Discovering Eden

Credit: canoearctic.com

 

Discovering Eden: A Lifetime of Paddling Arctic Rivers, by Alex M. Hall (pub. by Key Porter Books, Toronto, Canada, 2003, 218pp plus index, pb.)

 

The Canadian Barrens are many things, but one thing they are not is barren.  Imagine, on one trip of 19 days, seeing 50,000 to 100,000 migrating caribou, 237 muskoxen, 32 wolves, three wolverines, and two grizzlies.  Imagine a land where you can travel without seeing another human, and perhaps plant your feet where no other human has trod for hundreds of years.  This is a country where 50% of it is water.  There are still hundreds of rivers and hundreds of

 

People were the one thing missing from the Barrens, at least until the mid-1970’s.  Alex Hall decided in 1974 to spend his life being a canoe expedition guide, against the advice of the Canadian government, which couldn’t see such a venture succeeding.  Canoe Arctic, Inc., existed in name only for a few very lean years, but is still operated successfully by the author to this day.  Here is the link to his site, where you can view 25 photo galleries, and begin to plan your dream trip. http://www.canoearctic.com/

 

This is a fascinating and informative book.  Every paddler will find takeaways from these pages.  You will learn things you likely never knew about the native aboriginal peoples, the habits of caribou, and the life cycles of blackflies and mosquitoes, finding wolf dens and coexisting with wolves, close encounters with grizzlies, stampedes of thousands of caribou right through camp, and learning to keep provisions safe from bears.  Above all else, you should feel an even deeper appreciation and understanding of the wilderness and nature’s delicate balance.

 

Having run canoe expeditions all his life, you will find clear insight into what makes a successful canoe trip vs. a tale of horrors.  He makes it clear that an expedition is no place for democracy.  Someone has to take the lead, and that position needs to be respected by everyone in the group.  Trips are run at the pace of the slowest, weakest paddler.  There is never an argument over tactics.  Since safety is the foremost priority, discussions may be held over whether to line, portage, or run a rapids,  or the miles or hours to be run, but the least hazardous or threatening point of view is always accepted without further comment.  Everyone agrees to and adopts these standards beforehand or they don’t go---period.

 

In the latter half of the book, Hall will explain the changes that have occurred on the Barrens in the size of herds and packs, the changes that come as money and greed invade the territories to dangle the perpetual promise of jobs, the exploration and exploitation for diamonds, gold, copper, uranium and other metals, the desire to build year-round, all-weather roads that will open the territories to more mine building, and the damning of rivers to create the hydro-power needed to operate the mines.  Unlike other areas where these problems damage and destroy habitat, the changes that would occur in the Barrens wilderness will destroy ecosystems and the balance of nature itself.  With such short growing seasons, there are trees now standing that are hundreds of years old, some as much as a thousand years, and it would take that long again for their replacement.  Beds of lichen through the wilderness, upon which migrating caribou depend for food through the winter, take 40-60 years to be replaced.  The destruction of this food source would destroy the herds and all forms of wilderness life that feed upon them.  This book offers a great opportunity to learn about the area and the efforts being made to protect it, and get these lessons from a man that has made the Barren Lands and its wildlife the guiding forces of his own life.



Rescuing An Easter Bunny

Go ahead and fill 'er up.

 

A neighborhood lady looked out her window to see their large dog walking about the yard with something in its mouth.  She went outside to investigate, and found the dog carrying a roughly week-old rabbit.  There were no other rabbits about, nor any indication where it had come from.  She took the bunny and put it back on the ground, but then saw a bunch of cats assembling.  The small creature could not expect such gentle handling from the felines, so the woman and her husband brought the rabbit to Jean. 

Jean started the bunny on PetAg’s KMR (Kitten Milk Replacer), which she served every three hours with a curved-tip Monoject feeding syringe.  For the first week, the bunny lived in a heated tub with two young squirrels that Jean is also rescuing.  Neither the rabbit’s nor squirrels’ eyes were open yet, but they constantly found each other, and all three stayed huddled in a ball.  The rabbit knew enough to claim the warmest spot by sandwiching itself between the two squirrels.



I'm lookin' gooood!

