Paddling With Pain

I got some news yesterday that I refuse to qualify as bad. Suffice to say that it has turned my world upside down and that I spent a good bit of the day today feeling less than carefree. The last thing I wanted to do was paddle...so that's exactly what I did. I needed to see something that hadn't changed, that was exactly where I left it and would be long after I am gone. I needed physically to move over obstacles and water.

So I headed up the road to Lake Sampson and Lake Rowell, which are connected by a canopied canal and forded by a creosote-soaked railroad bridge. Sampson is damn near dry, but the water left is clear to the bottom. In the mid-afternoon sun, it is like moving through liquid amber. Sampson is a relatively small lake but even that is deceptive; I missed the canal entrance twice on the way back. The shoreline features seemed to change as I watched them.

These lakes are well loved by area coots. I saw literally thousands of them, especially on Rowell, where their take off en masse sounded like a cross between a train and a thunderstorm. A coot, like any duck I guess, apparently can't decide whether to walk or fly when it takes off, so it does both and rips the surface of the water. Times that by about a thousand.


I gave it more than a perfunctory shot today. I bagged two lakes, saw something I'd never seen before, and met the obligatory couple back at the ramp. Seriously, a pair of people always seems to show up as I am racking my boat and I spend anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes chatting with them. This time it was an elderly hunter and his wife, who had retired, inexplicably, to Starke. This is how I learn about the places I paddle, from the locals who always ask me if I have caught any fish. Kayaking for kayaking's sake is a strange concept, I suppose. But for me, today, it was a necessity.