New Adventures and a Canoe

When was the last time you tried something new?

This holiday weekend, my husband and I bought a used canoe from our local boat rental facility that was making space to update their fleet. I have canoed before, it’s delightful, but this is my first time owning a boat! So, this weekend marked a few firsts for me.

It was my first time:

• Strapping something so big (17+ ft long) to my RAV4’s roof racks

-Seems like no biggie, but 6 ratchet straps later and both the boat and I felt secure* about it, haha.

*The boat was secure before the 6 straps, I needed the extra couple for the insurance and peace of mind.

• Launching from an unsupervised boat launch

-It was an official access point, and several other boaters had the same Labor Day plans as us, so it wasn’t isolated. But it was not a boat rental site with lifeguards, or a river tubing resort with a clearly marked start and end, a guy on a jet ski to check on you, or a bus to take you back to your car.

-It was a self-guided adventure on a beautiful segment of the Wisconsin River!

• Nearly paddling into a 3ft long pike that looked like a small log.

-Don’t worry, it saw me before I saw it and swam away fast, but it was a close one.

The adventure was invigorating! It made me feel excited, hyper-alert, a bit jumpy, peaceful, awe-struck, connected with nature and my husband, and thoughtful. Routines are important and helpful to keep us going. The occasional comfort-zone-stretching adventure is important, too, to reconnect with ourselves.  

There are many metaphors and ample analogies one can make about a river, and I thought about sharing some here, but in my planning for this post, I kept coming back to how excited I was about accomplishing something a little out of my comfort zone. That’s where the real inspiration came from, the rush after an exciting, and successful new experience, so that’s what I’m sharing here.

Of course, after our maiden voyage we have a few ideas on how to enhance our future canoeing excursions, and we are excited to have these fun little projects to work on together.

This brings me back to my original question; when was the last time you tried something new? What was it? How did it make you feel? Do you have any new experiences coming up? Feel free to share your new endeavors in the comments and we can cheer you on.

P.S. In addition to the river similes, I have a ton of river related songs in my head today. If you have a favorite song about rivers, you can post those, too, maybe we can make a playlist.