Here on the Ottawa river, just about everything is safe. Other than maybe the sharp rocks on the island at Mcoys or the hole at Butchers Knife, not much on the water can truly hurt you. It’s deep, powerful, and safe.
But what even is “safe”. One could say it is not safe to drive a car. Which most of us do nearly every day. One could say that biking to work on a busy road isn’t safe. And even simply sitting in your home, tragedy can strike at any moment. Most people look at my kayaking and see only risks. They go about their day to days and then stumble upon a video of someone doing something extreme. Death diving, mountain biking, climbing. These things feel so far removed from their day to days, so risk must be high. Yet, I look to the world, and I see risk. Everywhere. We are constantly taking risks. It is an inherently human thing that we haven’t yet discovered how to avoid. In this way, kayaking is much safer than the day to day of life. There are only so many variables on the water. There are often answers or ways to get answers when paddling. This is not at all like our lives. We are a confused bumbling people on a planet hurtling through space. And yet, kayaking is also very dangerous. It is a sport that if you do long enough, you will know people who die. It is a sport that requires a certain level of dissociating from trauma. It is a sport that requires us to rewire our brains into active problem solving and not always processing. Oftentimes, there isn’t time to process. I do not know the antidotes to these traits. People will continue to die paddling. We can do everything right and the river can still be unpredictable, unkind, and cruel. Perhaps that is part of it all. That instead of staring down the tunnel that is the unknown and saying you’d rather not go down there, we get in our kayaks and paddle it. Kayaking is equal parts surrendering and collaborating. In this way, it is nothing but a dance. With water. With life– and death.
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