SPORs of the world, unite!

I’m a SPOR, and proud of it too. Some might call me an irresponsible parasite, but that’s only when I’m wearing my lawyer constume.

When I’m not, I’m often engaged in any one of a number of outdoor pursuits that involve movement through space and time under my own steam. In other words, I’m a Self-Propelled Outdoor Recreationist, or SPOR for short.

I know what you’re thinking. “Why didn’t I think of such a great acronym? I could’ve been famous!” Well, to be perfectly honest (and when ever am I not that?), it wasn’t my idea. I saw it in a Mountain Equipment Co-op catalogue years ago. (Marvellous folks, by the way. Great gear and best customer service this side of the Brahmaputra).

The great thing about being a SPOR is that there’s so many different ways enjoy the outdoors, be it hiking, backpacking, canoeing, kayaking, biking, skiiing or something else, that there’s literally something for everyone.

For those of us SPORs who’ve tried many different activities, there comes a curious realisation in that the way you view the environment through which you are passing is greatly affected by the endeavour in which you’re engaged.

Let me explain with an obvious example. To a hiker, rivers and ponds are obstacles to be dealt with. Nobody likes taking off their boots and feeling their way across a hip-deep ford full of round, slippery, toe-jamming rocks or sharp, slippery toe-cutting rocks. To a canoeist or a kayaker, water is a highway and a playground, while the trails linking mean naught but back-breaking labour. You carry an aluminum canoe on top of your head while walking through calf-deep heath for any length of time and you’ll see what I mean.

It can be a little more subtle than that, too. To the day-hiker, hills are challenges to be attacked with vim, vigour and gusto, all the better to revel in the glorious view from the top, because most day-hikers pick sunny days for hilly hikes. To the long-distance backpacker, a hill is a slow, steady process of one step at a time, a flop at the top, with maybe a view and maybe not, depending on the weather. Sometimes there’s not even a flop at the top, but a skitter down the other side to shelter.

A day-hiker’s thought processes are concerned with the trail, enjoying the day, and soaking up every minute that can be enjoyed from it and then relaxing at the end of it in a comfy chair and the wonderful feeling of having really had a great time. A backpacker has more time and thinks more slowly. They have a longer-term relationship with the trail and become more a part of its landscape than a traveller through it. For a day-hiker, the trail is a diversion. For the long-distance backpacker, the trail becomes their life and their life-line. It connects them to the world and gives them purpose. It stretches before and behind, future and past. A day-hiker can see his journey and the land through which he travels all at once. A backpacker cannot, nor does he want to.

I day-hike and backpack both.  Each activity enriches me, for each their own reasons.

My sister is a bicyclist.  She enjoys long rambling rides over hill and dale exploring highways and byways, lanes, lines and drungs.  I’m not a biker; just doesn’t seem to be my cup of tea, so I’m just surmising here, but I’ll bet her landscape is one touched constantly by the hand of humanity.  She moves through the world along paths built by people and travels through history and social geography, privy to the changes we’ve wrought in the land and the changes the land has wrought on us.

Marshall McLuhan was right.  The medium is the message.

Give and ye shall receive…..what ye did not expect.

At supper tonight, Katherine is being exceptionally polite, enthusiastic and generally cute and appealing. . . . . .

K: “I love you Mommy.  You’re wonderful.”

Vicky, with fond smile: “Thank you Katherine!  You’re wonderful too.”

K, in winsome tones: “And Daddy, he’s my super-Daddy.  I love you, John.”

Me: “I love you too, Katherine.”

K, in identical winsome tones: “I think you stink.”

Apparently, my daughter learned how to rhyme today. . . .

Exploits 2006 Part II

I ‘ve been meaning to get to a more detailed account of my trip to Exploits, so here ’tis. The first post is up this way.Exploits truly is a place for getting lost in the moment, because that’s all there is. The farthest you can plan ahead can be measured in hours and the island demands that you take it at the speed it sets. As soon as we stepped onto the boat to take us across, I relaxed and slowed down. It’d been a stressful, rainy drive over the highway and the last hour, on the secondary, increasingly rural road to Cottlesville I’d spent champing at the bit, trying not to drive too fast…..Vicky and Katherine had been gone for a week and the house had been way too quiet.

So as we set off into the fog and rain, Heather, Moss and I climbed up to the flybridge of the Sea Fun and just watched. Moss, like the rest of us, got a little wet.

There was general hustle and bustle as boats were packed and unpacked, kids were sorted into sleeping quarters and supper was prepared. All along, I noticed that Katherine seemed different. She looked taller, more sure in her movements and her vocabulary, syntax and general conversation were much more sophistocated. Strange, what can happen in a week.

If Katherine had leapt along in development, Exploits hadn’t moved much. The house, full of its own history and that of Vicky’s family, remained constant and as we all trundled out over the path to the rest of Upper Harbour and the remnants of the old Methodist church, everything that I find significant and representative of fell into place, one after the other. The close woods through the Spirit Level, the old houses sitting in their lots and fields and the great bulk of the Schoolhouse Hill looming over the channel between the islands, all were as I remembered them.

