life. The problem right now right here, of course, is that the lake is full of ice. I have a few intrepid kayak paddler friends who get out and play in their boats on the ice, but this simply isn’t the season for rowing in the Black Hills.
So I’ve been rowing on the machine these days. Sometimes I look at pictures from last summer as I row. Most of the time I don’t need pictures to remember and be inspired. After all, I don’t have a destination in mind. I’m simply messing about in boats. And as Ratty said, "Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."