While Joe attempted to remove the wheels from the kayak -- which the man at the rental place had said would greatly aid in transporting it down to the creek, but which proved to be a mistaken idea on his part -- I took up an examination of the instructions on the kayak. These instructions detailed how the kayak was to be used, such as "Become familiar with the equipment." Joe was taking care of that part, and in fact seemed comfortable enough with the boat to exchange certain strong words with it. The instructions also laid out how the kayak was not to be used: "Do not operate beyond ability." Well, one out of two isn't bad, I thought.
I next commenced reading the warnings on the life jacket, and then handed it to Joe. "Honey, this is important," I said. I looked him straight in the eye to let him know how serious this was. "I love you," I said, "and this is for you own good. Do not, under any circumstances, dry clean this life jacket."
Before getting in the kayak, I thought it important to follow a ritual sometimes practiced on the islands -- that of blessing a boat before its voyage, although I figured we could skip the part about praying for a lot of fish. Addressing my main concern about this particular voyage, I intoned solemnly over the boat, "No nature is allowed to enter this kayak."
Perhaps I forgot some part of the ritual, because the moment we got in Joe suddenly began performing a creative dance that involved moving all of his limbs wildly about and slapping at his leg, indicating that some form of nature had affixed itself to his person. The fearsome-looking invader soon proved to be part of a plant, and was forceably ejected from the boat.
On our journey we passed under several bridges, each one lower than the last, until we feared that we would have to go under the water at the next bridge. Joe usually steered us through while I kept a sharp eye out, trying not to observe anything that might be crawling on the bridge beams. I unfortunately spotted a section on which crawled thousands of things that were not part of a plant, and immediately warned Joe: "Don't look left. There's a lot of nature."
Joe proved to be very clairvoyant on this trek, having joked with the man at the rental shop that, no matter that we had a map, and no matter that the man said the sound would be easy to find, we would still get lost.
"I have to stop saying things," he muttered after we had taken a wrong turn. "They always come true."
There is always a point at which you finally decide, though you have been denying it up until then, that you have gone the wrong way. It is not easy to abandon the path it has taken you an hour of toil to get to, but in our case this decision was helped along by two decidedly unfriendly canines on the shore, at which point we made a hasty retreat back down the inlet.
Later I became aware of a commotion in the rear of the boat, where Joe was seated, which seemed to indicate that he was a) having an apoplectic fit, or b) engaged in a life-or-death struggle with a large marsh creature. Soon the noises stopped, and he announced that we were safe, that what he had thought was a menacing spider was, in fact, not.
This incident illustrates a clear difference between the genders. When I perceive that my person is in imminent danger of close personal contact with some form of nature, no one within a radius of several miles is unaware of this fact, thanks to my verbal warning system that immediately goes into effect.
Joe, on the other hand, though he may thrash about a bit, makes not one sound, and a passerby may form the impression that he is perhaps practicing some form of ancient mind-body connection.
Lest I give the impression that our kayak tour was all effort and no payoff, let me assure readers that it was actually quite scenic, giving us wonderful close-up views of a small RV park. In some cases we were so close to the RVs that we could even read the labels on the cases of beer parked next to them.
In fact, we were so enthralled that, once we had passed the RV park, we turned around and paddled back so we could see it again. Our turning around had nothing to do with the fact that, after two hours of exhaustive paddling and ducking under nature-infested bridges, we were seemingly no closer to the open water whence we were headed. I announced -- softly, lest the RV folk hear us -- that I was definitely never getting in another kayak, even though I had said the same thing after our last kayak trip.
When we finally struggled back to the kayak shop, the owner cheerfully asked how our trip was, and Joe quickly shouted "Great!" to prevent me from saying anything to the contrary. I wanted to give the man one of the nature souvenirs we had picked up, but instead I just handed over my life jacket.
"Don't dry clean it," I said.
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