 

After a week, they were separated when the rabbit began to experiment with solid food.  The experimenting was quickly over, and the rabbit’s growth spurt turned nibbling into a voracious appetite.  It would start at one end of a piece of Romaine lettuce, carrot, apple, or celery and just keep chomping until it had inhaled the whole piece.  A couple times it was found to have contentedly fallen asleep with a piece of celery still sticking out of its mouth.  Besides the fresh produce and Timothy hay, it also began to learn what the rabbit pellets were for, and has doubled its weight in two weeks.



Official Sounds of Spring

Great Blue Heron

 

Prairie Dog with his personal tornado shelter.

 

The tornado sirens were sounded as a test an hour or so ago, and that makes it official.  Spring has sprung on the Plains.  Tornadoes are on the ground in the City of Moore as I write.  They should have had enough bad luck a couple years ago with the major EF-5 tornadoes to last a lifetime.  It is a fact; lightning does strike in the same place twice, or more often, and so do tornadoes.



This was a noisy little fella.  He just barked non-stop.

 

Master of all he surveys.

 

On a happier note, the paddle last week gave us a few wildlife shots.  There have been quite a few RV campers staying at the lake.  Camping is free until April first, so several have turned out to enjoy the warm weather.  While loading Buddy back on the Ram, I spent awhile chatting with a fisherman that had decided to wet a line for a couple hours before his evening Bible study.



How Hard Will It Blow?

I’m glad I took advantage of a second chance to get some paddling exercise in before the winds returned.  Right now it is gusting to 25 mph, and will keep increasing until tonight when it is supposed to be reaching 50 mph.  While on the subject of weather, I’d like to recommend a site that I’ve been using and have found to be more reliable for planning than even local weather stations.  It is called WindMapper.com.  When you pull it up, you can do two things at once.  In the top right corner, you can reference the region of the country you want.  On this site I’m using as an example, I’ve pulled up Florida and a section of the Southeast.

http://windmapper.com/FL/observations/

While the local forecast may be giving predictions for thousands of square miles, you can determine conditions right at the lake or river area you want just by putting your cursor on the arrow at that location.  A window will pop up to give you every piece of weather-related information you may want now, and for the next 48 hours.

 

The second thing would be to obtain a forecast, and it doesn’t have to be for the same area.  There is a window top-center where you type in the name or zip code for a place you are concerned about.  For example, I’ve watched weather for friends paddling around Florida on the WindMapper at the same time that I’m getting a forecast with local conditions for a lake I want to paddle in Oklahoma.  I’ve found the information to be accurate and reliable, even down to an hour-by-hour analysis of conditions as they change.

Great Horned Owl

Look at those beautiful eyes.

 

This was a Great Horned Owl Jean got as a rescue animal.  It had flown into a barbed-wire fence around a pasture.  The farmer found it hanging there while riding the field to check on some livestock that were calving.  It had apparently been there some time, at least since the previous day, and was seriously dehydrated.  When Jean tried to give it water, it just about attacked the eyedropper.  When it was stabilized, we transported it to Wild Care south of Oklahoma City.  The avian veterinarian examined the owl, and unfortunately determined that the bird would have to be euthanized since the main artery to its injured wing had been severed, and the wing was dead, and would soon poison the bird itself.  While the objective in rescue work is to rehabilitate the animal, sometimes fate and the seriousness of the injuries make it impossible to create a miracle.



Best Information Ever on Lyme Disease

John F. Sullivan found and posted a video on the Facebook Mississippi River group this morning that is the best description of Lyme Disease that I've seen.  Even after having an exposure to this two years ago, there was a lot of information here the I didn't know.  Also, one of the problems with the disease is that a lot of doctors don't understand it or take it seriously, so self-education is all that more important so you know what to expect, how to detect it, what to do about it, and most importantly, how to try to prevent exposure.  Prompt action is critical to recovery, and I was fortunate that I was visiting our doctor on another issue when my wife suggested I discuss being bitten by a tick in Wisconsin, one of the nation's hotbeds of the disease.  He didn't waste a minute, but jumped on the problem right away, which undoubtedly prevented many more serious complications. 

Since not all of you may subscribe to the Mississippi River group, I thought it important to help spread the word by offering it here also.  Please take a look at this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHiIiKpK3hc&feature=youtu.be

Picture of the Day

Camped for the night on Deadman Island, Escambia Bay, FL.

