“
No,” he says.
“
Yes, a few times a year,” she adds.
“
Usually the better paddler sits in the back,” the kayak man says.
She positions herself in the back.
“
You might want to adjust the foot rests before you go,” the kayak man instructs. He shows them how to get them just right, so that their feet are braced and so that they are low to the water with their backs supported, without their knees too high where they would make them unstable.
They pull out from under the bridge, feeling their way.
“
Let’s go up this side for a while, until we have a feel for it,” he suggests.
She agrees, sees that they can go half a mile up on the ocean side of the Intracoastal and stay out of the wind and little waves that they will have to cross to get to the canals on the other side. The canals where she has seen the birds every time over the bridge.
A snowy egret takes wing twenty yards ahead of them. It crosses the Intracoastal in a few dozens of seconds, flying mere feet, maybe inches above the water.
“
I love the birds,” she says.
“
I love shooting birds. Ducks off the water and wild turkeys over in the hills.”
“
You’re a hunter?” she asks. The disdain is obvious in her voice.
“
I’m a southerner, it’s what we do,” he says
“
Are you defined by where you were born? Or are you able to reason for yourself?”
“
I am defined, in part, by where I live, because of the things to which I was exposed and grew to love as a child. I hunt because I like to hunt and because I like the taste of game birds, not because I’m a southerner. But I suppose I grew up learning to hunt and loving to hunt in part because I am a southerner.”
She considers his answer.
“
Well. It’s legal, and you like it, and you’re not asking me to go hunting with you...” she says
“
I’ll only go hunting while you’re in Ohio,” he says.
“
And you don’t have to tell me about it,” she says.
“
Deal.”
After twenty minutes paddling into the little breeze that is fetching up the Intracoastal they are far enough from the bridge that all the car sounds are gone. The only sounds are their dipping paddles and their breathing. She picks an angle for crossing the two or three hundred yards of Intracoastal so that the little wind and little waves will be on their quarter, not completely on their beam.
“
Let’s pull hard to get across quicker,” she says.
“
My heart and lungs and mind are ready and willing, but I don’t know about my arms, back, and shoulders,” he says. “I don’t spend all that much time with a shovel like you do,” he says.
“
I think you shovel it pretty good,” she teases.
They pull harder and are quickly across the deeper water and into the first of the shallow canals. Their kayak is so low to the water that the marsh grass and the sparse five foot pines and spruces tower above them. Though only a half an hour from the put in, and though less than a mile from the bridge, they have entered a different world. A world filled with ospreys, egrets, great blue heron, green heron, tri-colored heron, kingfishers, and gulls. A world where the muddy banks of the canals are crowded with biblical numbers of nickel sized crabs. A place where mud that has recently been underwater on the high tide is pungent with rotting vegetation and scraps of fish left behind by the wading birds and otters. A watery world where entire schools of shiny fingernail sized fish riffle up out of water and burst ahead and left and right of the kayak. A world where dragonflies shoot and dart like hummingbirds, inspecting the kayak, then dismissing it and flying away.
A world so quiet that she can hear each ripple of the water against the kayak.
A world where even though they are less than a mile from the takeout they are completely lost, having only the sun as a reference. Where she wonders whether they will get so lost that they will end up portaging the kayak across the muddy grasslands back to the Intracoastal, losing their shoes in the sucking mud.
She dips her paddle to probe the depth of the water. It is less than twelve inches deep back here in the canals. Occasionally her paddle sinks into the mud that sits below the black water and then emerges coated with gelatinous stinking muck that reeks of primordial decay. They pull past a little point at the intersection of two canals and surprise a great blue heron that squawks twice, takes flight, and lifts itself away from the kayak with powerful flapping wings whose whooshes can be heard until it is thirty or forty yards away.
She looks at her watch, realizes they have been out for two hours, and realizes that they should head back. He agrees.
They find the bridge and angle towards the passage to the take out on the other side. In the middle of the Intracoastal, with the wind at their back, they boat their paddles and drift for a few minutes, letting the wind work for them. She drinks in the million winks and facets of early morning sunlight flicking off the tiny ripples on the water. She has rarely felt this peace, especially when there has been a man nearby.
They pull for the takeout and as they open the little reach down to the takeout she notices a trap staked on the bank, hidden in the long grass.
“
Wait,” she says.
They paddle back to bring the trap closer, so she can get a closer look.
“
For muskrats,” he says. “Or maybe otters.”
The trap diminishes the perfection of the morning by the tiniest amount. But the difference for her between perfection and near perfection is not one percent, it is an infinity.
Joe
It is my 50
th
birthday. I am waiting in the shadow of the lighthouse because it’s already warm. I am waiting for Shannon and I am waiting for the surf instructor. Shannon pulls up and exits her car.
She is wearing black board shorts that are two sizes two large and a red Lycra rash guard that is one size too small, even for her. Once again she has taken my breath away. This tiny woman, who must shop in the early teen section of whatever store she shops in, has stopped me dead in my tracks with her beauty, with her fitness, with her figure, and with the sensuality that unknowingly drips from her. Will Thursday ever arrive?
“
Ready for this?” she asks.
“
Yes,” I manage. I am very close to saying something naughty, a flirtatious comment about her outfit, about how she looks, but am interrupted by the arrival of our surf instructor.
