WATERLINES
PADDLE BESIDE ME AND BE MY FRIEND. PHOTO: RYAN CREARY
MY GOOD FRIEND Tom O’Connor first paddled into my ocean more than a decade ago. Self- help gurus often expound on the powerful effects the company you keep can have on your life, counseling disciples to ditch those friends who drag them down, and hold tight to those who lift them up. For me, kayaking has been the gateway to those naturally buoyant characters— enabling me to cultivate friendships that reinforce the things most important to me. I first became acquainted with Tom (whose name I’ve changed to avoid embarrassing him) through email, when I was working as the editor of this magazine and he was one of many as- piring writers sending me queries about his paddling adventures. Then one summer I bumped into him on the water.
FATE and FRIENDSHIP LIFE LESSONS FROM ONE OF THE FINEST CHARACTERS I HAVE MET AT SEA
We were both out for solo kayak trips, and when our paths crossed and we drifted together to chat for a few minutes, it seemed like the most logical thing in the world. Of course we’d run into each other in the middle of nowhere, in kayaks, and immediately start talking as if we’d known each other all our lives. Tom moved to the West Coast for journalism school while I was living there, so we often got together for trips. I remember a dozen rounds of cribbage scores scribbled on tattered paper in the dripping winter rain. Naturally we both thought this an acceptable way to spend a February weekend—kayaking in a temperate rainforest, test paddling a leaky demo boat in a five-meter swell, stopping to bail every half hour. Tom was reviewing a hammock that clearly wasn’t made to withstand horizontal winter rains, leav- ing him to wrap himself in garbage bags every night. Hilarious. We laughed about it then and we laugh about it now.
In thrall to the outdoor cul- ture of the West, I stayed there as a long as I could and then bemoaned the circumstances that brought me back east. Meanwhile, Tom confi- dently concluded that the maddening city and the wet coast weren’t for him. And also that he didn’t need to finish his master’s of journalism to be a journalist.
34 | ADVENTURE KAYAK
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