 

It's a good thing I got out for a paddle Sunday.  The wind is back to 30, gusting to 39 or more, so there would be no way to get on an open lake today.  Even for my walk this morning, the windchill caught me a bit underdressed, and the wind groaned and whistled around obstructions. 

 

Have a great day. jim

Getting Buddy Wet

The lake shore used to be a hundred yards back where the trees line the bank.

 

It was 38 degrees yesterday morning, a definite cool down from the weird temps we’ve been having the last few days, but since the ice on the lake had melted, certainly a comfortable opportunity to get on the water.  The big draw was that the wind was forecast to be calm to light in the morning.   Anyone that knows Oklahoma knows that calm days are as rare as hen’s teeth, so I just had to go for it. 



They were more obvious in person than on this picture, and certainly more

obvious when moving, but if you look closely, what appear as vertical excavations

along the cliffs are about 13 pairs of light and dark reflections.

 

 

Whether I was too late or too early, it was obvious I wasn’t in the prime part of the waterfowl migration.  I saw a heron, a lot of prairie dogs, some coots, a large flock of pelicans, and a few flocks of ducks that were too skittish to allow me to get close enough for identification.  I heard an owl several times, and some wild turkeys.  There was one thing I saw, which I don’t believe I’ve ever seen before. 

The west side of the lake is edged by cliffs.  They aren’t spectacular by Lake Superior standards, but range about 25 to 40-ft high, and I understand were used at one time by Native Americans to hunt buffalo.  The animals were driven over the cliffs to other hunters waiting below to dispatch the wounded and butcher the harvest.  I saw an unending parade of alternate vertical light and gray lines playing along the cliff faces.  After a couple minutes of ruling out other possibilities, like an effect caused by my polarizing glasses, I realized it was the low-angled sun rising above the trees on the opposite side of the lake and reflecting off the wavelets on the lake.  It was a bit like watching the panning of shadows created by a car’s lights passing a picket fence.  They covered the full height of the cliffs and stretched north until the cliffs melted into woodland.



Calm days that are as rare as hen's teeth.

 

According to the Corps of Engineers, Canton Lake is still down 13-ft below normal, or 79% below normal capacity.  It’s even lower than during my last visit, and I was hoping it might slowly rise, but that’s not the case so far.  I went as far to the north as I could, where more birds could be expected, and paddled the full width of the lake with the paddle blades churning and dipping mud and barely keeping Buddy afloat.



WARNING

Boats are prohibited from entering the buoyed swim area.

I am given to understand that in the last several years, there have been

zero infractions. 

 

It was a wonderful morning to be on the water, and by the time I returned to the ramp a few  fishermen were joining me to enjoy the Sunday morning.  With the warming, the breeze began to fill in from the south.  With the winter’s idleness, my muscles were saying that 7.1 miles was acceptable for the first time out, so after Buddy was back on the truck, I enjoyed my lunch before heading for home.



American Falcon

 

Hah!  I think I finally got the picture files working—mostly.  We’re about to find out.  Anyhow, this is one of Jean’s rescued critters.  This is a kestrel, part of the American Falcon family.  This one came to us with a broken wing.  After being stabilized, it was transported to WildCare, south of Oklahoma City.  They have an avian veterinarian that works with their staff, and they specialize in helping the animals recover, heal, and strengthen until ready for release back into the wild.



 

As with many of the wildlife, they seem to have a much better understanding of humans than we do of them.  While some will fight and protest being handled, many remain calm and receptive, seeming to understand that we are trying to help them.  This bird was very calm, and quickly accepted hand feeding, but retained his alert wariness.  This is important in handling wild animals, always avoiding any tendency to treat them like a pet, which would destroy their ability to live or defend themselves in nature.



 

 

One Inch Above the Water

Cover photo credit: goodreads.com

 

One Inch Above The Water: Running Away on America’s Rivers, by Jim Payne (pub. by Lytton Pub. Co., 2008, 294 pp., pb)

I love books.  I find that plunging into a new book is much like meeting new people.  Some are engaging, delightful, entertaining, and they draw you in to become part of their world.  Others are dry, standoffish, and cold.  Finally, there are those that are flat-out burdensome.  In such a book I find myself getting to the last page only out of a sense of obligation, especially if I’m supposed to write a review of the book.  I don’t know if anyone reads the reviews, but I take it  as commitment of sharing---inviting you to share what I’ve enjoyed, or saving you time that would better be invested elsewhere.  This is a book that is friendly, engaging, and one you will enjoy.

