North Park, Monday, May 2, 2022, air 66°F/ 19°C water 58°F/ 14°C
I can see Dawn’s small car with her red kayak a few cars ahead of me. She can probably see Blue in her mirror. I know she feels the same impatience as me, jittering through her veins. I can taste it in the humid air. She passes the turnoff for Babcock Blvd and I think, oh, well she’ll still get to the boat house eventually.
I am parked, with the blinkers on, where I am not supposed to be unstrapping Blue, my much-loved 12-foot green and blue Pelican kayak, as Dawn pulls past me into the parking lot. She comes over to help me lift Blue down. Blue weighs 42 pounds. After _ years of paddling together, we can both get our kayaks up and down without help. But it is much faster with help. We hurry, and hurrying is never good as important things can be forgotten. It is good to be doing a safe, hopefully predictable paddle as our first of the season.
I straddle Blue trying to keep one foot dry. Usually having only one-foot wet when it is cooler keeps me warmer.
We chit-chat and laugh, remembering with our bodies how to paddle. It has been eight months since our last paddle. We both talk a mile a minute, paying more attention to our conversation than to the lake we are on. There is a lot to catch up on after seven months.
Blue turns and I am doing slow donuts to catch up and get Blue to go straight, remembering her quirks and practicing techniques of my strokes. Blue is usually three or four forward strokes and a sweep in the opposite direction you want her to go. It takes me nearly to the island to get our rhythm down again.
Tiny white flowers line the hill above the mud. The park is browner than usual. The water is the yellow-brown of western Pennsylvania dirt.
A pair of cormorants land on the brown ripples, like the tires on low rider cars, the tops of their black backs hardly more than a brush stroke under their long necks and pointed beaks. The cormorants have been coming to North Park for a couple years now.
Dawn and I are heading for the back channel with no discussion, just a knowing between friends. We find the opening and pick our way in, between high mud bars, and varying water levels, until one of us finds the deeper trail. The current moves quickly, keeping us paddling ahead. The quiet buzz of a bug blends into the quiet hmmm of traffic on Ingmar Road. We are earlier this year than the last. We paddle through a cloud of gnats hovering from the waterline to the height of our faces.
The banks rise up molded from ocher clay, topped with spring grass. A mother goose sits on her nest mere inches from the edge, too much rain and it could fall into the creek. She is hissing at us. Her distress brings her mate, a few feet away he swivels his head down at us watching, ready to defend their nest.
We look for landmarks from last year. But it is completely different. Nature has a way of redecorating. As we cruise around a snaky bend and come into a flatter area. Dawn points out fuzzy yellow goslings. There are parents unhappy to see us.
I see a deer pretty close to the bank. Dawn is ahead and looking in the opposite direction of the deer. I whisper, “Dawn, Dawn.”
She loves deer for some reason. I lost my wonder for them after finding out they feel like scrub brushes. It’s a mother and a spotted fawn. Dawn is too far ahead for me not to scare them away. Dawn misses them until they bolt off as we get too close for mother’s comfort.
She sighs, “Oh, well next time.”
We are drifting, guiding the kayaks and watching the plants and animals. The chill is deepening, the sun is lower.
“We need to pick up the pace,” I say, we are not prepared to paddle in the darkness.
She says, “We’ll do.”
I am the one who watches the weather while physically on the water. She is the one who checks the radar when we are out.
Coming out of the back channel, I feel the new sports bra rubbing the underside of my left armpit and we still have to paddle all the way back. That would be twenty minutes.
Still paddling, I watch the back of a blue heron’s wing feathers flutter in the wind as he landed in the trees on the island. The evening light makes the sparseness of green leaves look like late fall. The trees are like gray shadows with color at the edges. We are almost there.
The gravel crunches as we pull into the launch. “Do you need a hand?” Dawn asks, standing on shore.
“No,” I moan, throwing a leg over the side of the cockpit, “Thanks.” I have not been so out of shape since before I went to the gym twenty years ago. We are barely moving; the stretching we did earlier feels like nothing. We are dragging ass. This is always the worst part. The cleanup. The fast-falling sun adds to the coolness of my skin. My feet are freezing, making it hard to maintain my body temperature. Well, that and the menopause. I again wish for long sleeves. Dawn and I help each other lift our kayaks into their J hooks on our roofs and dump our gear into our cars.
“I’m off next weekend, you want to hit the river?”
She says, “Ya!”
Wow!!!