Vera Saulino tells of her intrepid expedition riverboarding down the Sun Kosi River, Nepal.
As I lay there, face down on the bottom of the passage, I reveled in the quietude of my breath under trillions of gallons of seawater. I was alone and I was content. I knew they would be searching for me and with any luck, they’d find me before my teeth started to chatter.
The pace of our training is the first challenge. I start slowly and clumsily; putting my thumbs in the wrong places and struggling to manhandle ropes into messy half-remembered knots. When your life depends on that knot, you’ve got to know it instinctively. The ocean doesn’t give you a second chance because you’re a beginner.
Why am I so hesitant to weed out my water bottle collection? Because each bottle is connected with a memory or meaningful event. Sure, the memory won’t disappear with the bottle, but the bottle is a concrete reminder of the event. Read on for examples.
So comfortable, lightweight and breathable, I forgot I was wearing the Watermocs and only took them off for dinner in town because they’re so good looking that people would have stared.
My friend Ann Raiho and I will be the first two women to paddle a historic 2,250-mile route from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay in a three-month canoeing expedition through the Minnesota and Red Rivers, Lake Winnipeg, and the Hayes River.
Wave science leans heavily on quantum mechanics, atomic physics, and complex mathematics. But, in lay terms, climate change affects wave size. “We’re pumping more energy into the system,” Susan Casey says. “More energy makes bigger waves. Steeper waves, and steeper waves are more unstable.”
“It’s mind over matter,” Jeni said. The fact of the matter is that I was learning to breathe under water. My mind said that it was both unnatural and unsafe. But Jeni, my scuba instructor, said my issue was normal and that it just takes getting used to. “We women like breathing through our noses,” she told me.
“Life is a thrill.” So get out there, says Tara Short, founder of Green Edventures, LLC. Maybe you’re one of the folks who’ll fill of one of the a few spots left in her upcoming Baja eco-adventure trip, which runs April 14-20.
I’m big on analogies, so if I had to compare stand-up paddleboarding to a non-aquatic sport, it would definitely be jogging.
Since the April 20th explosion of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil well, it’s been pretty much impossible to hear “oil” and “Gulf Coast” in the same sentence without also hearing “total decimation.” Heading to the beach after exposure like that would be sort of like packing up for a forest getaway in the wake of a conflagration.
The freedom of having just eight items (a toothbrush, a pair of capri’s, a tank top, one bathing suit, a pair of Keens, a sleeping bag, a sunhat, and sunscreen) was revolutionary. And it was fitting that the only mirror I had to look into was the river water, which served up a more authentic reflection than I’d seen in a long time.
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