To live in that house, to walk along the paths and lanes is to not so much enter a place that time has not touched as become a part of a place in which the past and the present rub shoulders comfortably and nudge each other along into the future. Not just time, but everything moves more slowly. You cannot think a hasty thought; the place will not permit it. Exploits demands that each moment, each activity or task be taken in its own time and no other.  Jobs that could be onerous, like fetching water from the well or getting an armload of firewood become enjoyable simply by their own nature.  There is nothing to do, right at that moment, nothing pulling at you or demanding your attention than dropping the bucket into the well, or trying to figure out how to get a load of wood THIS wide through a dooway only this wide.

That which was is as important as that which is.  That which is to come will matter when it gets here and not before.

By removing the clutter and complcations from the world for a while, Exploits lets your mind travel along paths it might otherwise never take.  It’s a place for dreams, where nothing is impossible.

Hold that portal!

If you don’t get the joke of the title of this post, you’re obviously not a D&D geek. Oh well, we can’t all be one.

The preceding post on the need for a new door into (and out of) my basement got me thinking (warning bells should be going off right about now) about other uses for doors and doorways. They’re good for a lot of things, surprisingly. Here’s a top ten in no particular order:

Balancing buckets of water on.

If you can hang a door in a doorway, why can’t you hang a horse thief?

Keeping the bad guys out. Or in.

Barking at.

Slam-door-dancing.

Cover in case of unexpected gunfights.

Chin-ups.

If you want to be in the way, a doorway is a good place.

Good place to stand in case of earthquake.

Carrying corpses on. (Note: it is a good idea to take the door off its hinges before attempting this.)

Any other uses out there?

“This is a case about boats. I like boats.”

So said a judge to me in a recent court appearance. (I’m a lawyer, remember?) It’s very true. I like boats and so does Vicky. She’s already taken a crack at restoring one, a 17-foot wooden rodney.
So much so, in fact that we’ve got the building of three in our sights. The first, for this winter, to get our feet wet, so to speak, is the Nutshell Pram, a cute litte number that promises to be fairly easy to start off with.

Then there’s two Endeavour kayaks (his & hers) that are calling. Promises to be a busy few winters.

The nifty thing is that I’m pretty sure that a boat in its component bits will go into our basement, but when you’ve put them together into a floaty-thing, they probably won’t go out the way they came in. I may need to incorporate the cost of a new doorway into the shop from the rest of the basement into the cost of the boats. Amortised over the life of the vessels, it’ll only be pennies. Plus, it’ll have other uses than carrying boats through. I could carry boxes through it. Or just walk in and out for fun. Dogs could get trapped on the wrong side of it.

The possibilities are endless!

Splash!

Hee hee. I think I had more fun this morning than I’ve had since I got back from Exploits.

Entirely impromptuly, I went to a four-hour introduction to sea kayaking clinic held by St. John’s Parks and Rec Dept, and I can’t say enough good things about it. Vicky and I sea kayaked a few times on the Saint John River in Fredericton and thoroughly enjoyed it.

So when I spotted this clinc in a local stuff-to-do guide, my Lovely and Talented Wife gave up her usual Sunday-kid-free-take-a-deep-breath-morning-at-work and sent me off.

Taught by Ian Fong of The Newfoundland Kayak Company, and Carolyn Staple of the Parks and Rec Dept., the clinic started with a basic discussion of Shake Hands with your Kayak, an introduction of Stuff to Help You Out of Trouble and a rundown of Cool Gear. All extremely interesting, very well presented by two people who really know their stuff.
Then, we intrepid six novice kayakers carried our boats down to pond-side, it started raining. Not just little drops. Big ones. Close together. Lots of them. The lovely thing about getting rained on whilst engaged in a watersport, is that in summer, it really doesn’t matter.

We all got launched and I remembered just how much damn fun this is. It’s different from canoeing, as you’re sitting in the water more than on top of it. Skadoodling up to the calm end of the pond was effortless. These things just glide through the water at the brush of a paddle.

Up at the non-windy end, Ian and Carolyn demonstrated a couple of rescue techniques, showed us a few strokes that improved our boat control, gave us a chance to try them out and about and then invited us to try “wet exits.” Love that term, otherwise known as How to Get Out of an Inverted Kayak and Then Back In Again With Only a Slight Loss of Dignity.

So I tried it. Ian walked (swam?) me through the procedure and then under I dunked. He knidly held onto my glasses for me. Getting out of a capsized kayak is quite easy. Getting back in once the boat is righted is a little harder, but a lot more entertaining.

Then, as the rain was slashing down even harder, we beached and as we lugged the boats back up to the shed, the sun came out. Hmm.

