Raising the bar on "limitations"...

I love how sometimes the simplest answers contain some of the deepest truths! In a recent travel documentary, a couple of guys are in a helicopter for the first time heading for a photo-op over the Rockies. The pilot lifts gently off the ground, gains a little altitude and then proceeds to fly slowly backwards. Curious, one of the passengers asks, "Why are we flying backwards?" The pilot answers, "Because we can." I love it!

Chris McDougall has written a riveting book, "Born to Run", in which the reader can vicariously experience ultra (ultra!) trail runs amidst awesome elevation-gaining landscapes! The true full-on gift of this book, however, is that he shares fascinating details and insights into the history and unique mind-view of Mexico's reclusive Tarahumara Indians - super-athletes whose health and peaceful demeaner have much to teach sophisticated urbanites. Imagine a people described as the "kindest, happiest...and also the toughest" folks on the planet!

Early in the book, McDougall hears the story of a 95-year-old who hikes twenty-five miles over the mountains in the deadly Copper Canyons. How could such an elderly man do such a thing?! The answer" "Because no one ever told him he couldn't." Wow...simple answer, deep truth. Do we, in fact, live up to our own expectations - which for whatever reason, may not be nearly high enough!

I pondered that. How true it is and how, so often, we allow others (or society in general) to put limitations on what we can do. How often I've thought, gee I'd better be careful running on these trails, after all I'm almost *-years old! Well, so what! It's probably true...we live up to our own expectations. If we think that maybe we'd better slow down and take life a little more cautiously because...well, that what folks tell us we should do? Are we simply putting limitations on ourselves that have no business being there? Since opening this marvellous book, I think so.

It seems like a good way to view life: no limits, or at least, way fewer limits. The alternative to "goin' for the gusto" is needlessly settling for less. We need to "raise the bar" on our own expectations of ourselves - we'll probably be quite pleasantly surprised!

So...might just as well go for it! Check this book out - it's an awesome read!

D.

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"Magnificent Desolation"...

I was 19 at the time and attending an eastern university - where for the past year I had enjoyed way too much social life and done way too little school work...understandably, a source of significant consternation to my parents. In a month, the "Woodstock Festival" would rock my generation with music, mud, twenty-mile line-ups, and the 500,000 guests who headed "down to Yasgur's farm". In two months, I would meet my beloved...an event that would bring much relief to my parents, and immense joy to me. It would be another two years before my father's love of his home-built kayak would send me scurrying (with limited funds) for a couple of fibreglass whitewater/touring "singles" for J and I.

On this particular summer weekend in July of 1969, in the midst of a summer job working for the railroad in remote regions of British Columbia, we had managed to scrounge a ride on a freight train headed to Vancouver. It would be several days of rare and welcome respite from the physically exhausting work of digging holes for replacement telegraph poles along the historic Canadian Pacific railway route - by hand with only a bar, shovel and "spoon" for tools. The accomodations in Vancouver would be "5-star" luxury, in comparison to the rough and ready conditions of the old railroad coaches that were hooked up to the end of passing freight trains and parked in forgotten railroad sidings. This would indeed be a supreme party weekend!

One of my fellow workers and a good friend, with whom I spent three summers on the railroad, was a student from Montreal, and a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon ("Deke") fraternity. He had miraculously arranged for three of us to stay at the "Deke House" on the UBC campus for a couple of nights. We had been away from "civilization" for over two months and had begun our jobs back in May with longer-than-shoulder length hair, unruly beards, and a firm belief in "peace, love, and happiness" - it was, after all, 1969! Anyway, after two months of digging holes and breathing telegraph-pole-creosote in the most isolated of mountain passes, our "language" and social graces had deteriorated to the point where we took great pleasure in making the more refined and "citified" members of the frat house blush - or at least squirm at the thought of us bunking in. I suppose we might have stood out just a little on campus - even if it was 1969!

Working on a railroad gang, in those days, meant being away from the news and the likelihood of timely communications in general. We didn't even have telephone service of any type while working along the ribbons of steel. I had probably forgotten that this particular weekend was going to make history - more dramatically, perhaps, than any other event the world had ever seen! By Sunday morning, however, we were well "up to speed" on what was going on and were completely transfixed, even mesmerized, by the events transpiring before us on the TV screen, 40 years ago today, in the fraternity house common room. What was happenening before our very eyes made us forget every idea of "partying" through the weekend. Reality was by far surpassing anything that we could have imagined ourselves doing!

Just after lunch hour, Pacific Daylight Time, a spacecraft landed on the Sea of Tranquility - on the surface of the moon. Some six hours later, a Lunar Module camera transmitted live coverage of Neil Armstrong stepping off the ladder and touching the surface dust - almost 400,000 kilometers from our fragile, island planet. Several minutes later, Buzz Aldrin joined Armstrong on the surface while Michael Collins flew his lonely solo mission, in lunar orbit, awaiting their safe return. Overwhelmed by the awesome drama of this extraordinary event, I'm sure there were few words that could have adequately described what we, and so many around the world, felt.

