Essay: Paddling Meditation

A fine mist hovers just above the lake as the sky begins to lighten. The still, dark water reflects the firs lining the opposite bank. Here and there a trout takes a bite out of the surface, rippling the mirror and sending a gentle splash into the air. As the sun creeps over the ridge, osprey chicks screech their demands from their nest atop a snag as their parents circle overhead.

I take no interest in the birds or the fish other than to notice them as they do what they do day after day, living their lives. I am intent on this smooth water, this water that sends me an invitation with its stillness. I grab the paddle from where it leans against a tree and walk down to the bank. Awaiting me there is my canoe, a third of its length pulled ashore. It lists a little toward me, beckoning.

Composed of thin strips of Western red cedar the hull is two-tone, predominately light honey in the bilges, and dark brown just below the gunwales. Above the water line run two stripes of deep red mahogany. The decks, gunwales, yoke, laced seats, and steam-bent stems are made of ash. Thin bands of copper accent and protect the stems, fore and aft.

As I approach the boat I consider the involvement of my own hands in its fabrication: selecting the clear boards and sawing them into strips, painstakingly gluing those strips together as I tacked them into place over the mold with hundreds of brads, sandwiching the hull between sheets of fiberglass impregnated with epoxy. And all that sanding. Hours and hours of it. I consider how the smoothing and polishing of wood are themselves time-honored forms of meditation.

I place the paddle in the boat. Two staccato beats reverberate across the water as the blade of the paddle knocks against the boat’s bottom and the shaft clunks the seat. The small racket cracks the stillness. I imagine fish scattering in all directions, and every animal, every insect, going on alert. An hour later the same noises would go unnoticed, muffled by the chop that will dapple the lake.

I take hold of the line tied to the beached end of the boat and raise it off the gravel, freeing it from the shore. I step into the water, my toes curling with aversion to the iciness of it. I nudge the boat ahead of me, enough that it is now able to float its full length. I ease it a little farther out so it will carry my weight without scraping bottom on any one of the several submerged rocks that line the shoreline. I grab the gunwales, and in one motion push away from the shore and leap into the boat.

I settle in noisily, sloshing water aboard. I adjust the cushion under my knees and lean back in a semi-seated position. Kneeling is the preferred position for paddling a canoe. In spite of the initial discomfort, there are advantages. The center of gravity is lower, making the boat more stable, and it puts me closer to the water, giving me more control.

Half a dozen anglers in rowboats surround me at a distance. From about a hundred yards away I hear two men talking in clipped sentences. Their voices walk across the water, clear and easy. Suddenly one of them cries, “Ah!” as his rod bends and he begins to reel in his breakfast.

I do not fish. I don’t care for the taste of trout or the mess involved in its preparation. Nor do I care to get involved in the tangle of tackle necessary to bring one into the boat. As a kid I loved to go through my father’s tackle box, sorting the lures and hooks, examining the dry flies, and feeling the weight of the lead shot. To catch a fish, though, one needs more than tackle. One needs a certain passion for it, something that never developed within me. I leave the fish alone.

Paddling on a small lake is of itself the end, the purpose of being on the water. I have no destination. This flat-water paddling is different in that regard from white-water canoeing, where one churns downstream in a rush of adrenaline. There is a beginning, there is an end. Here, on this lake, I reach ahead, dip the paddle in the water, pull back, and do it again and again. Around the perimeter, across and back, into coves, and through reed beds. There is much to be had, much to be learned in this repetition of motion that takes a person nowhere in particular.

I once had a notion to paddle a canoe from east coast to west, to embark on a grand journey of discovery of my own Northwest Passage. I imagined getting a huge advance for the book I’d write describing not only the physical journey but the spiritual awakening I’d go through.

Such was the stuff of dreams. The light of morning showed me I hadn’t any idea of how to make such a journey happen. Perhaps I didn’t have the courage to find out.

Still, I was desperate for discovery. I longed for something beyond what being a loyal consumer could give me. Somehow, some long time ago, a tiny seed of emptiness had germinated within me. Slowly it grew, expanding and deepening, this void with its choking roots and grasping branches.

My religion, the one I was raised in, offered little help. It raised more questions than it provided in answers. Perhaps I lacked faith, wasn’t worthy. Or perhaps I just practiced the wrong religion. Either way, years of introspection exposed this void and demanded it be filled. Spiritually, I was adrift. There was no current I felt comfortable in.

So I set out to build a canoe instead, nurturing the belief that the process would be my own personal journey of revelation.

