Of boats and water
21/10/14 05:17
For now I’m not doing much paddling in the dark. It isn’t that the cold has stopped me. In fact it has been unseasonably warm for most of October. But it is quite dark. In the time slot where I used to watch the sunrise now I get on the water in the dark and get off the water in the dark. It is part of the routine of the seasons around here. I row on a machine in my basement to keep up with my exercise during the winter.
There are days, however, when I can still sneak away to the lake in the middle of the day. Yesterday was one such day. I had a funeral to write and a bit of other work to accomplish, but those things could be set aside in the mid morning so that I could head off to the lake.
It was a perfectly calm lake and paddling was like taking a journey on a mirror. The sun was bright, the air was warm and I had the lake to myself. Most of the boats have been pulled form the water for winter storage. The docks have been pulled up onto the shore and the buoys have been put away for the winter. There were several clusters of mallards on the water, but they could see me coming from a long way off and so gently paddled away from my route without much fuss.
It was a good day for quiet on the water.
I am very familiar with Sheridan Lake. I paddle there dozens of times each year and I’ve been paddling on that lake for a couple of decades. I have paddled in dense fog, in low light and in the dark of night. I know the shoreline and my way around the lake. As such, it is strange to paddle on a perfectly calm day with nearly unlimited visibility. The reflections in the water are so realistic that it seems as if there are two sets of trees and mountains: one reaching up and the other reaching down. The lake appears to be as deep as the sky is high. Of course I know that this isn’t true. Like all mountain reservoirs, the lake is silting in. It gets shallower each year. And there are lots of places where the underwater plants are so tall that they touch the bottom of my boat as I pass. Were I in a motorboat, the weeds would surely clog the propellor. Where I paddle isn’t really deep at all. The reflections are an optical illusion.
The flat lake also does something with perspective when it comes to distances. Something about the reflections in the water or the way that doubling the appearance of the height of the hills makes it more difficult to judge distances as I paddle on the calm. The distance from one side of the lake to the other appears to be larger than it is, but the distance between two points on the horizon appears to be smaller. It is difficult to explain, but it can be mildly disorienting.
There aren’t many deciduous trees near the lake, so the color is pretty much evergreen, but you can tell it is fall by the colors that surround the lake. The cattails are mostly golden and some of the grasses near the shore have turned dormant. Even though the weather seems very much like summer, hints of fall are all around.
The mallards’ heads appear to be iridescent green above the surface of the water and stand in stark contrast to the shore weeds. It is an amazing feat of nature that at one moment the ducks seem to disappear against the background. Then, suddenly, they stand out in stark contrast. Perhaps they rely on the shifting perspective as a form of keeping themselves safe from predators.
Sometimes when I paddle I get a sense of connection with the generations of mariners who have inhabited this planet. There have been so many who earned their living by going to sea or plying small boats on rivers and lakes around the world. We humans are fascinated by the water and are drawn to build boats and venture out onto its surface. But as far as I know i have no sea captains in my lineage. My mother’s people were settlers and farmers and homesteaders for many generations back. My father’s people had a similar heritage. I grew up near the mountains, far from any large bodies of water. The river that ran by our place was considered to be unnavigable. You can float it with a modern creek boat or whitewater canoe, but when we were growing up we never saw a boat any larger than the inner tubes we used to float down the stream. My uncle had a place on a lake and had a series of small boats over the years, but we saw the lake as a place for an occasional vacation, not a place to live and work. My cousin lived right on the Missouri and had a lot of adventures with ferries and water craft of various sizes. To hear him tell the stories these days, most of his adventures had a bit of danger, if not of drowning, then at least of getting wet.
Still that urge to get out on the water is deep within me. Often, when I am not paddling, I am dreaming of boats. I’m preparing my garage for another boat building adventure. Before long I will have a new boat emerging from the sawdust and shavings.
