Paddling my own canoe
My holidays changed to be psychologically much richer than what I planned some weeks ago when I told my friends, “this year I must stay home and work on proposals”. Instead, due to an unfortunate series of events on my friend’s side, my holidays were spent with one of the most can-do humans I know. Spending those days talking and walking and sharing (and helping when he’d let me) such a person was a knock-on-the-head for what humans can do when their life philosophy is No Limits. Therefore, I’d like to follow up Giulio’s book suggestion for teens and girls with another book suggestion of my own that encapsulates a No Limits philosophy. Teen years are often an angst-ridden time when the young person flounders and flails and despair that they ‘cannot do anything’. But, Au contraire! You CAN.
The book: Paddling my Own Canoe is about a woman, the author Audrey Sutherland, who has a goal to reach a a particular inaccessible beach on the island of Moloka’i in Hawai’i. Because of the cliffed terrain surrounding that particular beach, the only access point is by sea, which is the Moloka’i Channel, one of the most dangerous stretches of water in the Pacific Ocean, due to its strong undercurrents.
Starting her successful trials in 1958, she spent some days to a week every year improving her methods of travel to that beach, first swimming from one ocean-entry point on the island (after being dropped there by plane), and dragging her survival gear in waterproof containers that she built, and later by building small rafts/canoes and paddling there (hence the name of the book). As the years passed, and she became more skilled, she eventually upgraded her goal to build a small house on that beach, completeing that task, as well.
This 130 page monologue lets you listen while she talks to herself, trying to understand what went wrong on a particular action and how she might fix the problem so the action will work better next time. You hear how she breaks down a large task into many managable pieces and then tries and tests each of those pieces until she reaches success. You are with her when she is planning, trying, thinking, researching, and forever improving how to do something. This is a book that not only shows how to solve big problems by breaking them down into manageable pieces, but demonstrates thinking for oneself and how to live with grace and humor and courage and diligence. For example: much of her equipment she built or devised on her own because there didn’t exist the kind of expedition equipment (lightweight, sturdy, waterproof) that she needed at the time in the 1950s and 1960s. She is also very modest, often chiding herself, and she has a wonderfully funny sense of humor.
Some quotes from the book:
“I peeled down to the high-topped tennis shoes and clumped off to the river with the dirty dishes. Alone and content among the trees at the water’s edge, I stood like Daphne, bewitched there in the forest. Daphne, ha! Where’s Apollo, you dirty, salty female? I knelt by the pool and scrubbed, composing a derisive haiku, as did Basho and Issa in Japan long ago.
Goddess by the stream
Tall, bare, proud ... laughs at dreams, and
Squats to wash the pots. “
and
“What I really need is for some scientist to develop a dehydrated or freeze-dried wine. Please forgive such sacrilege, Monsieur Lichine and Mr. Balzer and you other connoisseurs, but I do enjoy wine with my meals, and seven half-bottles, a week’s supply, weigh ten pack-sagging pounds. Table wines are twelve percent alcohol and perhaps two percent grape residue. Perfect a dehydration method and I could carry a fifth of that lovely wine, Louis Martini’s Moscato Amabile, in a container holding four ounces. Develop further; freeze-dry the alchohol. Then I could buy foil packets of a powdered Beaulieu Cabernet Sauvignon, or, for Franco-oenophiles, a Chateau LaMission Haut Brion, add water, display the packet label with a flourish, and pour with a drip-stopping wrist twist- into a Sierra Club cup. “But listen, Aud”, say my scientific friends. “If you really want concentrated wine, it’s already been done. It’s called brandy.” “
and
“I had to go back again. To be that terrified of anything, that incompetent, survive by that small a margin - I’d better analyze, practice,then return and do it right. “
and (my favorite quote of the book):
“And why did I always come alone to Moloka’i? I know why, but the telling is hard. Daily we are on trial, to do a job, to make a marriage good, to find depth, serenity, and meaning in a complex, deterioating world of politics, false values, and trivia. But rarely are we deeply challenged physically or alone. We rely on friends, on family, on a committee, on community agencies outside ourselves. To have actual survival, living or dying, depends on our own ingenuity, skill, or stamina- this is a core question we seldom face. We rarely find out if we like having only our own mind as company for days or weeks at a time. How many people have ever been total isolated, ten miles from the nearest other human, for even two days?
Alone, you are more aware of surroundings, wary as an animal to danger, limp and relaxed when the sun, the brown earth, or the deep grass say, “Rest now.” Alone you stand at night, alert, poised, hearing through ears and open mouth and fingertips. Alone, you do not worry whether someone else is tired or hungry or needing. You push yourself hard or quit for the day, reveling in the luxury of solitude. And being unconcerned with human needs, you become as a fish, a boulder, a tree- a part of the world around you.
I stood once in midstream, balanced on a rock. A scarlet leaf fluttered, spiraled down. I watched it, became a wind-blown leaf, swayed, fell into the water with a giant human splash, then soddenly crawled out, laughing uproariously.
The process of daily living is often intense and whimsical. The joy of it, and the compassion, we can share, but in pain we are ultimately alone. The only real antidote is inside. The only real security is not insurance or money or a job, not a house and furniture paid for, or a retirement fund, and never is it another person. It is the skill and humor and courage within, the ability to build your own fires and find your own peace.
On a solo trip you may discover these, or try to build them, and life becomes simple and deeply satisfying. The confidence and strength remain and are brought back and applied to the rest of your life.”
Happy Holidays All!
Posted by amaragraps on 12/29 at 10:58 AM