Put Your Paddle in the Water

Advice from me to me

August 5, 2024, 13:32, flood tide, waxing crescent, Late Summer
High 90ºF/ Low 70ºF, grey skies, pressure 1017 mb, 3.65 feet

Today finds me on the Panera Bread Wi-Fi off Highway 75 headed north.

There’s this audio clip on Instagram that goes, “I wasn’t sad I just needed [insert action here].” It’s been looping through my head and getting filled with actions such as: a six-hour singalong through mountain roads, a wander around Target, a cheeseburger in paradise, and a bar crawl with my family.

This newsletter has been circling around what it means to face an ocean of uncertainty and return to land.

The first post was sent two years ago from a remote area of Panama. My sweetie and I were anchored down for hurricane season, working as handy people at an off-grid eco-retreat. We had decided not to chance a Caribbean crossing and by doing so, extended our travel for another year. That active pause allowed time to integrate some of our experiences sailing down the isolated Pacific coastline and crossing the threshold of the Panama Canal, as well as time to get more prepared for sailing that didn’t end up being all that smooth. We lived off of rainwater and I was inspired to think about other catchment systems I might implement to collect creativity and resources once our journey was complete. Here's an early post about that:

Empty Buckets

The hard thing about writing consistently is that I feel like I need to have everything else sorted before I sit down to the page. It’s so much easier to do anything else, as soon as I open up space for words to come through, it seems like there are a million others to attend to - an email, laundry, a job application, a text.

It's now eighteen days since I sat at Panera and thought about what to say here. Right now I'm sitting on a bench overlooking the James River a few blocks from my house, clack clacking on my phone with 9% battery.

I started this writing project because I felt like I was learning important lessons at sea that might be helpful for living on other parts of the planet. My 777-day ocean voyage has been a pretty big experience to integrate and it often all just feels like a dream, that is until I land in some situation that has me feeling either super human or alien in my ability to navigate it.

The other day, I finished reading Miranda July’s latest book and a sentence grabbed me: “who would ever talk about a trip they took unless it was to hell and back?”.

Just in case I never sum up my personal philosophies informed by life on an ocean-going vessel, here's a nugget from river guide training that's been helping me through lately: PUT YOUR PADDLE IN THE WATER.

My trainers repeated this basic and resonant command. Whitewater rafts are quite maneuverable and responsive to the river currents running underneath. Keeping your paddle in the water allows you to feel the water and make micro-adjustments. Having a paddle in the water is not the same as rowing. It's less energy-intensive, yet more responsive. When guiding down the river, I aim for the river to do most of the work and steer the raft into areas of faster and slower currents accordingly. Like most water experiences, there's no rush aside from a well or poorly executed maneuver.

On Tuesday, I took part in facilitating a leadership program for college students. I instructed my group of four on the mechanics of the raft, guided them in drills, and let them guide the raft down the entirety of the falls of the James River. This was a new type of leadership for me — setting them up for success, letting them learn from blunders, and adding a stroke or two in here and there to avoid trouble. A few times, the students would spot an obstacle and fail to make a choice on which way to go round. They then ran straight into it. No choice is a choice. In a full-circle moment, I found myself being the one to say “put your paddle in the water”.

This has become a mantra of sorts for me off the river as I navigate job searching, acclimating to my city, and the other ebbs and flows of life. I look downstream for obstacles while also attuning to the present. 4% battery left on the phone, so I'll leave this with a couple practical examples.

Some ways to put your paddle in the water:

Make a fridge scrap salad. Better yet, put it in a cooler with an ice pack and bring along for the day.

Send a prompt but imperfect response.

Walk around the neighborhood.

Dress for the day ahead.

In early training, I wore my sailing foul weather gear (“foulies”), purchased by my parents for Christmas 2015 and battered with ocean waves ever since. As the season progressed, I switched to my husband’s wetsuit, purchased in Morro Bay, California to participate in the local yacht club’s dinghy sailing night when we were passing through. My little hood is a sun shirt with the nautical charts of Cartagena, Colombia. I bought it the last day before a passage of eight days and nights to Isla Mujeres, Mexico. These days, I wear the sun shirt, shorts, water shoes, and my new PFD and helmet.

If you're in the area and would like to go down the river, book a trip at rvapaddlesports.com.