Balancing act

This week I had my first two sea kayaking classes of the new season and both of course had their own personalities. The first was loose and laid back. We covered a lot of the points I wanted to cover and yet, driving home I could pinpoint bits and pieces that I wanted to do differently or that I felt I overlooked.

In the shuffling madness

It’s probably the nature of the moment; The media screams of politics, the opinion battles of guns, gods, activists and naysayers, the wind tunnel nature of my own little world of late, the sound of heavy trucks passing by on the highway. . . Whatever the reasons and likely for all these reasons and a multitude others that have so easily woven into the din, the tenor, the beat, the drums, the bells, the noise seems slightly overwhelming. Even the birds seem strangly loud.  An oppressive atmosphere seems filled with acrid odors aloft on a racing wind.

easy skankin’

Somedays you just stop whatever you’re doing and load up the kayak and head to the nearest bit of water you can find. 

Well, that’s the FIRST thing you do. . .

ferry trail

So this is when you know you spend too much time thinking about kayaking. .  .  I walked onto this trail and was suddenly thinking about ferrying.

postmodern hermeneutical theory

There’s still a light in that old cabin across the field. Last night I could see a lamp fly past the window. I could hear things crash and the old man swearing under his breath. Funny how those acrid shouts in the night air fill me with a sense of comfort. After days of silence I feared that something may have happened. I imagined taking the long walk through the Durum fields, and the knocking on the door. . . oh, and the smell!! Oh, God, the smell! . . .I’m glad the old man is not dead. I’m glad he’s up crashing and shouting and cursing the world that races on around him. I won’t go and visit him of course. I hate the smell of his house anyway. Why is it some people never open windows?

measure of time

Spring is here. Not “Spring is Here!!” which of course is plastered on every shop window and auto garage to encourage you to buy a rake or change your oil, no I mean the real spring. The trick of knowing when spring has finally arrived is really based on how you measure time.

For my part I don’t use calendars to pin down spring. The ice coming off the lakes certainly portends to the coming of spring, yet that is not spring. Spring after all is about life. I was thinking about this the other day while walking around a Mirror Lake near Wisconsin Dells. It was warm, the sun was shining and it certainly felt like spring. “So when was the beginning of spring? I wondered to myself. Was it March 21st like the calendars say? Was it that day when the ice finally came off the lake? Was it the day the turkey vultures returned to the hills around the valley where I live? Then I looked down at the ground and realized . . . the first day of spring was about two inches ago.

3am goes something like this

In the silence of the predawn hours sounds that are often lost in the din of the daylight rule the dead nocturnal air. My office clock chugs with a regular rhythm that will if I let, it bring to mind Pink Floyd’s “Dogs of War”. . . ba dum, ba dum, ba dum ba dum. . . along with that rhythm comes memories of that whole hypnotic hip thing their backup singers had goin’ on. .

Outside the window the wind rushes through the trees and the remnants of today’s storms still swirl around every corner. Wind chimes jingle and jangle in the empty darkness. The clock set’s down the beat . . ba dum, ba dum, ba dum ba dum. . .