Summer 2015 has come and
gone, a child’s kiss on my cheek, soft, sweet and fleeting. I loved this
summer. It was one of my favourites. It was also my summer of “letting go.”
On August third, I put my
kayak and assorted gear for sale online: paddles, flotation device, booties,
gloves and car-racks. The entire package sold within twenty-four hours. Gone.
All of it. I was in shock at the sudden loss of my boat, and also felt surprisingly
free. The kayak had been a huge part of my life for over twenty-five years.
I bought The Green Otter (The G.O.) second-hand,
in Toronto in 1988. Made by Natural
Design in Seattle, she was seventeen
feet of green fiberglass, with a large comfortable cockpit. She had no rudder,
no bulkheads, and was beautifully stable. The
G.O. was solid and proudly moved through any water. I loved that boat. And
every time I moved, The G.O. came
with me. She lived in barns, garages, and carports. At one time, I seriously
considered storing her on my living room wall.
When I first bought her, I knew very little about kayaks and even less
about kayaking. In the summer of 1988, I took a wonderful introductory workshop
on kayaking with White Squall, in southern Georgian Bay. That was the very first
time I sat in a solo kayak. I gently slipped into the boat and paddled out into
the bay. Immediately, I was filled with a
quiet feeling of coming home. The kayak felt like an extension of me, as if I
had grown a great fin or mermaid’s tail! “You paddle a canoe,” said Noel, “ but
you wear a kayak.” Yes, and I couldn’t wait to get my own boat. Within two
weeks, I found her. Minutes after buying The
G.O., we loaded her onto the roof of my car. The young woman who sold it to
me wept and waved goodbye to her baby as we drove away. This past August, I
came full circle with The G.O. A young
family bought my boat and, as they rounded our corner, The G.O. strapped
snuggly to the roof of their car, I wept and waved goodbye. The torch was
passed. This was no small doing. For years, I stoutly refused to part with that
boat. This fin had guided me through Georgian Bay waters in Ontario, up the
Indian Arm near Vancouver, through sunset paddles and moon rise trips in
Departure Bay, Nanaimo. Year after year, I refused to let go of the boat.
Although paddling excursions had become few and far between, I clung to that
boat like a shield. She was my past, my life in Ontario, and the symbol of all
the joys of being in and on the water. And then she was gone. Letting go of The Green Otter was swift, clean and
good. A shift occurred. I started to let go of so much more: books, CD’s,
clothes, puppets and storytelling gear, the “stuff” I had accumulated over the
years. A lightness came over me. “You’re making way for something new,” said
Valentina. ‘And to do that, you have to let go of the old.”
In his marvelous
collection: The Book of Awakening, poet
Mark Nepo shares a Polynesian creation story. Taaora wakes to find himself in a
shell. He stretches and breaks the shell and the Earth is created. He continues to grow and finds himself in a
new shell. Once again, Taaora stretches and breaks the shell and the Moon is
created. Again, Taaora keeps growing and is contained by yet another shell.
This time as he stretches, he breaks the shell and the Stars are born. And so
on, each new shell is broken only to reveal a new creation, a new beginning, a
new world. Mark Nepo says that this ancient story helps us see “ that we each
grow in this life by breaking successive shells…In this way, life becomes a
living of who we are until that form of self can no longer hold us, and, like
Taaora in his shell, we must break the forms that contain us in order to birth
our way into the next self.” Beautiful.
I have new work now: to
open to this beginning and not tighten and seize in the face of possibility.
I wish you a gentle season
of discovery.
