How to Paddle for the Last Time

How to Paddle for the Last Time

   There in that place we sat at sunset, Jon a few feet ahead of me and I nestled in a seat-shaped cleft of rock feeling the roughness of it as I sat. My cook pot behind me on the only relatively flat surface of a washed up log was boiling over in a mess of starchy froth pouring from under the lid and down the sides. The blue flame of the stove hissed and flashed yellow and his remained cold and unlit, forgotten. We were to say the least mesmerized by the last glimmer of sun going down over a bare horizon of an unbroken ocean. We waited for the fabled flash of light sailors describe as the sun disappears. We were slightly baked at the time so such events real or imagined would make for a full evenings discussion on the merits of being there, in that place at sunset.

   This was the first night of many paddle trips he and I would endeavour to take and one of the quieter as we seemed to be magnets for getting into scrapes and mostly lost at times. But while we sat awaiting a natural visual effect that by the way did not occur on that night or any other night that I have had that special opportunity, we had no idea that each paddle might be the last one. Who thinks like that? Each event was in a series of adventures he and I would jump into, sometimes at a moments notice gathering camping gear, food, gas and a sea chart. Our conversations on dark beaches listening to the waves into the night impacting to my way of thinking about the outdoors to this day as we were out there for the same reasons and chasing the same aesthetic.

   With like minds we set out to Barkley Sound aboard Francis Barkley, a sturdy cargo vessel that for decades dutifully delivered goods and mail to communities in the area that had not yet been connected to the greater world by roads. Down the winding Alberni Inlet in a dense fog we sat out on deck feeling the damp on a July morning looking at our kayaks balanced on crates below us in the open hold of the ship and straining eyes to make out the ocean. The anxiety crept in as slowly as the fog until by some luck the ship broke free of the gloom into open calm seas and sunshine. The week began with a pot enhanced sunset and wound its way through entering sea caves on low rolling swells, testing our nerves in narrow dark caverns. We tested our skills in open water in the outskirts of the safety inside the cluster of islands. There we met a breaching humpback whale barely visible behind the walls of deep swells that seemed to surround us until we scuttled back inside. The week found us luxuriating on several beach camps throughout the archipelago. The week ended at the same crowded dock where it began at a lodge that denied us access to the washrooms because we were not members of the kayak tour from that lodge. We were offered room temperature cans of Molson Canadian beer by a young server who took pity on us as we waited and whiled away the time until the Barkley returned for its trip back up the inlet. As foggy headed as that first night we settled in on the deck of the ship dozing and warming our backs on the smoke stack. It would not be our last paddle together.

   That came later, and then again in that place snaking our way up with friends on the San Juan Estuary near Port Renfrew on the west side of Vancouver Island no one would have thought it was our last paddle, however, sadly it would be at least in the physical sense. He passed in 2016 shortly before I would take on the most daunting challenge of my life taking part in the Yukon River Quest. He was with me there, in sprit and I had a moment while in line at the registration booth to get my number and prove that I had all my papers in order when I looked over to see a guy dressed as Jon would standing there. It took me out of the moment, the place, and the time and the bubble I was in. The next half hour that it took for me to return to Earth was quietly difficult. Of course it was coincidence, it was not him but I felt an eerie sense of comfort afterwards. This would not be his kind of thing. Running to his kayak to paddle non-stop for three days down a wilderness river attempting to get to the finish line before the elements of water and nature and fatigue beat him there. It would have been a place where we would return if I survived the marathon to spend a week or more drifting down the river towards Dawson City in our own time and in that shared mindful approach to encounters with the wilds. I wore his fleece cap at night under the chilly midnight sun. Was that to be our last, final paddle?

   The past few years have taken me on a crazy ride through ending of things and to the joys of rediscovering refreshing new life events, new things that are entered carefully and with lessons learned. It is the way of getting older, getting over the small things between people. It has been a period in my life when circumstances have kept me off the water more often than not and soon I hope to return, with a fresh energy and outlook. I think now which one of those will be my last paddle with someone else? How do we learn to make that last paddle trip, that last ever occasion for anything with someone we cared about when the end comes as something of a surprise? There are no good reasonable believable answers, and I cannot find even in my quieter moments an entry point to that question. None of us know how much time we have left, but some comfort in facing the inevitable and hopefully long way off destination for me is with a picture I took of the back of Jon’s head on that first night in Barkley Sound as the sun was doing its final act of the day on the natural stage before us. One of the few times that evening that I remembered to press the shutter button on my camera while my cook pot spat boiling rice water all over the beach rocks.