Saturday, October 28, 2006

canoe chronicle


canoe at the ready
Originally uploaded by Southworth Sailor.
If you can't enjoy sailing because your boats are in hibernation, you might as well do the next best thing - grab anything that floats! I could not pass up this gorgeous fall Saturday without getting on the water. My canoe has a year round berth in my neighbor's beachfront yard, so it's easy to launch at the impulse of an itch. Because there was a mild south breeze, and because I rarely venture south, I decided to head down Colvos Passage. It didn't take me long to realize that this struggle against wind and current was going to be a slow go. It occured to me that while my progress was slow, I was sharing the elements of Puget Sound mariners of centuries past. For hundreds or thousands of years, the only vessels to ply these waters were dugout canoes. While my plastic Coleman pales in comparison to the dignity and stabilty of the carved cedar craft of the Salish, I share something of the timeless interplay between human motion and this inland sea. After an hour of inching my way down the passage, I turned the bow back north and enjoyed a quick relaxing ride back home. The vivid colors of the autumn afternoon were a sharp contrast to the colorless marine fog of the morning.

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