Seeing the world "up close...and personal"

3.7 nautical miles across the water, from the perspective of the City of Nanaimo, the "Harbour City", these cliffs on Gabriola Island seem nondescript, grey, bland. But from the kayak cockpit, they are a magnificent sculpture - dramatically textured from tens of thousands of years of  glaciation, rain, waves, freezing, melting, and the diversity of life that lives in the nooks and crannies of what was once seabed sediment thrust upwards by unimaginable tectonic forces. The multi-coloured sandstones and shales are striking to both the eye and to the senses, they seem almost fluid.

How our perspective on life and on the natural world changes and sharpens when we get "up close and personal". That's why, in part, I feel so passionate about kayaking and running. You are not a spectator, viewing a "high definition", but a still virtual, world from a living room chair. You are not subject to the interpretations and strident opinions of on-screen commentators you neither know nor have any real reason to trust.

On the water or on the trail, you are fully a participant with nature. The waves move you in multiple dimensions. The wind facilitates your passage or resists your every effort. On the trail, you side step and jump over the roots and rocks that would trip you up. You smell the vegetation and the forest floor, still damp from the cool of the evening. On both the water and on the trail, you notice tiny things that would go unseen if you were not amongst them, part of their world, connected by virtue of shared space and time. In the process of discovery, you find strength and a deep abiding peace and respite from what has worried you. Ideas flow, solutions come to mind, you feel refreshed. You know that you are part of something much bigger, much grander than yourself - and you feel deep relief.

It is in getting "up close and personal" that we truly discover the world of which we are a part and that sustains our every breath. It convinces us to care. Rachel Carson ("Silent Spring") put it this way:

"The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the Universe,

the less taste we shall have for destruction."

Perhaps you've found this to be the case in your outdoor passions?

Duncan.