Ocean Kayaker and serial adventurer Rob Lyon shares his philosophy for getting the most out of your outdoor endeavors while making sure you get home safely.
Just yesterday I was reading about the recent death of an extraordinary young man in a whitewater kayaking accident. Alan Panebreaker, an articulate person with a fresh degree in Environmental Law, described paddling difficult whitewater as ”the most pure and true experience“ he had ever known. It seems that every issue of a watersport magazine contains news of another tragic death, and while I am saddened deeply to read of them, I applaud the intentional choice of sport by individuals like Alan, who choose to live life on the river at such a rarified level. More power to him for consciously doing what he loved and accepting the risk involved. In the end, it is our own lives we are putting in harm’s way. Hopefully Alan had no children, but if he did, what do you think they would eventually decide their father was modeling? That he did not love them enough, or that he had lived life the way he felt passionate about? We can only hope it is the latter.
Think Radical, Act Conservative speaks to more of a holistic approach to adventure than an extreme one. Not just the meat, in other words, but the potatoes and the salad and a glass of decent red to go with it.
Watersports are intrinsically dangerous, some more so than others. Each of us makes choices about the style of adventure we feel most comfortable with, from Class V kayaking to the simple joy of gliding across the calm surface of a lake. For some, adventuring styles may be continually evolving, while others’ may be well defined and fully realized. If we are getting what we want out of our time on and around the water, that’s excellent. But if we’re still in reach mode stylistically, it can be a big help to try and define just how adventurous we really want to be. Extreme sports are not for everyone; some prefer more serotonin than adrenaline in their paddling cocktail. It is important to consciously and intentionally find our niche in the broad scale of adventure, thereby empowering ourselves with ownership of what it means and how to responsibly go about it. It’s not necessarily an easy decision – my own was grueling – but I’m glad I made it informed and with intention. To that end, here is one such style of balancing risk with reward that for some of us may represent the best of both worlds. It’s based on my passion for wilderness-coast kayaking, but it could be applied to any kind of paddling.
Think Radical, Act Conservative speaks to more of a holistic approach to adventure than an extreme one. Not just the meat, in other words, but the potatoes and the salad and a glass of decent red to go with it. For me, it’s a middle path approach that balances exposure to dangerous elements with the payoff of experience; it includes time for meditation, play, exploration, relaxation, discovery, reflection, fishing, beachcombing, exquisite seafood buffets and paddling. When you get down to it, it’s more like a coast crawl than a marathon, from one bit ‘o beach to the next.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the motto came off the top of someone’s head (mine, if I remember correctly) when we were trying to start up a wilderness school on the island where I live. We were talking about the ocean kayak program and our mission statement and someone said, “Like think radical but act conservative, you know?” And it resonated with everybody. Apart from the motto, one of our shared tenets about wilderness travel was to go to the coolest places in our bioregion. A second was to stay there long enough to actually be there, (3 weeks minimum) and the third was to do it with our thinking caps on.
RADICAL
Radical is an interesting word. In the context of ocean kayaking, we think of radical as meaning extreme and dangerous. Credit where it is due, it was my wife Pamela who models what radical means to me. The woman is legendary on the island for her critical eye. After a few years of living with her I realized that when she looked at something that needed doing or redoing (as was often the case), she saw right to core. Nothing compromised or hedged to make it easier or more cost effective, only precisely what needed to be done – nothing less, nothing more. And even though it was me who had to move those rock piles every time inspiration hit her, I love the woman for her radicalness, and I try to incorporate that same spirit in my adventures.
The TR/AC adage pretty much sums up my approach to forays in the wild, most especially coastal kayaking with its inherent dangers. Of all the venues I could choose to paddle, it was only the open edge of the North Pacific that interested me. I could easily paddle here in the San Juan Islands, but I rarely did. I could paddle in Desolation Sound, Barkeley Sound, Clayquot Sound, any number of protected or semi-protected waters in the province of British Columbia. But they all had too many people, regulations and buffering from that first kiss of sea wind born out in the eternity of the North Pacific. No, it was the wildest, loneliest, most primal country I was looking for. Furthermore, I quickly came to understand that radical, as it applied to my purposes, was twofold.