 

The author is someone many of you will identify with, or at least I did.  He was a political science professor at Yale, Wesleyan, and Johns Hopkins, and as he put it, he got tired of writing books no one would read.  So, at the age of 57, he decided to run away from home.  Well, he didn’t really, as he was still married, but he did plan several trips of a week to several weeks duration.  He got a Klepper pack canoe that was more conducive to travel, especially when mass transit was involved, and took off to experience something more natural than a classroom or office.  He did the Potomac River, starting at Washington, D.C.; the Columbia River, from Canada to the Pacific Ocean; the Hudson River and Lake Champlain from New York to Quebec; the Florida Keys; and the Mississippi River from Vicksburg to New Orleans.  He said, “My answer to the futility of worldly accomplishment was to balance work with play, to paddle over the horizon in search of adventure.  Each day I paddled, this formula was making more sense.”

 

As a professional writer, he has that ability to take you on the trip with him and feel as though you are sharing the experience.   You share the struggle against the current and waves, and the discomfort of being wet, food-bored, and never knowing where you can stop to rest or sleep.  But you also get to meet the interesting people along the way, to enjoy the humor in unusual experiences and dilemmas, appreciate our nation’s history in many ways, like sleeping in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s bed when all he was just looking for a spot of grass for his tent, and being uplifted by the stillness and beauty of nature.  He discovers that the joys, memories, and rewards of a trip are somehow proportionate to the struggle, and even the discomfort.  One evening while cowering under a tarp in a deluge, he looked across at some moored yachts, their occupants warm and dry as they watched TV.  Instead of being jealous, he felt sorry for their lack of adventure and dulled senses.  To really enjoy life, he said, is to step outside of your comfort zone and experience it.

 

Unlike some books about paddling around the world, or Australia, or South America, while they may be interesting to read and marvel over, they are way beyond the ability or inclination of 99.9% of their readers.  This book is a good outline for trips that involve a high sense of adventure and interest, are actually within about anyone’s capability, and reasonable in both the realms of time and finances.  This is a book of stories you will enjoy spending the time with.



Walking Off The Edge

If some of you have been wondering if I've walked off the edge of the earth or something, no, in some ways it's worse than that.  The reason I haven't posted anything in so long is I'm suffering from the wonders of modern technology.  Our computer died.  We replaced the computer and our old Vista program with a new Windows 7, and the nightmare has been unending.  We spent close to a month getting document files changed over, and now I can't work pictures.  As soon as I figure out how to get the picture files to work, get the digital photo program and the Adobe Photoshop programs to talk to each other, I'll be back in business.  Until then, I'm just dangling from the edge.

The Mississippi River Fascinates

How long is the Mississippi River?  That’s something of extreme interest to anyone wanting to paddle its full length, but it’s hard to get a firm grasp on a set number of miles.  Since the river is constantly changing, the first issue is how old the measurement is that one is quoting.  Then there are a lot of cut-offs and side channels, so did the person we are quoting measure the shortest distance, or the center of the shipping channel?  According to Jim Lewis’ research before his trip, the length of the Mississippi is listed at 2,552 miles by Itasca State Park, at 2,300 miles by the U.S. Geologic Survey, at 2,300 miles by the EPA, and 2,350 miles by the Miss. National River & Recreation Area office.   So, pick the number you like, or don’t worry about it.  As Pooh pointed out, “Rivers know this: there is no hurry.  We shall get there some day. “ 

The river doesn't just flow from north to south, but hits every degree of the

compass in between.  If you look at the scars in the forest, you can see where

the river used to be before cutting new channels.

 

Actually, if you paddled the river twice, you’d undoubtedly come up with two different measurements.  The river will frequently find itself winding in and out among a number of islands, thus creating three or four different channels of different lengths.  As one channel goes fairly straight, another makes a bow, and a third takes off on its own and creates a huge dog-leg.  All the channels eventually take you to the same place, but how you travel between A and B to get there can give new meaning to the expression about “the long and short of it.”  If a figure is incorrect, no worries.  Like fashion, the old measurement may again come in style.



