Currents
WAT E R L I NE S
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
LIFE LESSONS FROM ONE OF THE FINEST CHARACTERS I HAVE MET AT SEA
FATE and FRIENDSHIP
28 PADDLING MAGAZINE
email, when I was working as the editor of this magazine and he was one of many aspiring writers sending me queries about his paddling adventures. Then one summer I bumped into him on the water. We were both out for solo kayak trips, and when our paths crossed and we drifted to- gether 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 re- member 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 Feb- ruary 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, leaving 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 culture of the West, I stayed there as a long as I could and then be- moaned
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 jour- nalism to be a journalist. He dropped out of study- ing writing to actu- ally write—something that never occurred
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60