The off-season
In the high Uintas in Utah, the Sierras in California and in the Bighorns in Montana, there is always snow. Always. There are roads in the Bighorn Mountains that are only open for six weeks a year. If you want to find snow in the summer, you can.
There are people out there (I know a few of them) who strap a pair of backcountry skis on a pack in July, when it’s 90 degrees in Ten Sleep, climb up to the 13,000-foot Cloud Peak in its eponymous wilderness area, find a spot of snow and ski for a few hours.
That’s just fine for them. For me, it’s philosophically wrong. Just for me, mind you. There’s a lot of talk about eating seasonally and all that. You know, spinach in the spring, tomatoes in summer, squash in autumn and winter. Eat stuff when it grows. If you have eaten a strip-mined hothouse tomato from Chile in February, you understand why that is. It’s not a tomato. It’s an edible tomato-like object.
While my Montana friends aren’t doing anything wrong, it’s hardly skiing in the truest sense of the word. They are sliding over snow, sure. But it’s cruddy snow. Icy in the shade and mushy in the sun.
I believe in eating seasonally to the best of my ability. I also believe in recreating seasonally. “To everything, there is a season, and a time and purpose under heaven,” said both Ecclesiastes and Pete Seeger.
So I paddle from the Spring Equinox to the Winter Solstice, then I let my boats lay fallow for a season. They receive a well-deserved rest, while other activities take up my time. Winter activities like snowshoeing, skiing (I’m a Nordic guy), skating and ice fishing … and building quinzhees and snow forts occupy my outside time.
Is there open water? Yep, and once upon a time I took advantage of it.
OK, I did it once
It was January 1995. I strapped a fairly stable canoe on my truck and drove up to Sauk City, Wisconsin. It was snowing a little, blowing a little more than it was snowing. And it was cold. I don’t know how cold, but it felt like single digits. I was bundled head to toe in layers of thick wool, topped off with Swiss army surplus pants and a Filson Mackinaw, and my Elmer Fudd hat.
Leystra’s Venture Restaurant is one of my regular haunts when I go to the Wisconsin River. It’s an archetypal Wisconsin breakfast place, with a plain menu full of plain food, except for the exotic Denver omelette. I took a booth and waiting exactly 13 seconds for the waitress to come over to get my order.
At the next booth over, four farmers sat. Grizzled old guys with seed corn caps and barn coats that smelled faintly of barn. They were done with morning milking and were there to play Euchre and take advantage of the endless cup of coffee that was well and truly endless.
They noticed me, gave me an almost imperceptible recognition of my existence, but then one of them noticed my truck parked just outside the window. The guy sitting next to him put two and two together and fixed me with an incredulous eye. “You going canoeing?”
I said, yes, I was. Various remarks about my sanity were forthcoming. One suggested I had been dropped on my head when I was born. I told him that was entirely possible. As I got up to leave, I said goodbye, and one of them said, “Well, good luck out there.” I thanked him and paid the bill.
I started the truck, and even though I had only been in the restaurant for 45 minutes, the engine block was already cold. Of course it only started blowing warm air just as I arrived at the put-in at Ferry Bluff.
Bundled up, emergency gear all packed in a dry bag and a giant Thermos of hot chocolate strapped to the top, I launched into Honey Creek. I paddled hard enough that I wasn’t cold, and it was a lovely day, despite the wind and flecks of white stuff.
The water felt thicker, though. I’m not sure if that’s my imagination, but it felt like paddling through corn syrup.
I paddled upstream for an hour or so, then floated back down to Ferry Bluff and loaded everything up and on my truck. It was then I noticed the layer of ice that had built up on the hull of my canoe, maybe a fourth to three-eighths of an inch thick. Wherever the water had touched my hull, ice had accreted.
I whacked it a little to bust the layer off so my straps could actually touch the canoe, buttoned things down extra tight and drove off for home. I felt hardcore. I wanted to tell everyone that I paddled in this weather, and that I was awesome for doing something only a few fanatical people would do.
It was later when thinking about this day that I realized I hadn’t paddled to enjoy paddling. I had paddled to say I had paddled. Was it enjoyable? Yes, but it was thin sauce, especially when I realized that it was a lot more work to go for a paddle than it would have been to throw some snowshoes in the truck and head over to one of the many prairies along the Lower Wisconsin River.
Alternative paddling activities
So what do I do in the winter that is paddling related? Oh, there are pictures to enjoy (and edit). Winter’s a good time to go through the detritus caused by the digital age and delete the hundreds of redundant pictures that you just dumped on your hard drive. This frees up space on your computer and gives you a chance to see where you paddled last season and relive those moments.
I get out maps. I love maps and guidebooks, as well as websites and blogs of people who paddle all over the world. Even if I don’t plan on a trip to a specific place, I still like to look at the maps of the places I’ve been. Boundary Waters maps on waterproof paper are a particular favorite, each red dot with a story to tell.
If it’s warm enough and I feel ambitious (and if I was too lazy or busy in the fall), I might crank up the kerosene heater in a corner of the shop and sand and varnish some paddles. But usually I just let them rest too. I might carve on a paddle blank a little, just to get some freshly planed wood smell in the air, but mostly I stay out of the shop too.
I don’t fault people who like to do things just to do them, or just to say they did them. That’s a particular personality quirk shared by many of my friends. I am often found in their company, sometimes sliding down a snow-covered hill in a whitewater kayak, going way faster than is sensible.
So maybe I like to paddle in the winter after all.
Darren Bush is owner and chief paddling evangelist of Rutabaga Paddesports in Madison, Wisconsin.