THE ABC'S FOR YOUR SUMMER 2019

After a long cold winter and very wet spring, the days of summer are finally here. This weekend kickoffs the official unofficial start to summer.  It's time to organize and alphabetize yours for summer list of adventure and fun near the water. Not sure where to start? We have some from great tips A to Z  on how you can make this summer unforgettable. So you waiting for, as Van Morrison said, "Smell the sea and feel the sky. Let your soul and spirit fly."

Abandon your phone Ok, not for the whole summer, but at least day or two. Writer Michelle A. Homme says, "The quietness we encounter will allow us to hear the birds sing and to hear the wind whip lightly through the trees as the seasons begin to change.  We can recharge without feeling like we’re being pulled in so many directions."

Blast to the Beach Whether crowded or remote, sandy or rocky the beaches rules are always the same. Breathe the sea air, rest, relax and reflect with no shoes required. "I feel so lucky to know the magic of travel by way of water," wrote kayak adventure Kate Hives in her blog At Home on the Water, "To intimately feel the ebb and flood of the ocean as it caresses the rocky shores and sandy beaches of this coastal playground. Sometimes I feel like I have been told a great secret of the mystery of the natural world and my – our – connection to it."

Catch a Wave  All of that white snow from this past winter means a summer of whitewater for rafters and kayakers as they anticipating a longer season than normal with rapids. “There’s nothing better than spending a great day in nature, on the river with some friends," said Whitewater Excitement's Phillip Schoenhoff, "If you’re looking to smile all day, laugh until your abs hurt, and experience the excitement and thrill of the rapids, come on out and join us!”

Demo Your Dream Ride You wouldn't think about buying a car without a test drive, so why would you want to do that with your kayak? Many shops have demo programs for people who are in the market to buy a kayak. The River Store
 
Escape the City Did you get outside today? No, really outside, away from the noise, traffic and the endless scurrying about. Scientific research has long documented how just spending time in the great outdoors can have numerous mental and physical health benefits for rebooting your body and mind. As John Muir reminded all of us, "Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean."

Feast on Your Float Tired of the normal river food being peanut butter sandwiches, simple freeze-dried packets, and oatmeal? Check out Lacey Anderson's Camp Cooking WITHOUT Coolers cookbook series.  She has developed menus that are nutritious, good tasting and easy to prepare, that is also lightweight and does not require refrigeration.

Go

Live

Incredible

Delights

Experience

Intimacy

Natural

Wonders

Experience

Tranquill

Lush

Amazing

Nature

Delta

Serenity  Paddler and operator of Delta Kayaking Adventures Kathy Bunton loves her experiences on California's waterlogged delta so much she put in the form of an acrostic poem to encourage you to come to glide along.

Help Clean Your Waterway Last year, cleanup organizers and volunteers spend a lot of time outside getting dirty as according to American Rivers the National River Cleanup registered cleanups at 3,166 sites, mobilized 57,228 volunteers and removed almost 2,000,000 pounds of trash. American Rivers
 
Indulge in S'mores What's a good camp out without the best dessert? Who doesn't love chocolate, marshmallow and Graham crackers? But as camping mom, Christy Harris Bryant points out pay close attention, "Because the golden rule with s' mores is. Never burnt, never burnt, Nobody wants a burnt s' more."

Journey Down A River "I love river trips," wrote outdoor educator Jeff Jackson in Paddling Magazine, "The whole trip though, not just the exciting bits or the paddling parts. I love the early possibilities and preliminary ideas, finding the maps and digging for the info I need to connect the dots."

 

Kayak a Lot That needs no explanation. Just go do it.

Love Your Parks "National parks are the best idea we ever had, wrote Wallace Stegner, "Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst." We heartily agree. Whether it's a national park or state park visiting these national landscapes of beauty and history shouldn't just be done in the summertime, but all year round. National Parks State Parks

Mix and Mingle at Water Festival These gatherings celebrate the river community and its history. Some are well-funded mega-fests while others are grassroots efforts led by volunteers with a universal love of showcasing their river. "These unique assemblies of river enthusiasts, first-timers and nomadic paddlers produce intense challenges, excellent learning opportunities, and unforgettable memories," wrote Kalob Grady in Paddling Magazine, "While non-kayaking friends will love the live music, vendors, silent auction and wild party."

