are fleeting, with the wind returning before long, but it’s time enough for many of us to sample rough-water paddling at its rollicking best. Eager to catch long, cruisy surfs for ourselves, we crowd close together in the line-up—the area just outside where the waves begin to break. Rushton takes off on a wave and I catch a steepening face just be-
hind him. Accelerating into the trough ahead as the wave breaks, my kayak broaches and suddenly I’m side surfing—an out-of-control, Hail Mary move known as a bongo slide in surf parlance. Rushton’s ride has already ended and I’m sweeping towards him, pushed by the freight- training wave at an alarming speed. He looks up and we lock eyes— each seeing that I’m about to steamroll over him. Then, at the last pos- sible moment, my bow veers back down-wave and I carve away, missing his boat by a few scant feet. When I see Rushton later in the line-up, he’s smiling, “There’s nothing like when your eyes meet on a wave.” Riding waves with our mentors is both liberating and uniting. “An
‘aha!’ moment,” as Mark, a soft-spoken retiree and first-time surfer from Washburn, Wisconsin, puts it later. After dinner, the lodge’s dining room is cleared for slideshow pre-
sentations. Local instructor and author Conor Mihell reads a chapter from his bookThe Greatest Lake, a history lesson on Chladek’s original Gales, accompanied by archival photos from those early years. Mihell pauses frequently for appreciative “oohs” and “ahs” from the audience as slides of cartwheeling kayaks appear on the screen behind him. We’re now members of the same elite tribe.
Gathering for Wikle and Rushton’s event wrap-up Monday afternoon, we are tired and stiff-limbed. But there’s something else engraved in the wea- ry visages—a fresh, quiet confidence that wasn’t there before. Most of us have tripped on the Michipicoten’s fickle currents, or
wiped sand from our ears and eyes when the fleeting union of wave and kayak eluded us. But we have also learned the unforgettable, in- imitable sensation of harnessing that power and riding a peeling left all the way to the beach, of rolling effortlessly on a pillowy foam pile. Of being soggy and tired and heading back out for one more ride. Before we part ways, Tammy tells me a story. She met a young wom-
an this weekend, a recent inductee into the paddling community. The woman told Tammy that, contrary to the opinions of non-paddling friends back home, she didn’t believe she was addicted to kayaking. She pulled on a wool hat as she spoke, finished dressing for a rough-water rescues workshop. The lodge’s thermometer read 23 degrees Fahren- heit. “If you’re going out today,” Tammy told her, “then you’re addicted to kayaking.”
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