Called oxbows because of their shape, the river creates a loop, but erosion

makes the throat smaller and tighter until the river just cuts the old channel

off and leaves it behind to create another oxbow elsewhere.

 

The Mississippi is huge.  Its drainage basin covers 1,250,000 square miles of North America.  The river slithers and creeps about to make new channels, cuts off ones it no longer has use for, while at the same time carrying 500 million tons of soil into the Gulf of Mexico each year.  That is enough to extend the length of Louisiana 300 feet further south per annum.  Mark Twain wrote that a man can go to bed in the State of Mississippi, and during the night an oxbow can break through, and he will wake up to find himself in Louisiana.  Waterfront towns that built themselves on the commerce of the river have found before long that they were country farm towns with no access to the river at all.  At other times, such towns would be swallowed to become part of the river.  Nearly all of the Mississippi River that LaSalle paddled in the 1660’s is now dry land.  Twain wrote of the town of Delta, which at one time was three miles south of Vicksburg, but after some reworking of the land by the river, was two miles north of Vicksburg. 



This is the Clark Oxbow, south of Palisades, MN.  The yellow follows the

new river channel.  When reaching the fork, if you followed the wrong channel

you would be taken miles out of your way.

This is the Maydale Oxbow.  Except for a small cut, the throat has been

completely cut off, making for some great day paddles through the forest

and out of the current.  Older oxbows are visible with four old channels

being visible in the same area.

Here you can clearly see how the oxbow is created.  Like annual rings in a tree,

you can see the concentric lines around the bow.  Each represents a heavy flow of

water from storms or spring run-offs where the outside bank is cut away, and eddy

currents fill land back in on the inside of the bends.

  

"Ka-Ka-Ska-Ska"

Illus. Credit: Amazon

 

 

I had an immediate reaction to Jim Lewis’ story about his trip down the Mississippi, but when considering writing skill, it was a gross injustice to read his book immediately after reading Sigurd Olson.  By no measure can that be considered a level playing field.  The fact that the book was self-published is evident in the poor proofreading that missed the incorrect word usages, errors in punctuation, and questionable structure.  The negative aside, the book is still worth a read for what it offers for anyone interested in the river or making a similar trip.  The greater points are that he decided to paddle the length of the Mississippi, accomplished his mission, and succeeded in publishing a book about the adventure---all successes. 

 

While many plan and anguish for years over the decision to paddle the third greatest river in the world, few make it, while the author and his friends simply decided on the trip over cups of coffee.  They are the members of the Itasca Kayakers, a paddling club formed in 2003 in Grand Rapids, MN.  At times the book seems to have been published for the club.  A lot of time is spent on who did or didn’t paddle each leg, who missed some of the trips and had to make up the miles on their own, and how the shuttles were accomplished.  However, for anyone unable to commit to a non-stop, through-paddle, they offer a model for doing the river in stages.  They completed the trip down the Mississippi in 12 legs over four years (2005 through 2008), and with some incredible runs, the longest of 87 miles in a single day.

 

Buried in the text of nearly every page is a quotable quote.  Both the importance and value of the trip and book are revealed in three of them that I share here. 

From an unknown writer comes, “I heard somebody say the wealthiest places on earth are not Fort Knox or the oil fields of the Middle East.  Nor are they the gold and diamond mines of South Africa.  Ironically, the wealthiest places on earth are the cemeteries, because lying in those graves are all kinds of dreams and desires that will never be fulfilled.  Buried beneath the ground are books that will never be written, businesses that will never be started, and relationships that will never be formed.  Sadly, the incredible power of potential is lying in those graves.”

“A man is not old until his regrets take the place of dreams.” Yiddish proverb

Lastly, from Yoda, “Do or do not.  There is not try.”

There is no spoiler here on what the book’s title means.  I had to read the book to solve that mystery, and so will you.

