Re: [Paddlewise] Conquering Kayakers?

At 08:27 PM 11/13/99 -0600, jrussell wrote:
>Hi All,
>I recently pondered aloud to a group of sea kayakers that I had noticed a
>personality "type" that is driven and eager to accomplish a certain kind of
>outdoor "feat" such as circumnavigate a large lake, or be the first to
>paddle solo across a wide expanse, paddle 600 miles alone in a short number
>of days, or conquer some other outdoors challenge.  I wondered about this
>because while I love to kayak (and bike and ski and snowshoe), I don't
>really have a need or desire to do this sort of thing. I'm happy just to
>paddle and while I would love to say circumnavigate Lake Superior, it isn't
>something I feel I need to do -- it doesn't have more appeal than other
>trips I can go on.  So part of my curiosity is -- what is this about? What
>makes people want to paddle to conquer? (I realize it's not just paddling,
>of course.)  

Actually, I think it's a frontiers thing. For most of history, there's been
a frontier -- room for exploration, something unknown across the far
horizion. People felt economically drawn to the frontier as it provided new
opportunities, but there's a romantic draw to it, too. The frontiers are
gone, now, and there's no place yet to explore that hasn't been nosed out
by satellite photos and trail guides. So, people make their own frontiers .
. . higher, faster, farther. 

>The second part of my outloud musing was that it seems to me
>that, more often than not, these folks are men. So I wondered (and this got
>me into a bit of hot water since I'm female) whether there was some gender
>thing going on here (and *I* wasn't the one to use the word testosterone!).

I suspect you're right. It does tend to be a guy thing. Remember, it wasn't
Becky Thatcher that wanted to "light out for the territories," it was Huck.
Some things really don't change much, no matter how much we think they have.

-- Wes

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