Outside Adventure to the Max: RIVERS, ISLANDS, AND MOUNTAINS

Friday, June 3, 2016

RIVERS, ISLANDS, AND MOUNTAINS

                                         I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
                                      Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy’d
                                   Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
                                That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
                              Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
   Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
                                       For always roaming with a hungry heart
                                                 Alfred Lord Tennyson

On a clear day at access at Sailor bar, I can see the Sierra Nevada Mountains They're snow-capped, looming and like John Muir said calling for us come. In between are the forks of the American River brimming with spring runoff, roaring down to the basin. Turning to the west, it's a water trail to the Pacific. Down the American River, pouring into the Sacramento River and the Delta before reaching San Francisco Bay. In some places the water is slow and gentle, almost meandering lost without direction, while in other places it's quick and furious moving with such force that it has carved out the canyon that cradles it. However, water isn't concerned about the past, it lives in the now. Leonardo Da Vinci said, "In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time."

"One of the reasons I love whitewater kayaking to much is that it forces you to focus on the moment," wrote a former member of the Canadian Freestyle Whitewater Kayak Team and Bronze medalist Anna Levesque in her recent Girls at Play newsletter. " If you don't pay attention in a rapid you could end up somewhere you don't want to be. People are addicted to whitewater kayaking because they felt that intense joy that comes with being really present, at the moment. You don't have to be a whitewater kayaker to experience this. Sea kayakers experience this and lake paddlers who can get really quiet and pay attention to the beauty around them are also able to experience the present moment"

Some good advice as we head into the summer paddling season. It's great to look back on our experiences on the water, but we should be reminded that our best days are just any days we are paddling. So seize each day and enjoy each moment in the mountains, lakes, rivers.

Here are a few of my favorite images from this year so far.