Navigate Your Neighborhood When you live somewhere long enough, it has a tendency to stop being interesting by being too familiar. "Throughout my life, I fell in love with places other than where I was living. This feeling is common in many adventurers," wrote Natalie Warren in her paddling town series for Canoe and Kayak Online, but, after exploring the beauty, and history and the attractions she had second thoughts as she treats her hometown as a new destination and recommends you do the same, "While I don’t doubt that you would love it here, remember to love where you live. Explore your home."


Open a New Window "Summer means promises fulfilled, wrote naturalist Sigurd Olson, "Objectives gained, hopes realized. The surge of doing and achieving, of watching and enjoying is finally replaced by a sense of quiet and floating and a certain fullness and repletion, as though one cannot absorb any more."

Plunge into Boating So what's stopping you? If you been thinking about learning to kayak either whitewater or just want to know how to tour the lake lets just say there are boatloads of ways to get on to the water. "We all know adventure and exploration are not just for teenagers," writes Current Adventures Kayaking School and Trips' Dan Crandall, "Learning to kayak is an easy activity that will rekindle your youthful enthusiasm for many years to come." Current Adventures

Quiet Your Mind It's summer. It's time to stop stressing. Chase away those negative thoughts and take advantage of your precious time. Writer Michelle Maros said, "Sometimes we even forget that the whole point of going on vacation is to relax and have fun! This week, let’s leave all the stress behind and focus on how to really enjoy your time away, no matter where you’re going or who you’re with."

Race on the River Whether you want to support a great cause, get in shape or awake your gladiator spirit. Whether with solo or with a team there are divisions and courses for everyone using almost anything that floats. “If you’re in a competitive class you’re gonna go and go fast pounding down the river to beat your neighbor," The California River Quest race director Emily Matthews told the Chico Enterprise-Record about this weekend's event, "In the adventure class you’re out there to play and have fun. But in both classes, you pretty much paddle the whole time.”Race the Red  Great American Triathlon

Swim in Nature I don't mean skinny dipping but then again, why not. Adventure athlete Sophie Radcliffe‏ tweeted, "There’s something about swimming in nature that makes me happy and relieves stress; I love watching the world float by and gliding through the water with the sun on my back."

Time Travel in a Canoe Go back in time this summer. No special effects needed for this odyssey. All you need is paddle and canoe to feel like a voyager discovering the lake for the first time. "We need to be more aware of where we are headed and from whence we came," said famed canoeist Bill Mason, "An appreciation of the canoe and acquisition of the necessary skills to utilize it as a way to journey back to what’s left of the natural world is a great way to begin this voyage of discovery.” Sy Park BWCA

Unwind at Sunset  English Novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson eloquently paints this description of dusk while on the water, "The sky broke like an egg into full sunset and the water caught fire." Who can argue? The sunlight flashing in each droplet from our paddles as the water glows in a golden glitter. How can you resist the sight of tranquil lake basking in the dimming light?

Vow to Wear Your PFD "We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: when you’re on the water, wear your life jacket, also known as a Personal Flotation Device or PFD." states the NRS website, "Year after year, dozens of people lose their lives while boating. And year after year, statistics show that many of these tragedies could have been prevented by wearing a well-fitted, properly-adjusted life jacket."

Wander Like Your Lost  It's the perfect quote for summer from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings that says, "Not all those who wander are lost." It encourages you to slow along the way to the lake or river. Stop in at the paddle shop to get some advice, hike that trail that you have always paddled or stop at that scenic vista. Summer days go by so quickly, you should make them last as long as possible.

X-Out Your Own Adventure "Let’s celebrate that we had our own adventure," writes Pete Delosa in his blog River Bum suggesting in these Instagram days of big water and even bigger drops there is no reason to count out your triumph. "If you went on the water and had fun then you won today and that is worth celebrating. Other people might have been looking paddleboarding kind of day today than we were and that is ok. I hope they found what they were after, but that doesn’t take anything away from our success."

Yoga on Your Paddle Board We get it. Just standing up on the board is challenging enough for some, but as the founder of Stoked Yogi, Amelia Travis told Yoga Journal, "Before you write off stand up paddleboard (SUP) yoga as impossible, here’s what I tell all first-timers: “If you can breathe, you can do yoga. If you can stand on one foot, you can paddle."