 

 

 

 

 

 



Take Me To The Water

The Oklahoma Travel Guide

 

For those of you in Oklahoma, (or from elsewhere, if you’re headed this way) if you have a “Oklahoma State Parks and Outdoor Recreation Guide” that’s more than a week old, the Dept. of Tourism has just received the new 2015 updated edition from the printer. Also, the Oklahoma Travel Guide for 2015 is a real beauty, with a reproduction of a tooled-leather cover done by Minco artist, John Rule.  The form for ordering free travel brochures is at:  http://www.travelok.com/brochures

 

If a guy believes one kernel of corn is the same as an entire corn field, he’s a Republican and understands how to spin “truth” so one kernel of truth becomes the whole truth, like the Keystone XL being good for the American economy (all 1% of it) and creating thousands of jobs (well, actually only 35 of them).  So, when I saw this following line in my current issue of the outdoor recreation guide, I had to wade into the corn field and check it out.  Under paddling activities, it reads, “More than 600 major creeks and rivers mean Oklahoma has a river ride to suit your taste.”  After a call to the Dept. of Tourism, they had their in-house kayaker call me back.  I told her that the guide advertised 600 major creeks and rivers, but then listed only four.  If there was a guide listing creeks and rivers that are actually paddleable, I’d love to get a copy of it.  She admitted, “I don’t know about that,” but said she would get up with their fact checker, and call me back.

 

 To her credit and the tourism office’s, she spent over an hour or more checking for more information for me, even doing an internet search.  When a state agency spends part of an afternoon serving the interests of a single individual, it has to be appreciated.  When she called back, we concluded that there may be 600 creek beds and riverbeds in the state, but few are major and fewer still have any water in them.  She offered one site you may wish to look at:  http://geology.com/lakes-rivers-water/oklahoma.shtml/  This brings up the Oklahoma page, but in the left margin are the links for all other states you may wish to check.

The tab for “Stream and River Levels” shows daily readings for all reporting stations.  For those in this area, I’ve found two other good sources for Oklahoma to be: http://southwestpaddler.com/indexOK.html/ and http://www.oklahomaroadtrips.com/

Keep those paddling dreams alive.  Warm weather has to be getting closer.

 



The Singing Wilderness

Image credit: Univ. of Minnesota Press

 

The Singing Wilderness by Sigurd F. Olson (pub. in 1956 by Alfred A. Knopf, repub 1984 by Eliz. D. Olson (wife) and in 1997 by Univ. of Minnesota Press, 245pp.)

 

My son and daughter-in-law gave me three of Sigurd Olson's books for Christmas.  These are part of the nine volumns written by Olson, which accompany the countless stories and articles that appeared in many publications across the country.  (This title was published in 1956, 12 days after the author's 57th birthday.)  Seven of the nine books have been most recently republished as the Fesler-Lampert Minnesota Heritage Book Series in paperback.

 

The Singing Wilderness was the first of the three titles I picked up to read.  This is a delightful book that is broken into four sections that enable Olson to guide the reader through the Quetico-Superior canoe country during each of the four seasons.  In each season, the chapters are broken into 6-8 page essays or short stories that cover such things as timber wolves, the trapper's cabin, campfires, the way of a canoe, and a continuing index of 33 topics.

 

This book works on two main levels.  It is not a novel that you would gulp in one or two sittings.  Each short essay is a literary gem that carries you down a river, along a dogsled trail, or through the wilderness and leaves you sitting there to savour the experience.  To continue on would break the spell.   I was so sick when I started reading that 6-8 pages was as much as I could manage, but as health slowly improved, I found I still read only one essay a night, and turned the light out to continue hearing Olson's fire crackling in the fireplace, or squirrels scampering up and down the cedars, or the sound of a stream chuckling among some rocks. 

 

The writing is so good that Olson doesn't tell you about the experience as much as sit you right in the middle of it, and this is the second level on which the book works.  This book is a must for anyone who writes or dreams of writing.  The word-craft is so clear and artful that images in your mind become as clear as any painting or photograph, to which he also adds the sounds of the wind, snow, birds, and every creature of the wilderness.  Don't miss this one.  

The Near Impossible

Brian Keel is also waiting for spring, but at least he's out and about.

Wow, the reader numbers really dropped off!  I thank those that faithfully returned again and again, but I understand the lack of interest in constantly returning to an old post.  We were just recovering from the month-long sick-out when I tried to submit a new post, and the computer crashed, as in totally dead.  It wouldn't even start. 