I had tremendous fun, learned a pile and am completely, thoroughly and in all other ways addicted. The instructors were friendly, obvious experts in their rather soggy field and very good teachers. Thanks, guys.

Anyone local who reads this, try out one of their clinics. You’ll have a really good time.

Turns out there’s a really active local kayaking group, Kayak Newfoundland and Labrador. Now all I need to do is build the woodstrip kayak we got the plans for a couple of years ago. It’s from the Bear Mountain Boat Shop and builds their Endeavour 17 kayak. This should be FUN.

Conversations

THE SCENE: Katherine has been a horrible little wretch and has been sent to her room to reconsider her behaviour.

Me: “Are you ready to apologise?”

K: “NO!”

Me: “Okay. All you need to do is say ‘I’m sorry’ and the world can start up again. Let me know when you’re ready.”

Assorted hollering, none of it very polite. Some time passes.

K: “I want to come out.”

Me: “Okay.”

I open the door. There she is, snotty nose, red, tear-streaked face, looking more truculent than ever.

Me: “Are you going to apologise now?”

K: “I can’t!”

Me: “Okay. You’re staying in until you do.”

I start to close the door.

K: “Wait!” She grabs a little box from her dresser. “There’s no apology in my mouth. It’s in the box.”

Me: “Well, it’s not going to do much good in the box, now, is it?”

K: “No.”

She grabs a handful of air out of the box and stuffs it in her mouth.

K: “I apologise.”

Me, trying to keep from laughing in her face: “Mmrfle, gyrgle, shrmph, Katherine.”

K: “Are you okay, Daddy?”

How I spent my mental vacation

Summer holidays this year saw me to Exploits Islands, where Vicky’s folks have a summer home.

Picture by Vicky, of the property a few years ago.

Vicky’s Grandma bought the place in the early 1970s.

Exploits is an abandoned community on two islands in Notre Dame Bay, nine miles or so from the mainland. There’s no road or causeway; a local fisherman takes us over and back. There’s no telephone, no electricity and no running water. It’s walking water – you walk to the well and back with a bucket.

As if that wasn’t good enough, there’s beaches for mucking about on, boats for messing about in, woods for getting lost in, water for falling into and outhouses for climbing on top of. More about that later.

This is the back of the house, by Heather.

In short, pure bliss. Vicky, Katherine, Fergusson and Wikket (Lab and Border Collie Number 1) went down with her folks a week before my holidays started. I learned in that week that a house with only me and Moss (BC No. 2) in it is a very quiet place indeed. Due to poor planning on my part, I had to eat my own cooking once.

The expotition down to Exploits had the Pateys (Bob, Heather and kids) and the Bauers (Shelley, sans Larry, who had to work, and kids. It was their first time down. We all sallied forth through all manner of Newfoundland weather: fog, rain, sunshine and construction. Six exciting hours later we arrived at Cottlesville, population itty-bitty. Home to a very talented kayak-maker, paddler and guide, Sea Knife Kayaks.

It was a soggy trip over in the good ship Sea Fun. The rain was pelting down, but there was no wind. Most everyone stayed in the cabin, ‘cept Heather and I, who are susceptible to seasickness. Mossy stayed up top too, because he was attached to me. We got wet. Had fun though.

Then we arrived and Vicky’s folks went back home. That leaves ten. Five nominal grown-ups and five kids, aged 3 to 10. All in one house. For a week.

Honest, we’re not crazy.

We had a wonderful time. There was boating and hiking, seashell collecting, violin practice, woodstove-lighting, bonfires and s’mores. And I got to re-shingle a roof.

The outhouse roof. I did mention that, right? Well, there’s the proof below – Heather took the picture.

That roof is about six feet square. There’s rocks and nettles to its front and one side, a fifteen-foot drop into nettles on the other side (the one facing the picture) and to the back……is downhill. Let’s just say that at the bottom of THAT fifteen-foot drop is a large patch of very well-fertilised nettles.

I did not want to fall off that roof.

Did I mention that I’m scared of depths? Actually, I’m not afraid of falling, but the sudden stop at the end. It’s an entirely rational fear of landing. It’s weird: I can stand at the edge of a cliff and look down, no problem, but being on top of a small space or on a stairway or balcony that I can look down through and see the ground below my feet gives me the heebidajeebadies.

The first step was to get rid of the old shingles and the easiest way to do that is to shovel them off. There is something truly ironic about shovelling out the TOP of an outhouse. Anyway, if any of you Gentle Readers out there have ever been near shingles before, you know about that peculiar tar-and-asphalt smell they have. It’s not objectionable, which is just as well, considering that you’re surrounded by it when standing on a roof. A word to the wise for those who have occasion to reshingle outhouse roofs. As you shovel off the old shingles, the shingle-smell gradually fades and you become aware that lurking below the shingle-smell is another odour, that the shingles were actually protecting you from. An older smell, coming from further below your feet……..

It is truly amazing how quickly one can lay shingles when one has the proper motivation.