Zigzag a Water Trail Whether you want to go the distance or simply float to the next landing there is a water trail just waiting for you. Featuring public water accesses, campsites, rest areas and miles and miles of best paddling anywhere you can spend the day, week or the entire summer just like John Connelly did when he took his epic 1500 mile paddling adventure across the Northeastern U.S. and Eastern Canada. In Dying Out Here Is Not An Option, a chronicle of his trip he wrote, "Seeing the canoe loaded with all I require to survive for the weeks to come," he wrote, "Makes me think. this canoe and I are going to forge a relationship over the next 800 miles. What will that end up looking like? What will be the story?" US Water Trails

Want to see more about Outside Adventure to the Max. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram

METAPHORS IN ADVENTURE: WHAT ARE WE REALLY DOING OUT HERE?

By Outside Adventure to the Max Guest Blogger Kate Hives

It is the 4th year I have had the pleasure of returning to the small coastal village of Chaiuin, Chile to coach at the Simposio de Kayak Pacifico Sur. The team at Pueblito Expediciones have captured the South American market of sea kayakers as they flock from all edges of this grand continent to play in the surf and amongst the swell that crashes against the monolithic coast lines. It is in this familiar yet still foreign environment that I find pause to reflect on what we are all doing here bobbing around like corks on the sea.

It is easy to dismiss what we are doing as ‘just sea kayaking’, which on the one hand reminds us not to take ourselves too seriously. On the other hand, I wonder what lies beneath the surface of our desire for adventure and become more and more curious about ‘why kayaking’?

There is something powerful about separating ourselves entirely from that which is familiar and for us as human terrestrial creatures, the watery world of the ocean is as unknown and foreign as can be. In teaching kayaking, I find myself working with the elements of movement and direction in unfamiliar terrain in tandem with the less measurable realm of human experience. What are we really doing out here? What motivates us to head “into the water”. (Kokatat – meaning: Native American word for ‘into the water’.)

Sure, we are spending time with friends, feeling more alive as we bob up and down in the waves and perhaps, we simply like the sense of accomplishment that comes with mastering a new skill. Likely this is enough thinking for most – there is not always a need to delve much further into our motivations. Woven into these outcomes and goals is, however, a deeper more profound element that can lurk just beyond our awareness.

Just like traveling to a new country or learning a new language, my feeling is that learning to be comfortable in the foreign environment of the sea offers us more than just the physical ability to survive in these places. Perhaps it offers the gift of building confidence in our own capacity to be more than we may have previously thought; perhaps it helps us to understand that we are all capable of more, beyond that which is visible to the naked eye. What if I were to make the outrageous statement that we are not ‘just sea kayaking’, but we are in fact learning more about what it means to live into our human potential in all its possibility? Now that’s a reason to go sea kayaking!

Maybe I am overstepping. Maybe you simply took up kayaking as a personal challenge or as a romantic idea, just for fun, or simply as an alternate method of travel. But what if within those seemingly benign motivations lies a more dynamic impulse. What if kayaking could be a metaphor for those things that at first seem nay impossible? What if learning to steer your 16-foot kayak on top of a powerful driving wave is a training ground to muster the internal strength to learn to surf the similarly unpredictable wave of human experience. The metaphor of surfing the wave then becomes an expression of knowing when and where to change direction and how to go with the flow.

For me, when I pause to reflect on what it is I am really doing out here and ask myself what I have learned, I hear the answer “I am learning to steer my vessel in a challenging environment, I am learning when to go and when to pause, I am beginning to understand how to work with the energy of this grand oceanic force.”

From this vantage point the wave and indeed the ocean become the metaphor for this greater ride we are all on and I begin to know that I can learn the skills needed to navigate these often challenging and labyrinthine waters of daily life.

Kate Hives is an adventurous sea kayaking guide and rough water coach with SKILS based out of Vancouver Island. She has explored Canada from coast to coast and has paddled in Patagonia, Chile, Malaysia, Tasmania, North Wales and Scotland. Keep up with Hives in her blog At home on the water. 
Outside Adventure to the Max is always looking for guest bloggers. Contact us at Nickayak@gmail.com if you are interested.

