Canoe

“But because truly being here is so much; because everything here apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all. Once for each thing. Just once; no more. And we too, just once. And never again. But to have been this once, completely, even if only once: to have been at one with the earth, seems beyond undoing.”

Rainer Maria Rilke

 

In my hands turned a darkly varnished paddle of cherry wood. My body twisted, delivering power through smooth strokes and my canoe glided over the water. Today the loch was silver silk, creased by the passage of the hull that drew a V-shaped wake across the water like an opening zipper.

The canoe is one of the most perfect inventions of all time, and an extraordinary way to experience the world. Through it you can discover the relentless power of the wind on open water; or the rush and flow of river rapids as you navigate and manoeuvre nature’s highway. One of the most wonderful experiences is to paddle a canoe in rain. Watching the lively silver water turn still and dark as a raincloud approaches, the strange lingering light even as the air grows tense. Then the first heavy plods of raindrops striking the water, before the sudden explosion of downpour. Jumping, leaping, bouncing chaos as the surface of the water is pounded around the boat. The sound of a hundred boiling kettles. The thumping raindrops drenching you as you have absolutely nowhere to hide, and with that knowledge comes also happiness as there is nothing you can possibly do but enjoy it. Five minutes of madness, then renewed calm.

On this clear autumn morning, though, the canoe on still water was inner peace incarnate. I knelt on the bottom of the hull in the round corner of the boat, so it did not sit level on the water but was canted to one side. This put my body closer to the water, making my strokes more efficient, and the inherent tendency for the boat to turn with this uneven keel is balanced by the fact I’m only paddling on one side of the boat. This balance point is exquisite. I slipped into my favoured ‘Indian’ stroke, where you extend the blade behind you after delivering power, to provide a little steerage, then sweep it back to the vertical without removing it from the water, ready for the next stroke. Done correctly this stroke is powerful, controlled, and totally silent as the blade never leaves the water or makes a splash.

I slightly shifted the position of my upper body, and the boat leaned further over. I peered down to where the wooden blade disappeared into the darkness, and watched the dance of sunbeams as they angled down into the water. I love to do this when the boat glides in the grasp of a gentle river flow over a gravelly riverbed, or on clear water over sand, above my shadow. The sensation is one of effortless flying as I watch the bottom flit past, pressing my face close to the water, excluding sight of the shore from my peripheral vision. The boat is so finely balanced in this position that I can dip the gunwale under the water and flood the boat without capsizing if I wanted to. But of course the greatest pleasure is going to the point just before that, and keeping it there, in perfect control.

I raised my eyes from the sunbeams in the water, and the rhythmic motion of the paddle, and turned my gaze forward over the bow. The black horizon line of trees was mirrored, and I floated on a blue sky of glowing white clouds. The motion of the canoe was so smooth that it was almost without sensation, and as I extended the blade back into a long steady steering position the sense of any movement at all vanished. I narrowed my eyes slightly to soften the details in the water, and I seemed to drift through an endless blue sky.

 

This is true flow; motion without disturbance, like a planet in its orbit. Indeed, to paddle a canoe at night is the closest thing I know to voyaging through the celestial sphere. All points of reference are lost in the darkness. Am I moving at all? The blackness of the shore vanishes instantly as you settle into the boat and push away, the shadow of the trees diminishing as the sky is revealed. Paddle out for a minute or two, then settle in the darkness. Let the water settle. Stars everywhere. Everywhere, for you’re not simply travelling underneath them but paddling through them, among them. You look down into the shining dark void with its infinite space, sink a paddle into it, and pull yourself along star by star. Were it not for the familiar perspective of the solid canoe beneath you, you’d be lost to the limitless expanse. A fleck of consciousness drifting along in the dark.

In the sunshine I continued stroke by stroke across the still loch to the distant shore, and followed along its intricate course. A slight wind pressed the smallest ripples onto the loch and threatened to spoil the reflection, but here along this shore there was an edge in the water that prevented the smearing ripples from passing any further. It was so striking and strange. Just there to my right the water was rippled, and here it was smooth. There is no in-between; the transition was sharp and clear, and the edge between the two followed a line almost parallel to the shore. It’s often there, that edge, I’ve seen it many times; but I’m no closer to understanding why or how it happens. I call it an edge because it gives the appearance of a sheet of ice floating in the middle of the water, but with the colour of brushed steel. To my left the reflection was untouchable. To my right the inverted trees were smudged away in silvery blurs. The zigzag edge strikes off into the distance ahead of me. Maybe someday I’ll find out why that edge is there, but for now I was content with the pleasure of mystery.

