The First Word

January 2009

World's troubles melt on water

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.

To download a pdf copy of the magazine click here: > DOWNLOAD

By John Kimantas

What an awful fall for doom and gloom.

I'm a faithful newspaper reader, but I'm not your regular news junkie. My eye tends to scan for the things of particular importance to me, which is a fairly narrow band of interest. Things like the talk of tankers being allowed along B.C.'s Inside Passage, salmon stocks at risk, killer whales starving to death, logging of ancient trees alongside Cathedral Grove, mining of the Catface Range in Clayoquot Sound – the types of things that are going to affect us well into the future, well beyond the latest schemes by politicians trying to fix all the things they've been unable to fix in the past.

But lo and behold the regular news was suddenly starting to have an impact on my daily life, and on the lives of the people around me. With the credit crisis and the stock market plunge, confidence in just about everything dried up.

This drop in confidence hit the kayak industry, which logic would seem to indicate would be recession-proof. But no – doubt kept retailers from booking advance orders, creating uncertainty for manufacturers; tour planners worried about a weak dollar. Doubt naturally meant cutting back on marketing; so lo and behold welcome to a leaner Wavelength than we've had in a while (noting it will return to regular size in the next issue).

The gloom couldn't last though. A new president meant a new outlook for the U.S., and oddly for the rest of the world too. Gas prices tumbled. Despite the naysayers, a bright future began to emerge.

I wonder how long it will be before people realize doom and gloom is a self-fulfilling prophecy? Lose confidence in the stock market and prices plummet. Lose faith in the economy by spending less and the economy crumbles. And so it goes.

We here at Wavelength found our own way to insulate ourselves. At the height of the gloom, my partner Leanne and I snuck out of the office early to take two shiny new Epsilons out for a test ride.

Everything changes when out on the water. Even the air becomes a natural rejuvenator. Add a fresh ocean breeze, exercise and communing with nature and sensibility returned. Just a little more than an hour on the water and every care in the world seemed to melt away.

This suddenly-remembererd freedom took me back to 2005 and my longest kayaking trip (92 days along the B.C. coast). I often went days, nearing weeks, without talking to another soul. In the end only four things really mattered: staying warm, staying dry, staying fed and keeping hydrated. Beyond that everything else was simply clutter. The stock market, world conflict, even what day of the week it was – those became distant and ultimately unnecessary memories.

It's so easy to get lost in the things that are fleeting, important at the time but of little consequence in the long run. We take on cares and pressures that are artificial, that we create for ourselves and use to bind ourselves down. Quite often we end up living a lie based

on false expectations of what we think we want.

Need a cure? Go kayaking. And the longer the trip the better.

- John Kimantas