THE PADDLING YEAR

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

On a crisp September day in 2015, explorers Dave and Amy Freeman climbed into their Wenohah canoe and paddled off into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness on an adventure that would last for 366 days. Paddling, portaging, gathering firewood and hauling water became a way of life as they sought to bear witness to the land they so deeply loved, care for and hoped to help protect from the threat of proposed sulfide-ore copper mining on the BWCA's edge.

During their year in this northern Minnesota Wilderness, they camped at some 120 different sites, explored 500 lakes, rivers and streams, and traveled more than 2,000 miles by canoe, foot, ski, snowshoe and dog team. They saw the change of the season first hand from the migrating birds, the lakes icing up and snow falling to the return of spring flowers and the golden sunsets of summer. Before they knew it the earth had made that one full rotation around the sun and it was their time to paddle out of the wilderness after a year in the wild.

"The sounds of nature are so different than those of the world of humans," Amy Freeman told National Geographic when asked what she misses most since leaving the wilderness, "After a year in the outdoors your senses of sight, smell and hearing are heightened. Back in the city, we’re bombarded with stimuli. I’ve had to desensitize to not freak out."

My paddling year, unlike the Freeman's, was broken into like most of us, mini outings and weekends, trips to the lakes and rivers in between dreaming about trips to the lakes and rivers. I could be classified more as a fanatic than just plain enthusiast and consider a day that I don't get out on to the water as a day lost. But like most of us, my jobs, relationships and just plain having the time to paddle  So the over 130 days I went paddling in 2017 is quite an achievement for me and I could never do it all alone.

French-German humanitarian and physician Albert Schweitzer said, "In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit."

A passion for kayaking flows through the paddling community I'm connected too, like an untamed river. I'm so grateful this past year to paddle once again with likes of  Dan Crandall, Kim Sprague, John Weed, Paul Camozzi, Jason Bates and the rest the gang at Current Adventures Kayaking School and Trips and The River Store.
From first-timers to experienced veterans any outing with these guys will be a great day on the water in building skills and confidence. After paddling with them, you only have one question. When can do it again?

And speaking of the spirit, thanks to Bayside Adventure Sports for being another guiding light in my paddling world. I have many more adventures in-store for them in the coming year to some of our favorite spots and even a few new ones.

But mostly I couldn't do any of my kayaking without the support and encouragement from my wife Debbie who makes it all possible. She is always up for an adventure sharing my same passion for being outside on the water or hiking alongside it. I can't wait for our next trip.

I would also like to thank, Dirt Bag Paddlers & DBP Magazine Online, Canoe & Kayak Magazine, Paddling Magazine, AquaBound, American Rivers and NRS Web, for sharing my posts on their social media pages. It's always a fun Friday for me to post Outside Adventure to the Max. They help to spread the word about our weekly post.

A big thank you goes out to our 2017's guest bloggers Pete Delosa, Kate Hives, Lynn Halsted, Taylor Carlson, Scott Blankenfeld,  Eric Straw and Nigel Foster for their insights and views this past year. They have certainly make OAM better by providing thoughtful and compelling views into the world of paddling. We certainly look forward to future post from them in 2018.

And most of all, I'd like to thank the readers and followers of Outside Adventure to the Max. We hope you enjoyed our thoughts and pictures about our outside experiences in 20117 and look for to more in the next.  Happy New Year.

KAYAK SUMMER 2017

We do not want merely to see beauty... we want something else which can hardly be put into words- to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. That is why we have peopled air and earth and water with gods and goddesses, and nymphs and elves. -- C. S. Lewis

Negro Bar boat ramp on Lake Natoma.

I have to admit it after four years in California it's hard for me to notice the change of the season. Other than football on TV, new skis arriving at Any Mountain and with my wife's allergies the change of the season goes by without attention.  So you can tell me summer on the calender and in some people's minds. The water is still warm but boat ramps and inputs are empty except for only a few. The sun is setting faster giving us even less time to get out.

Current Adventures Kid's Classes on Lake Natoma.

Summer has always started out with pretty high hopes for me. At its start, I think like most of us. I'm going to paddle more, camp more and take big fun trip
"Summer means promises fulfilled, objectives gained, hopes realized." wrote canoe guru Sigurd Olson more than 50 years ago,  "The surge of doing and achieving, of watching and enjoying is finally replaced by a sense of quiet and floating and a certain fullness and repletion, as though one cannot absorb any more."