Boats are beautiful things, and watching one come together can be as beautiful an experience as watching a sunrise. But being enmeshed in the process – with all its challenges and frustrations – was more like peering through a sky filled with drizzle than one of radiance. Nor did I have any spiritual revelations as I labored away, fitting one piece against another, redoing this or that, and, of course, sanding, sanding, sanding to make everything fair.

I looked forward to being finished, getting the boat in the water. I saw myself as I am now, paddling on a mirror lake on a crisp summer morning, listening to the subtle kisses of the bow cutting through the water. Back then, however, I had to remind myself so many times that it’s the journey that counts, not the destination. I had to be content with my plodding steps. I found this reminder somewhat comforting. I knew I would be finished eventually, that someday I would reach the end of this journey, that I should be satisfied with the process, and without expectations.

And so it is, I think, the way all spiritual paths. One just plods along day after day, doing the work – not mindlessly and dejectedly, but with purpose and faith. There is a kind of joy in this, too. It’s not a gleeful, outward kind of joy, but an underlying current of contentedness and satisfaction with life just as it is. Everything one encounters is just part of the subtle scenery along the way.

I confess I missed a good deal of scenery as I put my boat together.

Yet came the day when my vehicle of discovery was finished, sleek and shiny and oh so fair. At my first opportunity I lashed my new craft to my car and sought water. I found a put-in along the Tualitin, a muddy, slow moving river not far from home that offered near stillness and privacy. As I slipped it into the water, I remember thinking It floats! as though I had some doubt that it would. And perhaps I did. Yet there it was, sitting not so much in the water but on it. Moments later it carried me into the river.
I had no idea what to expect, but this maiden voyage was nothing like I had in mind – meaning I hadn’t expected to be disappointed. The boat was awkward, ungainly. None of the movements seemed to match the boat itself. What looked like a swan handled like a dodo. After 15 minutes I hauled the boat out of the water and went home.

I wasn’t thoroughly discouraged, however, and soon I gave it another go. What else could I do with this thing if I couldn’t use it? It wasn’t long before the boat handled as smoothly as it looked. It just took a while for me to understand that there was nothing at all wrong with the canoe. I just needed time to learn how to paddle this canoe.

The mist is gone from the lake now, with the sun well above the ridge. A breeze ripples the surface. A sensed but unseen agitation has replaced the stillness in the air. Sounds are dampened by the activity of a day already growing old. I turn my canoe around and head across the lake to my campsite. My focus has shifted from easy exploration of the moment to being somewhere else. Instead of being effortless and timeless, paddling becomes a chore that I just want to be done with. I put my back into it as I plow homeward.

Time shifts in odd ways. We have clocks that indicate its advance with measured precision. One minute today is neither longer nor shorter than a minute 50 years ago. How long I’d been on the water I have no idea. Surely, paddling with steadfast intention, I should be back at my campsite in just a flash of the time spent getting here. It seems, however, that my impatience, my longing for a moment that does not yet exist, distorts time and distance. Time and distance are not real. They are merely perceptions, conditions of the mind, the stuff of science fiction.

Finally it comes into view as I round a rocky point along the shore, the little clearing in the brush with it’s stretch of rock-strewn beach that indicates home. As I enter my little cove I am once again fooled by the illusions of time and distance. From the body of the lake, the shoreline passes by slowly. Now, with the shoreline so close, it feels as though I cover a great distance with just a couple of strokes of the paddle. There is a sensation that my speed has increased by a factor of five. I alter my course to give clearance to a pair of fishing lines angling into the water. The man and boy watch me from their perch on a rocky outcropping. I imagine the man admiring my boat, perhaps saying, “Now there, son, is one fine looking canoe.”

I size up the shore, looking for the spot where I will guide the bow onto the beach. I am nearly there and must make quick adjustments. I imagine the fisherman saying, “See how skillful he is.”

I feel it before I hear it, the submerged rock grinding into the hull. I am three feet from the bank. I am stuck.

Quickly, as if it’s all part of the plan, I step out of the boat into knee-deep water. As the boat rolls to the side it grinds against the rock one more time before floating free. As I lift the bow onto the beach, I inspect the damage: a pair of heavy scratches about two feet long. I try not to imagine what the man might be saying and consciously avoid looking in his direction.

A curse wells up, but in a moment it ebbs. I take a breath, sidestepping the rocky crags of self-recrimination. It’s not much effort to sand the hull and apply a couple of coats of varnish. Maybe next spring I’ll do that bit of maintenance. Meanwhile, I see the scratches for what they are, just more scenery that flows through my morning.