Dark rocks protruded from the water by the shore, and I enjoyed a delicate paddle among them, guiding the fourteen foot length of hull as gently as a floating pine needle. A twisting stroke here, a little sideways pull there, navigating the stony course with the simple pleasure of a skill well performed. Be careful not to scrape the hull and cause a noise. The boat slid under a pine branch and I needed to duck forward to avoid a snag, but it all passed by in silence. There was no sign of my passing except a line of tiny, vanishing vortices in the water which marked the points where my paddle nibbled at the stillness. This is the particular joy of canoeing, and the sign that you are doing it well. Not just sitting in silence but moving in it too, with balance and control and intention. Like the fox-walk in the woods, except that here in the canoe it is possible to go so much faster. There is a reason our ancestors used these craft as platforms for hunting animals that drank from the shore.

It is sheer physical pleasure to be paddling the boat through the surroundings of forest and water. The green and shadowed pine forests line the shore, marked here and there by the white skeletal forms of trees that are dead standing, the gold of a solitary birch or the flame red of rowan. I dropped a hand from the paddle gently into the cold water to feel the tug of it passing by, then lifted it to watch the clear drops softly run down my fingers and fall into the loch, catching the sun as they fell. The rings burst out of each droplet’s fall and passed through each other, making me think of the shockwaves of exploding supernovae throwing elements across the universe. The elements that now constitute the forest, the water, the air, and me. I place the paddle at rest across the boat, and water runs from the tip of the blade in a steady series of drops as the boat slides along under its momentum. Plop. Plop. Plop.

Canoeing always helps me to feel whole. It stimulates every part of me – my body, my mind, my heart. It is a lesson in the balancing of these things – a reminder that they are all one, and must work together. To paddle well, you must understand what you are doing. You must grasp the mechanics of body, boat and blade; must build the knowledge of where in the water the blade must be placed, of how to apply tension through the core, and pressure through the knees, in order to make the boat go where you want. Then you must execute this understanding correctly, using the energy of your body to best effect, anticipating what comes next. But even with the knowledge and the skill, if you paddle without your heart then you’re only going through the motions. Without heart it doesn’t matter how far you paddle, as you’ll be no further forward.

Gradually the boat came to rest again. The tiny breeze had carried me away from the shore. The morning sun was brilliantly white, shining out of the deep water; deeply glowing along the pine trees; deeply warming my skin from the morning chill. A short time earlier I was watching the sun rising over the hills, buttering the frosted gold leaves and needles of the trees with warmth, soaking into the depths of wood. Mist danced from the loch again, spreading like vaporous gold in the rising sun, wreathing through the trees beneath the deep blue sky. On the loch I saw mist glamours circling in a stately flamingo procession, and a pair of swimming ducks drew a silver slash upon the face of the water. Then the sun faded; all halted. It returned; they all went back the opposite way, Gaygordoning over the water all glimmery glidey, mist and ducks and all. Now here I float as the last of the frost drips from twigs and the tip of my paddle.

Nearby, a light grey feather floated on the surface, curling up as if to stay dry, touching the water so gently it hardly even deflects the meniscus. I’m no expert but I think it is a goose feather, a little piece of itself the bird left behind before continuing south. The gentle curl along its length is a near perfect match to the shape of the canoe, and I can’t help but wonder if there might be a real link there. Did one inspire the other? It seems that no matter how ingenious we think we are, no matter how much we innovate, we only discover that nature beat us to it. All that we create merely copies something that nature already does without any apparent effort. We’re simply creatures that learned to mimic the other things around us.

I took up the paddle again, and after a last moment of pause I slid it back into the water, where the dark cherrywood blade vanished into the sunlit depths. My body twisted, my knees pressed into the hull. The boat moved off as I paddled stroke by stroke, with hands touching wood, touching water, touching air, touching mountain, touching world, touching universe, touching heart.