Current Adentures RK1 Classes.

Those long summer days seemed to come to an end much quickly than before in out high paced world. In the end, I only accomplish half or even a quarter, of what I thought I would do and resign to the thought of maybe next summer.  Then substituted that with what Olson promised, that, --- a sense of quiet and floating and a certain fullness and repletion,--- while enjoying little adventures on my neighborhood lake and river.

Eppies Training Night.

I did work most of the summer for Current Adventures Kayak School & Trips as kayak guide and instructor took a few trips to some mountain lakes and got over hundred paddling days for the year. So I have plenty great memories of my time on the water. But I'm always a little resistant at first to the change of the season. I'm being greedy I know, but I just want more. The sun is setting earlier and earlier just as it did in the fall of 1842, when American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote,"I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house. So I have spent almost all the daylight hours in the open air."

Debbie on Lake Jenkinson.

So ready or not summer is over and fall is here.The start of this new season provides us an opportunity to renew and review. So find your cozy sweater, enjoy the bright colors of the leaves and embrace that nostalgic chill of the air.

"I begin to secretly long for the cooler days and deeper colours that the autumnal arrival hails. I hear the geese calling overhead as they begin their journeys southwards," wrote fellow kayaker Kate Hives in her blog "At home on the water, "Without wishing too hard for the rain and the cold of winter, I welcome the transition between them. I ready my being for a gentle slowing, while still staying focused on the task at hand and the vision that motivates it... It’s time to get out for sunset paddles and kick the leaves underfoot, finish that one last project and shine brightly before the simple stark renewal of winter is upon us."

The Tea House on Fannette Island

Here are a few of our favorite kayaking images from this past summer that will help us keep those memories burning brightly while heading into the days of fall.

Moonlit Paddles on Lake Natoma.

Current Adventures Kid's Class on the river.

Lake Natoma.

The Lower American River.

Loon Lake

Bayside Adventure Sports at San Juan Rapids.

Current Adventures 50+ class.

Lake Tahoe

Paddling Day 100 on Lower American River.

BUT FIRST, LETS GET A SELFIE: 15 KAYAKING INSTAGRAM YOU SHOULD FOLLOW

                  
At Outside Adventure to the Max, we just love our friends who thrill us with a daily post of their stories and visual media on Instagram. Whether they're running waterfalls, raging rapids or a long distance sea trek, they have brought us along and made us feel part of their adventure. Some are well known top notch kayaking athletes and photographers who have garnered thousands of followers and millions of likes while are others just might be off your radar till now.

Want to know who we follow? Here are some kayaking-feed-favorites that help us get fired up for new paddling destinations for our weekend and upcoming adventures along with inspiring us with their great images of our kayaking culture.

Cameron O'Connor

@cameron_kayak16
For chutes and paddles whitewater play boater young Cameron O'Connor puts us in this cockpit at renoriverfestival and gopromountaingames along with some other hard charging venues and play parks.  

@darinmcquoid
Darin McQuoid, a California based photographer and white water paddler, has kayaked most of the world on international expeditions.  An eye for action, his photographs have been published in National Geographic, Outside, Canoe and Kayak, Kayak Session, Paddler, Rapid Magazine

@peterholcombe
Makes, I live a van down by the river sound cool. Gypsy photographer Peter Holcombe leads his family around the country chasing a dream and his daughter's pink Jackson kayak.

@sagekayak 
At Outside Adventure to the Max we just love to keep up Freestyle Jr. World champion. USA Jr and Senior Slalom Team's sensation Sage Donnelly. A
a rising star in the world of whitewater kayaking, Sage shows us that girls still just want to have fun all while competing on a world class level.

Kate Hives

@kate_hives
Kate Hives is an adventurous sea kayaking guide and rough water coach with SKILS based out of Vancouver Island. A world explorer Keep up with Hives in her blog At home on the water.

@kalobgrady88 
It's his life, it's his passion. Kalob Grady grew up on the banks Ottawa River one of the world's greatest whitewater playgrounds so brace for waves. He just signed on to be the head coach of World Class Kayak Academy so pack your bags for trips to Canada, Uganda, Zambia, Chile, and West Coast.

@nicktroutmankayak
Nick Troutman is one of the most popular paddlers on the circuit. A World Freestyle Kayak Champion, film maker and most of all fun-time dad.