I could see that I would have to roam along the wildest sections of coast, at least a hundred miles, to get righteously down. I’d want to take my time, no racing around paradise for this old guy, ever mindful that deadlines kill (another working motto). As each trip over the years came about, a close look at the charts would reveal several exciting options, and each trip was nearly as much fun and as challenging to discover and design as it was to go and run.
CONSERVATIVE
As for the conservative side of this dualism, it’s pretty much what you would think. Like the recent spate of ads for one insurance company, it’s about “protecting the dream”. It’s about coming home in satisfactory condition after a satisfying experience in the field. Foremost is the implicit meaning of the motto as a whole. Radical is predicated on conservative, and vice versa. The more extreme your actions, the greater the need to protect the effort. Simple as that, really. Inversely, if you want to go out on the pond at home for the afternoon, you won’t need to be overly concerned with conservation. Implicit also are the actions related to the radical intention. In other words, central to fulfilling a radical objective is the attention to the singularity of that effort. Or to put it another way, as a buddy used to point out when we were fishing for steelhead and distracted by breaching trout: “Don’t shoot rabbits on a tiger hunt.” Big objectives require dedicated focus to achieve.
Equally important is the research, planning and prep work you put into the front end of a trip. When you finally reach bumfuck beach in the middle of absolutely nowhere, what you have with you is what you get. And if what you have breaks, well, you don’t have it anymore. A thorough understanding of what is necessary for quality and appropriate gear both on the water and off is crucial. Smart, conservative planning extends into resupply solutions and contingency plans to mitigate obvious risks.
Finally, conservative applies day in and day out to the myriad of decisions you make in the field. And myriad might be an understatement. Again, sticking to the agenda is the default focus. That means you must avoid those radical side trips that can jeopardize your mission. Remember that there is sufficient radicality built into the primary objective (or should be). For my style of coastal kayaking, this means remembering that there are plenty of things to explore without getting far off course. Generally speaking, it is the bad-weather days that you spend exploring; typically that’s up inlets along bays and on the beach. When weather conditions are flat out optimal and all things are equal, you’ll likely find me on the water making progress toward Point B.
In addition to the unnecessary risks discussed above, there are, of course, some necessary ones. Risk management is a fascinating field of style, technically defined (by the risk analysis firm ISO) as the “…identification, assessment, and prioritization of risks followed by coordinated application of resources to minimize, monitor, and control the probability.” Basically this involves studying the effect of uncertainty on objectives. There are all manner of risk categories, and we won’t go into them here, but most of them are commonsensical. Knowledge risk concerns the effect of deficient knowledge, while relationship risk can occur when “ineffective collaboration occurs”. (Marriage should make us all experts in that one.) Most of these are something we can assess and deal with ahead of time. For example, we can gather a thorough body of information (and make sure we understand it) while being very, very careful who we invite to go along with us.
In the field, being conservative is about staying ahead of the curves. These curves represent the vital systems of our well being. If we can manage to keep them in good operating order – body, mind and spirit – we will be able to accomplish what we’ve come to do and to thrive in the process. A successful end game will have its rewards: the honing of character traits like conviction and determination, resilience and fortitude. But the midgame, the process, is marginalized in our culture. “Think radical, act conservative,” on the other hand, celebrates means over ends. There is much to learn from and enjoy about being in wild places. It seems to me like a recharging dock for the soul, inspiring a deeper connection with the natural world, with the people who shared the experience with us, and with our selves. Staying ahead of the curves leaves us poised, centered, and paddling the middle path. So be it.
For more on Rob’s ocean kayaking style, check out North Coast Rhythms: Part I and North Coast Rhythms: Part II.
To learn more about the Sea of Cortez expedition, read Tyler’s posts Sea of Cortez Expedition: Part I and Sea of Cortez Expedition: Part II.