Off-Season? No Way!
Weathering Winter in Style —
More from the Home Front
By Farwell Forrest
farwell@paddling.net
December 28, 2004
The new year is right around the corner, and
General Winter's in the north country to stay. What's a paddler stranded in
the frozen latitudes to do? There are only three choices. Fight on through
the ice, flee to warmer climes, or embrace the enemy. And if, like me, you've
tried both fighting and running in the past, maybe you're ready for something
new. Luckily, there's still the Third Way. The secret? It's hidden in plain
sight. Last
week, I described how Tamia and I met the enemy on the home front. But
there's more to tell. When I finished up, we were in the library. Now it's
time to get out our maps and gather…
Around the Dining-Room Table
Maps? Yes. Maps. There's nothing that quickens my pulse like a map of a place
I've never seen — unless it's a map of a
place I know well, that is. Most of the trips that Tamia and I take get
started on a map. There's no better way to rekindle memories of past
journeys, too. This may explain why we have three filing cabinets filled with
topographic maps, not to mention dozens of atlases, at scales ranging from
1:24,000 (one inch equals four-tenths of a mile) to 1:13,500,000 (one inch
equals 213 miles). We've also collected hundreds of road, trail, and route
maps, along with scores of nautical charts. We even have several file folders
filled with maps and charts we've surveyed and sketched for ourselves.
Of course, no one needs file cabinets today. With the right software
package, you can literally have the world — including all its waterways
and oceans — at your fingertips. Despite this, I've yet to succumb to
the siren song of the body electric. Maybe the fact that I'm the last person
on the globe to use a computer with a monochrome monitor has something to do
with it. Or maybe it's simply that no monitor can match the display I get
when I spread a half-dozen quads out on the dining-room table. Low-tech or
high, though, most paddlers discover that maps and dreams are inextricably
linked, and winter's the perfect time to dream purposefully. OK. What are you
waiting for? Get maps of waterways near and far. Read the accounts of
travelers who've gone before you. (Or talk to your neighbor, just back from a
quick paddle round the Horn.) Make lists of
equipment. Plan
your meals. Then order whatever new gear you think you'll need. Thoreau
may have chided his readers to beware of any enterprise requiring new
clothes, but he sent his laundry out to be cleaned and mended, even when he
lived at Walden Pond. One era's luxury is another's commonplace. And vice
versa. Thoreau had a washerwoman and a seamstress. We have catalog
outfitters. Times change. Some
enterprises require new clothes.
Other things stay the same, however. What with inspecting maps, ordering
gear, and dreaming, you'll find that winter flies by. If you start today,
you'll probably still have a few things left on your to-do list in June. And
you may be surprised along the way. Planning a trip can be
almost as much fun as taking one. There aren't any blackflies or
mosquitoes in your living room in January, for one thing, and the
prospect of slicing your foot open with an ax or going for an unplanned swim
on the lip of a falls is comfortably remote.
You say there's no place in your budget for a Big Trip next summer? Not
even for a new paddling jacket? No problem. Explore your home
waters, instead. And if you can't afford to buy new gear, just make it
from scratch — or take what you already have and make it better. To do
this, though, we'll need to leave the dining room and move over to…
The Workbench
Make-and-mend was once part of every waterman's workday. The voyageurs
spent long hours tarring the seams of their bark canoes and stitching up
rents in packs, sails, and clothing. Drudgery? Yes. And not many twenty-first
century paddlers would choose to live as the voyageurs did. Yet there's real
satisfaction to be had in making your own gear, even if the final product
lacks the showroom gloss of the latest offering from the factories of
Tianjin. It's handy to know how to restitch
a pack pocket that's come adrift, too, and if you ever plan to venture
far off the beaten track, you'll be glad you can put a broken
boat back together without any help from a factory technician. Such
skills come only with practice, of course, but the rewards are many.
Independence, for one thing. Artistic expression, for another. Need proof?
Look at the scrimshaw drinking horns, detailed ship models, and meticulously
sewn ditty bags that came from the work-hardened hands of nineteenth-century
sailors. When they needed something, they needed it right now. They
couldn't fax an order to L.L. Endsmor from the Roaring Forties. So they made
do with the materials they had at hand, and their pride in a job well done is
still evident today.
You probably won't be shipping out around the Horn any time soon, but that
doesn't mean you can't share the sailors' sense of accomplishment. Your first
project can be as modest as a ditty bag — it's the traditional way to
learn to use a sailmaker's
palm, as it happens — or as ambitious as a boat. I've built boats
from both fiberglass and bark, but it's been many years since I had the
pleasure of shaping a seaworthy craft from either material. Lately, though,
I've been thinking how nice it would be to have a light open boat that could
be paddled, rowed, or sailed. A boat a little like an umiak, perhaps, or an
Irish curragh, but with a skin made from something other than a green hide.
And though I can't afford to buy such a boat ready-made, I think I can just
about manage to build one. There's no better time than winter to begin.
But what if my nerve fails me at the last moment, and my curragh remains a
dream boat for another year? Well, I've got a pile of torn clothing and
ripped packs on the floor next to me. Each item is too badly damaged to use
in its present state, yet all of them are much too good to cart off to the
landfill. And anyway, what paddler would want to throw out a pack that's
hauled his gear for twenty years, or discard a parka that's kept him warm in
all weathers for longer than he can remember? Not me, at any rate. So even if
my curragh never gets built, I've quite a few hours of pleasant and
profitable work ahead of me, mending what I have and making what I need.
And speaking of making and mending, what about the item of equipment of
most importance to any paddler or other no-octane sports enthusiast: his (or
her) own body? It also needs regular maintenance, with the emphasis on
regular. No canoeist or kayaker can afford to spend all of the winter
months slouched in
front of the television or reading in an armchair by the fire. The
obvious answer is to head outside and play in the snow. But sub-zero
temperatures aren't everyone's cup of tea, and there are always days when
even the most enthusiastic skier or snowshoer will want to stay at home. What
then?
That's easy. Head for…
The Health Club
Not literally, of course. Not unless your wallet's fatter than mine. Maybe
not even then. Driving for an hour to walk on a treadmill for thirty minutes
doesn't make much sense to me, particularly when the roads are sheathed in
ice or covered in drifting snow. That's why I make do with a modest inventory
of compact, inexpensive home fitness equipment instead. An exercise bike for
my legs. (Every paddler has to walk occasionally!) A rowing machine for my
arms. And a remembered repertoire of government-issue calisthenics, just to
remind me that something can hurt and still be good for me — so long as
it doesn't hurt too much, that is, and provided that the pain is the right
kind of pain.
Taken in daily doses, these do the trick, keeping my machinery ticking
over nicely, even when a blizzard's howling outside or ice is bending the
tops of the birches down to the ground. But this isn't enough by itself.
Neither grinding out pushups nor making my feet go round in endless circles
(while the rest of me goes nowhere) will ever do much for my soul. For that,
I need to leave the confines of four walls behind me, if only for an hour or
two. Not every battle can be fought and won on the home front, after all.
The struggle to love winter to death begins at home, but it doesn't end
there. It's time to look at some of the many ways that snow-bound canoeists
and kayakers can take the fight to the heart of the enemy's territory. And
next month, that's just what we'll do. I can't think of a better way to begin
the new year, can you?
Copyright © 2004 by Verloren Hoop Productions. All rights
reserved.