My wife and I are both lifelong paddlers of canoes and kayaks, so when we were newly married, we were excited to jump in on a guided canoe trip through a marshy area on Kiawah Island. Canoes were provided, and a somewhat motley crew of novice paddlers gathered, looking a bit like confused elementary kids on a field trip as they struggled with the straps on their oversized life jackets.
When the guide asked if anyone had been canoeing before, my wife and I were the only ones with hands up out of about a dozen people. The guide asked if we would be willing to split up, and we agreed—my wife in a canoe with an older guy and me with his not-so-young wife. (Spoiler alert: No old people were harmed in the writing of this story.) (Second Note: Those people seemed old to us then, but they were probably just a little older than we are now. Which is frightening, but I’ll stay focused.) With heroic help from the guide, everyone wobbled into their canoes without dunking, and, like Gilligan and the Skipper, off we paddled on a three-hour tour through a moderately narrow channel that wound its way through a reedy marsh. My canoe partner and I volunteered (naively) to be last, helping any stragglers keep up.
I mention this trip not because we wound up stranded on a deserted island making batteries out of coconuts. No, I bring this up because of the mother-son team who were paddling gamely along in our group. The mom was probably nearing forty, the son around twelve, and they brought with them into their boat an abundance of enthusiasm that was, unfortunately, outmatched by their complete and total absence of canoe-related common sense. They paddled so hard…but always in a big arc. They would paddlepaddlepaddlepaddlepaddle—BUMP—as they hit the bank on the left. The son, in front, would push them out of the reeds, and they would set off again, paddlepaddlepaddlepaddle—BUMP—into the bank on the right. What entertained me was that they never stopped paddling. Even as they were plowing into the bank, they were still both paddling away full blast, like ducks whose feet can’t stop moving. Paddlepaddlepaddlepaddle—BUMP! They’d hit the left. Paddlepaddlepaddlepaddle—BUMP! They’d hit the right.
Again and again and again. Left then right then left then right…
I would love to have had an overhead view of their meandering progress. They undoubtedly paddled four or five times the distance of anyone else, yet they (and us, since we were supposed to be last) fell further and further behind the main body of paddlers. At one point, they were about to hit the left side of the marsh right before a left turn, so I pushed a couple of hard strokes and bumped them so they’d get around the curve, making their first legitimate burst of progress. I was pleased with my creativity, even if the woman in the canoe with me let out an, “Oh my!” and a gasp at my recklessness.
I’d offered them paddling tips here and there along the way, but this delightfully enthusiastic couple of paddlers (BUMP!) ignored my advice and maintained their determined zigzag (BUMP!), while I mostly back-paddled against the current to keep from drifting past them (BUMP!). Finally, I said somewhat quietly, “You know, if you just stopped paddling and let yourself drift with the current, you’d go faster.” The mom had ignored all of my advice to that point, but after another couple of BUMPS she said to her son, “How about we just relax and drift with the current for a while? We’ll go faster.”
I was so glad she thought of it! Drift they did, with occasional bumps here and there, and they made much faster progress. Eventually, we reached the end of our drifting tour of the marsh. As we climbed out of our canoes, I had no doubt the mom and son were heading off to collapse somewhere from exhaustion, never to canoe again.
This little adventure down Recollection River popped into my head the other day while I watched something in the news, because our canoe trip suddenly seemed like such a great metaphor for American politics. We elect people on the left who paddlepaddlepaddlepaddle—BUMP into the left bank. Then we elect people on the right, who paddlepaddlepaddlepaddle—BUMP into the right bank. Back and forth through our nation’s history, paddlepaddlepaddlepaddle—BUMP. Back and forth. Each marshy bank seems to resent the other marshy bank more and more, yet on we go, paddling hard until we BUMP! Then, stunned that our efforts didn’t work this time, we set off again paddling for the other bank.
You have to wonder if we’d make more progress by, every once in a while, taking a breather from all the paddling and just drifting, all together, with the current.
That’s all. No big political statement. Just an observation from the rear end of a canoe.