Forty years ago today: the first footsteps on the moon. Since that day, I have grown and matured and, I pray, gained at least a little wisdom. Over those four decades I have often looked up at the stars and the moon as, when a young child, my father and mother taught me I must often do - and remembered that very special day. As I record these memories, I am on Gabriola Island, and I can look across the Strait of Georgia to Point Grey on the mainland. From here, I can easily see the tall buildings of the University of British Columbia. Somewhere, amidst those buildings, a group of students once sat, in a fraternity house common room - forgetting, at least for a while, their own egos, their own needs, and their own immediate concerns. Forty years ago, almost to the moment, we earthlings discovered that there need be no "ceiling" to our dreams when, with unfailing spirit and enthusiasm, we can work to make them come true.

Could we even dream of a world that might one day know "peace, love, and happiness"? Yes, we could do that. I think we must do that.

D.

"Magnificent desolation" - Buzz Aldrin's description of the lunar landscape.

High viscosity water...and low viscosity beans.

The evening was approaching and the sun, behind the overcast, was beginning its downward passage to the horizon. The wind, which had made for a lively paddle all afternoon, had called it a "day" and had retired to wherever the wind goes when it has finished its duties for the day - leaving an almost eerie "calm". The residual surface waves and deeper rolling waves provided a comforting "ride", not unlike that rock-and-glide chair on the porch overlooking the forest under a canopy of summer stars.

As many will have experienced, in these conditions, the ocean has a "silky" feel to it - there's a special viscosity that's hard to describe. The physicist speaks of viscosity as "an internal property of a fluid that offers resistance to flow". The water seemed to resist movement, granting only what was necessary for the marine environment to transition into the calm of the approaching evening. There was an economy of energy - time seemed to slow down and our paddling cadence became relaxed and our mood, contemplative.

Strange. I got to thinking about how much I enjoy a simple lunch of beans when I'm on the water - dark, fibre and protein-rich, molasses-and-brown sugar-infused beans. I like them with a "low" viscosity - runny and flowing - so sometimes I don't even heat them up - spoon 'em right out of the can. The more you heat them, the thicker they get - they don't slide smoothly down. With their higher viscosity, they, as the physicist says, resist flow and become rather unpleasantly "sticky" or as my very English mum would say, "claggy".

An odd thing to think about, beans...but, as night began to fall, and we set our course back to the beach, I quietly celebrated the fact that in the preceeding several hours, my mind had been refreshed and renewed. I had not been anxious or worried "about many things". I was thankful that I could, for just a few moments, ponder the nature of "low viscosity beans"...when the world and so many face so much. Tomorrow would be another day to give it our best.

D.

Above image of Joan, a contemplative moment in her Solstice GTS.

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Peace and meaning...beyond the calm.

Rarely do we experience the ocean this calm - not a breath of wind or even a residual ripple from the night-time breeze that, only several hours before, had refreshed the air from the previous day's heat. I took this image of Andrew in his Derek Hutchinson-designed Gulfstream as we completed the final few paddle strokes of our three-day circuit of Salt Spring Island. Entering Maple Bay, Maple Mountain is gently reflected on the left and the rising heights of Salt Spring on the right.

For me, wind is desirable - up to a point, of course. The wind makes for waves. Waves cause the kayak to yaw and pitch and roll - weathercock and broach will be terms well known by paddlers. The movement is invigorating, exciting, adrenaline-producing...and sometimes, nerve wracking. The sea kayak was built a thousand years ago by the Inuits, the Aleuts and others to venture into a marine environment - sometimes placid, sometimes stormy, almost always unforgiving. Wind and waves from straight ahead offer an exhilerating sense of motion and speed as the bow plunges into the crests and salt-spray refreshes your smiling face. Waves from behind thrill you when you "catch a wave" just right and the kayak accelerates dramatically, doing its best imitation of a surfboard! Waves created by a cross-wind are simply annoying until you reluctantly lower your rudder and gain at least a little purchase in the direction you want to go.

The bottom line: waves give texture, not only to the surface of the sea, but to excursions on the water. They can make for good sport but they can also capsize you, strand you on an island campsite for days on end, and generally humble you in ways beyond imagining.

Time on the water, in our narrow craft, teaches so many lessons. The "winds and waves" of life give texture and meaning to our days. They challenge us, they sometimes frighten us, they often humble us. They can turn us upside down but they can also bring out the best in us as we navigate each crest and each trough. In being willing to live fully and bravely, their very existence enables us to develop skills and strategies that ultimately make us strong and resilient. Waves can overpower us - but they can also empower us. The paddler who avoids all waves cannot develop the skills required to fully participate in the sport of sea kayaking. And so, I believe, we live most fully when we accept the "gifts" of life's "prevailing winds" - not always easy but always profoundly meaningful...especially in connection with one another.

In a world where life is not always easy for so many, together, we will traverse the swells and foamy crests. Together, we will survive the stormiest of life's unpredictable events. The alternative is to never leave the "shore" - and that wouldn't be the way life was meant to be. The inscription on a poster from university days has always stayed with me: "A ship in a harbour is safe - but that's not what ships are for." Yes, I think that's true.

D.

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England, The country which ruled almost every continent, have a great culture and with great culture comes great castles. Uk is famous for its castles they have and they are still in good shape. We have tried to bring in the mixture of famous castels, natural beauty and new famous structures for your desktop. Hope you will ike them :)