I can step pretty lively in the kitchen, but when it comes to getting into and out of a boat, I’d like to be able to order myself a pair of sea legs.
My friend Cindy and I were great friends in our teens, growing up in B.C. I haven’t seen her in 35 years but we correspond through email. She describes being on the water, kayaking, as a spiritual experience; a form of meditation; like entering a dimension where her mind, body and soul can easily intersect in nature. She is a true disciple of the sport, declaring that time spent in a kayak is the ultimate in self-care. It’s an admirable sentiment, and worth imitating.
Noah Patey built a nice little flat bottom pond boat and sold it to us a few years ago. It’s battleship grey, 10.5 feet in length, and moves nicely in the water: it’s great for paddling around Ship Cove and there are things you see and hear in a pond boat you’d never take notice of in a speedboat, such as the ‘canine sponge’ we witnessed running down the Ship Cove road not too long ago.
Recently, Len and I decided to paddle to Harbour Island. Len pulled on his floater jacket and I grabbed my gear and threw it into the bow of the boat. Then Len spun the boat 180 degrees and directed me to sit in the stern. As I threw one leg over the stern, Pearce Tucker drove by with Angela’s dog in the back of his truck and called, “You going jigging?” I was thrown off balance and dumped unceremoniously into the bottom of the boat, but quickly scrambled onto the seat, rubbing my bruised shins.
Angela’s dog looks like a cross between an Airedale terrier and a moose. As Pearce called out to us, she flung herself out of the back of the truck and plunged into the water, swimming for our boat with the obvious intention of coming aboard. The boat, not being exactly spacious, was never meant to accommodate two people and a wet, woolly dog, so Len pulled hard on the oars and we were soon out of reach.
Meanwhile, we heard Pearce shouting for the dog to get in the truck, but she was as heedless as a small child in a wading pool. Pearce tooted the horn, calling to the dog, “I’m leaving! Bye bye!” and drove off. The dog, who must have realized Pearce meant business, swam through the water as if propelled from a cannon and hit the beach running.
Now, it was a beautiful evening with cumulous clouds massed in great piles on the horizon like cotton candy, driven along by a southerly wind. The sun spilled on the surface of the waves, with the water blue-black on one side of the boat, and molten pewter on the other. Seagulls perched along Harbour Island, as picturesque as a Joe Norris painting. The Viking settlement winked its lights across the bay, the Great and Little Sacred Islands loomed on the horizon, and Cape Onion described a sharp silhouette, rising majestically above the Tickle Inn. An hour later we steered for home, skirting the waves that pounded the shoreline near Sam Hurley’s beach, watching the sun descending behind Graveyard Hill.
Len steered the boat stern-first through the rocks and towards our beach, directing me to hop out and pull the boat a little ways up. I swung my leg over and, as I attempted to swing the other leg over, stumbled on a slippery rock and fell flat on my bottom. As I scrambled to my feet, I saw a wave bearing down on the boat and, before I could find my feet, the wave hit and drove the boat right over me, striking my shins, knocking me down and filling my boots with water.
*****
Obviously, this religious experience Cindy describes while kayaking has eluded me so thus far. While she speaks of ‘a sense of synchronicity at once profound and grounding’, I dream of finding my sea legs so that I can get in and out of the boat with even a little bit of dignity.
*****
All in all though, there was no better sight, sitting in that boat, than seeing the dog as she chased Pearce’s truck down the road, shedding water in the evening sunlight like a canine sponge. In my mind it had to be like witnessing the eighth wonder of the world. The evening sun, the mist, the rainbow, the halo-surrounding that dog-was a sight worth seeing and, I guarantee, absolutely unforgettable.
I may not have my sea legs yet, but truly, watching that dog was a religious experience like no other.
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