The computer went off to the support tech, who administered the last rites.  In discussing options for a new computer and program, he said that a new Windows 10 was about to be released, but at the present my options were Windows 7, which is being phased out, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1.  He added that a lot of people don't like the 8's, so that quickly narrowed the field.   The one that would involve the shallowest learning curve in a desktop would involve us going from our old Vista to Windows 7, so that was what we did.  I know the younger tech-heads will frown, but when I saw the salesman flipping pages, expanding and contracting the screen on the new program, my immediate response was, "No Way!"  Plus, it seemed that would involve buying a new monitor as well, since the new computer didn't come with one.  Part of this response is my resentment at the tech companies for not supporting what their customers are doing and needing, but rather constantly pushing people into things they have no need or use for just to feed their sales greed.  Since the majority of the public is more than happy to lust after the latest fad-oriented gizmo, I know I'm the voice in the wilderness, but I kind of like the wilderness anyhow.

I'm slowly getting this new Dell up and running, and will get back to some new adventures for us to share.  We did have one warm, light wind day, and I was anxious to get back on the water.  I rolled out early one morning, pulled the canoe off the rack and got it tied down on the pickup, put lunch and some gear in the back, and suddenly realized I was pushing it faster than my body could keep up.  I was already exhausted and coughing.  I was feeling better, but stamina was yet to come.  After a rest, I put everything away again and watched the rare good weather pass me by.  Oh well, spring is but a few short weeks away.

So This is Winter

While I look at pictures of friends resting on a Florida beach, for contrast, this is life in Oklahoma. My wife and I have been sick since the 4^th of January--a full month. We were trading illnesses for awhile, a week on and a week off. The advantage there was that one of us was up to care for the other one. Then in a moment of near well-being, we decided to celebrate a day of freakishly warm weather, 70-deg, by taking the granddaughters to Great Salt Plains Lake for a day’s outing and picnic lunch. While it was warm, the wind blew 49 mph all day. The air was continuously filled all day with dirt, leaf mold, and whatever airborne bacteria and viruses were about, and we both crashed at once. We, like the groundhog, have just crawled out long enough to see our shadows.

Expedition of Discovery

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTJOTE6xOew

This link will take you to the video covering the 200 year anniversary re-enactment of the Lewis and Clark Expedition of Discovery.  At just a couple minutes shy of two-hours, the film takes you through all the success and heartache surrounding both the original voyage and the recreation.

Encounters from a Kayak

Credit: Nigel Foster

and http://www.nigelkayaks.com/857.html

 

Encounters From a Kayak: Native People, Sacred Places, and Hungry Polar Bears, by Nigel Foster (Pub. By Falcon Press, USA, 2012, 247pp.)

If you don’t know his history, you certainly recognize Nigel Foster’s name. Born in 1952, he started kayaking off Brighton, England, in a skin-on-frame at the age of 15. He was the first and youngest paddler to circumnavigate Iceland. While checking off one exploit after another, his paddling life has been mainly devoted to training and education through 13 books, countless articles, and a six-part DVD training program on sea kayaking.

The advantage of taking the time to enjoy this book is having the chance to recount unusual experiences with the author from spots around the world, from the Florida Keys, to Sitka and Newfoundland, France, the Faeroes, and throughout Europe. He meets an impressive range of wildlife up close and personal from polar bears and whales to peregrines and manatees. There is just too much to list them all, but with full color photographs to illustrate his stories, the experiences are what every paddler will at least enjoy if not marvel at.



This is Really Stupid

Credit: Caduceus from Google Images

 

Two days ago I titled the day’s post “Hit the Ground Running.” The problem with hitting the ground running is if you can’t keep up, you’ll end up flat on your face…..and here I lie. There were three final things I had to get done before loading the canoe in top the Ram: get lab work done, have a physical, and visit the dentist. I had a plan, a perfect plan. The lab work was to be done tomorrow morning, the physical in the afternoon, and the dental visit Wednesday morning.

Then I could feel it coming on last night. The chills were so bad by the time I got to bed, I thought I was going to freeze to death. The virus and medication I’ll be taking for it would screw up the lab work, so that and the physical are set back at least two weeks, by which time my doctor will be in Africa. The next available dental appointment isn’t until July, so unless I can get in for a cancellation, that’s out the window. So much for plans.