(no subject)

Ronnie wrote:

>>>>John,

Why do you continue to live in society if it binds you down so? You are one
of the top contributors to this forum, yet you tend to disagree with most of
us.<<<<

John Winters is hardly alone. I couldn't agree more with him on this
subject. John Dowd had a good way to avoid being the object of societies
fears (in their form of rescue attempts). His simple method was "don't tell
anyone where you are going or when you will return".  Some would say he was
irresponsible doing this. He would respond that he being very responsible,
in fact he was taking the full responsibility for himself. (I just checked
the 5th edition of John Dowd's classic book "Sea Kayaking", he has expanded
on this subject nicely in appendix C.)

As a young backpacker in the early 1960's I welcomed the first guidebook of
"100 Hikes". By the next year I began to realize what a curse that book
really was. Soon you had to buy them the new guidebooks, just to know where
it was you didn't want to go hiking over a weekend. The freedom of the
wilderness I had know previously was difficult to find again. I found it
again sea kayaking in the late 1970's and early 1980's but alas, the tour
guides and guidebooks soon followed and "civilized" much of that experience
as well.

Kristen told the Polar Bear that was sniffing her rear hatch (while she was
trying to leave the beach but was hung up on rocks by a rapidly falling 40
foot tide), "Bear be gone". I don't suppose a lot of civilization will come
to Ungava Bay anytime soon (where the above incident was only the most
intense of 16 Polar Bear sightings in five weeks in Northern Labrador for
Nigel Foster and Kristen last summer). The primal fear of predators that eat
humans rather than fear them should do wonders for keeping Northern Labrador
relatively pristine. One of the questions after their slide show last
Tuesday was, "How did you sleep at night?" Kristen said that they were very
tired after paddling 20 mile most days and slept well. A voice piped up from
the audience to answer the question for them, "denial". I didn't get the
impression may paddlers were going to follow in their wake after that show.
In fact, several mentioned to me later that they had enjoyed the show but
they wouldn't ever even consider paddling there.

Maybe those who feel like I do should start telling tall tales of scary
encounters with Great White sharks we met out on the water to help raise the
awareness of this very real possibility of being eaten for sea kayakers.
Discovering one is not at the top of the food chain when paddling a kayak
might clear up a lot of the damage to wilderness done by the "watertrail"
crowd.

Finally a request. This is a paddling forum, lets try to keep the passions
of both politics and religion off of it please.

Matt Broze
www.marinerkayaks.com
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