@pete_delosa
One of most popular guest at Outside Adventure to the Max bloggers, California based kayaker Pete Delosa takes us down some the biggest drops the Sierra can provide. Insightful and always fun you can also keep up with DeLosa on his blog at River-Bum.com.

Pete Delosa

@rafaortizkayak  
You will need a Red Bull to keep up with Rafa Ortiz, one of whitewater kayaking's super stars. The subject of “Chasing Niagara," a film chronicling Ortiz's pursuit of being the first person ever to go over Niagara Falls his shots are beautiful, daring and always amazing.

@martinbeebeephoto
Hey is time to relax yet? Martin Beebee mixes kayaking, golden retrievers and hot and cold places across the map in visions of peaceful tranquility. His aerial footage of the South Fork of the American River is pretty cool too. But, you'll have to go to YouTube for that.

@kayakerdude1435 
Gavin Rieser is the Where is Waldo of kayaking in California. He and his pickup truck and kayak were traveling everywhere this past summer looking for steep roads and big drops. This is the only way to keep up him unless you want to chip in for gas money.

@sleepygoat
Funny handle but beautiful photography as J Maxfield explores the levees and reservoirs around Lewiston, ID; far away from the daily routine.

@garethtate
Gareth Tate like to charge hard with an unquenchable thirst for travel and adventure. Tate takes us up snowy peaks, down raging rivers and for a dip into Lake Tahoe.

Dylan McKinney

@dylankmckinney
North Carolina whitewater globe trekker Dylan McKinney captures the feel and excitement of paddling in some of the world’s foremost whitewater. He puts you up front and takes you for a wild ride. Hold on tight!

@nickayak
The official feed of Outside Adventure to the Max. Follow us on river trips along the American River and moonlight paddles with Current Adventures as we count down to 100 paddling days and beyond.

For more adventure and inspiration along with connecting to other fellow paddlers and river lovers across the world follow some these post too. @dbpmagazineonline, @adventuretechnology, @aquabound, @adventurekayakmag, @nsrweb @rapidmagazine,@daggerkayaks

LEADING FROM WHERE I STAND - KNOWING WHERE I'M STANDING

 By Outside Adventure to the Max Guest Blogger Kate Hives

I have long craved a map and a compass. I long for the certainty that comes through being able to plan for the journey, know where I stand in a landscape and can then clearly navigate the terrain to the next way point. My chosen career in wilderness guiding has been a fitting metaphor to fulfill this desire. I have become fluent in the languages of True and Magnetic Norths, I have learned to read the clouds and feel wind directions to predict weather; and I have studied the tidal cycles, learning how to work with the power of the ocean. I have slowly, ever surely become a great navigator of this wild and beautiful ocean meets forest terrain. Somewhere, though, there emerged a deeper longing – a longing to know more intimately an inner wilderness.

I couldn’t have told you about this longing two years ago when I began my thesis journey at Royal Roads University.  I could have told you that I was interested in the connection between Nature and Culture, but never could I have told you that my studies would take me deeper in to my own connection with Self and an inner wilderness I had only previously had a glimpse of. I could have told you I was going to embark on a Vision Quest, but I never expected how my life would unfold after the ‘questing’ was over. It is only with the gift of hindsight that I can see clearly that I wanted to explore the more psychological dimensions of wilderness adventure, to peek into the intersections and embraces of inner wilderness and outer wilderness.

As I began this journey I felt as though I was blind, stumbling around in a place that felt uncomfortable, in a fog of not knowing that was more extensive than I had ever experienced. I had no map, not even an inkling of what the territory might look like. What I truly lacked was a compass that I could use in the dark. So, I stopped searching and I started listening, using deep self-awareness as a compass for how to proceed, when to proceed, if I should proceed. I began realizing that what I was seeking was nothing more than to see myself through the eyes of loving compassion that I might see mySelf wholly in all my glorious paradox – to learn to see myself as an Innocent and a Dragon, a humble servant and a powerful leader.


The concept seems so much easier to put in a sentence than to practice as a human being. [I use the spelling of ‘mySelf’ to imply a deep self-awareness that Carl Jung might call soul connection.]