Kenneth Grahame put it so well in “The Wind in the Willows.” Mole and Rat are rowing in Rat’s boat. They are discussing nautical matters, when Rat makes his famous declaration:
“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 really 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.”
Some of my best days are messabout days.
There are days, however, when I can still sneak away to the lake in the middle of the day. Yesterday was one such day. I had a funeral to write and a bit of other work to accomplish, but those things could be set aside in the mid morning so that I could head off to the lake.
It was a perfectly calm lake and paddling was like taking a journey on a mirror. The sun was bright, the air was warm and I had the lake to myself. Most of the boats have been pulled form the water for winter storage. The docks have been pulled up onto the shore and the buoys have been put away for the winter. There were several clusters of mallards on the water, but they could see me coming from a long way off and so gently paddled away from my route without much fuss.
It was a good day for quiet on the water.
I am very familiar with Sheridan Lake. I paddle there dozens of times each year and I’ve been paddling on that lake for a couple of decades. I have paddled in dense fog, in low light and in the dark of night. I know the shoreline and my way around the lake. As such, it is strange to paddle on a perfectly calm day with nearly unlimited visibility. The reflections in the water are so realistic that it seems as if there are two sets of trees and mountains: one reaching up and the other reaching down. The lake appears to be as deep as the sky is high. Of course I know that this isn’t true. Like all mountain reservoirs, the lake is silting in. It gets shallower each year. And there are lots of places where the underwater plants are so tall that they touch the bottom of my boat as I pass. Were I in a motorboat, the weeds would surely clog the propellor. Where I paddle isn’t really deep at all. The reflections are an optical illusion.
The flat lake also does something with perspective when it comes to distances. Something about the reflections in the water or the way that doubling the appearance of the height of the hills makes it more difficult to judge distances as I paddle on the calm. The distance from one side of the lake to the other appears to be larger than it is, but the distance between two points on the horizon appears to be smaller. It is difficult to explain, but it can be mildly disorienting.
There aren’t many deciduous trees near the lake, so the color is pretty much evergreen, but you can tell it is fall by the colors that surround the lake. The cattails are mostly golden and some of the grasses near the shore have turned dormant. Even though the weather seems very much like summer, hints of fall are all around.
The mallards’ heads appear to be iridescent green above the surface of the water and stand in stark contrast to the shore weeds. It is an amazing feat of nature that at one moment the ducks seem to disappear against the background. Then, suddenly, they stand out in stark contrast. Perhaps they rely on the shifting perspective as a form of keeping themselves safe from predators.
Sometimes when I paddle I get a sense of connection with the generations of mariners who have inhabited this planet. There have been so many who earned their living by going to sea or plying small boats on rivers and lakes around the world. We humans are fascinated by the water and are drawn to build boats and venture out onto its surface. But as far as I know i have no sea captains in my lineage. My mother’s people were settlers and farmers and homesteaders for many generations back. My father’s people had a similar heritage. I grew up near the mountains, far from any large bodies of water. The river that ran by our place was considered to be unnavigable. You can float it with a modern creek boat or whitewater canoe, but when we were growing up we never saw a boat any larger than the inner tubes we used to float down the stream. My uncle had a place on a lake and had a series of small boats over the years, but we saw the lake as a place for an occasional vacation, not a place to live and work. My cousin lived right on the Missouri and had a lot of adventures with ferries and water craft of various sizes. To hear him tell the stories these days, most of his adventures had a bit of danger, if not of drowning, then at least of getting wet.
Still that urge to get out on the water is deep within me. Often, when I am not paddling, I am dreaming of boats. I’m preparing my garage for another boat building adventure. Before long I will have a new boat emerging from the sawdust and shavings.
Kenneth Grahame put it so well in “The Wind in the Willows.” Mole and Rat are rowing in Rat’s boat. They are discussing nautical matters, when Rat makes his famous declaration:
“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 really 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.”
Some of my best days are messabout days.