He called each of us an hour ago and told us where to meet him, apparently after picking which beach and which break would be the best for us this morning. He has chosen well, even to my untrained surfer eye. Low waves roll directly at the shore and break gently with a lovely shape and curl from right to left. Boogie boarders are riding these waves for twenty seconds, washing all the way up to the beach.
Further out, over the sand bar, on the “outside” as surfers would say, the same small waves rise up and break in gentle rolls before flattening out, regrouping, and breaking again near the shore where the boogie boarders wait.
“
Shannon? Joe?” the rail thin, deeply tanned man says in heavily Spanish accented English.
“
Si,” Shannon replies.
The man immediately switches to Spanish. Costa Rican Spanish. Shannon carries on with him for a minute or two. When they are done the man turns to me.
“
No habla,” I manage.
Dennis reverts to his heavily accented English. While thin, his back and shoulders and core are well muscled with the long flat lean muscles of a surfer who apparently only eats raw meat.
We start our lesson lying in the sand. He draws the outline of a surf board and we practice popping up. My Marine father would recognize these as burpees. Football players would see them as up-downs, but only the up part.
Shannon is very agile, easily popping up and landing on the sand in a crouch on both feet. I am not quite as agile so Dennis shows me a different way, a slower pop. Already my knees are sending out their advance warning of tomorrow’s protests and pains and recalling the too long run from earlier in the week.
Dennis leads us out to the shore break, the ‘whitewater’ he calls it. We will practice here first before paddling out to the more distant row of rollers and breakers. Dennis wades out with us and asks me to lie down on the board. He will push the board at the right time and yell paddle paddle paddle UP!
The board moves with the wave and becomes stable as it accelerates. I start to rise and am momentarily nearly on my feet before wobbling left and splashing into the sea. Though it was only for a moment, I was nearly almost surfing, and it was fun. I felt the connection with the ocean in a way that all my runs and all my swims have not provided. The ocean was working for me, accelerating me, making my board stable, allowing me a moment on the wave and in the wave. I am hooked.
I collect my surfboard and wade out to where Dennis and Shannon are waiting for just the right wave.
She is short, maybe five feet tall, and she weighs next to nothing. Except for those running muscles and those digging muscles. So she has a small surfboard that catches the small wave with Dennis barely providing any push. She paddles and is up balancing in a crouch, radiating something that I cannot describe just before she steps off into the shallow surf.
“
She is a natural,” Dennis says.
“
Si,” I answer.
“
Y mas bonita,” he adds.
“
Si,” I answer again, understanding the tone and meaning attached to his look more than the actual spoken words.
After a few more times in the white water, Dennis decides we are ready to paddle out. Paddling out is very hard. Mas dificile. Dennis has to push us through the small surf and breakers to get to the outside, to get us through the blender. I understand the long flat leanness of surfers after just one trip through the blender.
We lay on our boards while Dennis casually straddles his. Dennis explains how he will push the board and how we should paddle paddle paddle then pop up but stay low.
“
Stay low,” he reminds me. “If you stand up too high you will crash,” he says.
‘
Crash.’ Not fall in or fall off or wipe out. He says I will ‘crash’. It is an interesting choice of words.
Shannon is ready and Dennis picks out a wave for her. She paddles, he pushes, she paddles and she is up and then instantly down in the large wave. The surfboard flips high in the air. The wave holds her down for one second, and then another. Just as Dennis tenses to rush into the blender she pops up, grabs her board, gives a thumbs up and starts paddling towards us.
“
Stay low,” he shouts to Shannon.
“
Stay low,” he tells me.
“
Get ready. Paddle paddle paddle UP!”
I feel the wave catch the board. It becomes stable as it accelerates. I place my palms on the board, rise up to cobra, and pop. I am up and in a crouch, staying low, I am surfing. On my fiftieth birthday, on an Atlantic morning filled with diffuse sunlight and clean salty air and warm water and with my new friend Shannon in a too tight lycra top. The ride goes on and on, I stay in my crouch and ride.
The wave flattens out, the board becomes less stable then wobbles and then I am off, in the Atlantic, smiling the first and biggest smile of my fiftieth year. I collect my board and paddle back out. I return to Dennis and Shannon winded from paddling through the blender. Both Dennis and Shannon are beaming at me. They saw the ride, my ride, and are happy for me.
This is one of the ways, perhaps the most important way, that I gauge or measure people. Are they happy, truly happy, when someone else succeeds or is happy? Or do they compare, find some fault in themselves, or some reason not to simply enjoy someone else’s happiness?
She is happy because I am happy. And I am thrilled that she is happy for me. Her smile. Again that smile. Unfettered by pretense, uninhibited, freely and completely shared just outside the breakers on a transcendent Atlantic morning.
The rest of the lesson passes in a blur, filtered through that first ride. I am hooked. After a few more rides and paddles through the blender I am whipped. My heart and lungs are willing but my arms and shoulders are done. I ride in to the shore to watch Shannon on her last few rides.
She tries and tries but cannot match her first wave in the white water. She rides all the way in lying down on the surfboard.
“
Thank you,” I tell Dennis.
“
Gracias,” Shannon says. She carries on a longer conversation with him in Spanish. Once or twice they look my way while they rapid fire Spanish and gesture with their hands. Finally they are done.