At this point in my thesis journey, which I recognize extends far before and far beyond my time here at Royal Roads; I can see the delicious darkness that holds juicy secrets that need time still to germinate; I am able to hold mySelf with a greater loving tenderness; and have an ever-increasing compassion for my fellow humans and the earth upon which we live. I am certainly not finished this journey and sincerely doubt it will ever truly be ‘finished’, but in my searching for inner health, equilibrium and knowledge, I feel as though my compassion for others has increased as I find it for mySelf.

This love I spoke of in the last paragraph, I don’t mean it as a gushy, ooy-gooey kind of smoochy way, I mean it as a deep acceptance of something, in this case myself. Being able to spend enough time in the shadowy realms of my human experience and being, so that I may better understand these places and perhaps be able to work with them as I work with ocean currents on the sea. This love for mySelf that I have been cultivating in the darker days of winter has strangely begun to spill out. It has begun to affect the ways I interact with and see other people, the other-than-human beings around me and has been, it appears, to be a curious by-product of inner reflection.]

My journey has been inherently impactful to me as a leader, especially in terms of the concept of ‘leading from where you stand’, if only because I am more fully aware of just where it is I am standing. I embarked upon a Vision Quest as a grounding foundation for my study. The vision quest is designed to initiate participants and invite them on a journey towards being able to more wholly embody their truest Selves, to encounter soul and learn to use Ego in service of its deepest longing. A year and a half after my Quest I have traveled through initiation, which took a lot longer than I expected – or hoped- and am now actively participating in the Return (which has also taken a lot longer than I had imagined). This process of bringing the gift, mySelf, back into the world is a heavy task. It seems as though it is requiring me to be more responsible than ever before – deeply responsible to mySelf.

To clarify how truly big this responsibility to mySelf is, feels like a daunting task. If I can try to distill it down into its simplest form: responsibility to mySelf means I am open and clear about where I am now; that I can listen enough to hear when I need sleep, to be social, or to run in the hills; that I can be compassionate enough to honour those needs in myself and in turn, others; to continue to trust that I will always have what I need (even if it doesn’t always feel like it); and that everything I can be, I already am. Ha, no big deal right!?!

Kate Hives is an adventurous sea kayaking guide and rough water coach with SKILS  based out of Vancouver Island.  She has explored Canada from coast to coast and has paddled in Patagonia, Chile, Malaysia, Tasmania, North Wales and Scotland. Keep up with Hives in her blog At home on the water.  Outside Adventure to the Max is always looking for guest bloggers. Contact us at Nickayak@gmail.com if you are interested.

AQUARELLA

These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession. -- Claude Monet

While touring Claude Monet’s home and garden in the Normandy village of Giverny, about an hour train ride from Paris, I found myself and the world famous artist linked by the same elan, because we share that same enthusiasm and inspiration of nature and a kindship of water.

Chartres River Walk

“I am following Nature without being able to grasp her," said Monet,  "I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.”

This is where he created one of his most famous works depicting water lilies in the pond surrounding his gardens. In his footsteps, among other tourists, I got a glimpse of his inspiration as I followed the meandering path under weeping willows and over a Japanese bridge and saw the pond's spellbinding reflection of light and water. He painted them here, in every time of the day, moving along with the with the sunlight. He created eight mammoth curved panels that to this day, still immersed people into his garden.

Seine River, Paris

“It’s on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way." Monet said, "So we must dig and delve unceasingly.”

They are like the same mirrored images that inspire me every day, while out on the lake or river. The movement of the water and its changing colors shimmering around me.

Kate Hives an adventurous sea kayaking guide and rough water coach with SKILS based out of Vancouver Island described in best in her blog At home on the water, when she wrote, "I feel so lucky to know the magic of travel by way of water, to intimately feel the ebb and flood of the ocean as it caresses the rocky shores and sandy beaches of this coastal playground. Sometimes I feel like I have been told a great secret of the mystery of the natural world and my – our – connection to it. It is this time of year that I revel in setting out in my kayak to search of the feasts of the natural world."

Lake Natoma

So now as spring fades and I head into the summer paddling season, I look back some of my favorite images and reflections while on the water. And just like Monet, I find myself appreciating the light, the blue sky and the water.

Lake Natoma with Current Adventures

Bayside Adventure Sports on Folsom Lake

Lake Natoma

Lake Natoma

Current Adventures at Lake Natoma

Lake Natoma