SACRED & PROFANE

The best traditions begin without intention. One year, my friend Jeff and I counted backwards and realized that we’d paddled at least once during the last twelve months, winter notwithstanding. There were no accolades or attaboys, just an unassuming reckoning. We wondered aloud how far we could tease this idea without taking it too seriously. After all, water freezes, and Wisconsin is freezing in winter.

Honestly, it started because snow was a no-show one winter down here in southern Wisconsin. Sure, one could hike the same trails one would ski, but that felt eminently – and elementally – unsatisfying. Jeff proposed we paddle instead. I thought he was joking, but then I remembered a photograph in a calendar I’d recently received as a gift over the holidays. January’s image showed a yellow canoe cheerfully bold in the center of a cold, imposing landscape, the frigid river the same pale color as the cliff in the backdrop, and the sky above – gun-metal gray. I felt a jolting revolt, a subversive twist on the conventional wisdom taken to its extreme tweak – that paddling is only for warm weather.

Skip the flip-flops and Crocs. Leave the bug repellent and sunscreen at home. Better bundle up and get used to it; we may be starting a new year, but warm weather’s a long way off. Besides, warm weather is for fair-weather fans – cry-baby kayakers and candy-ass standup-paddleboarders working on their tans. So, grab your Gore-Tex jacket and faux fur-lined hat, and I’ll lash the boats down and fix a thermos of cocoa with a wink of Schnapps. Let’s go paddling!

I do realize how crazy it sounds. “Winter-paddling” probably conjures one of two things for most folks: oxymoronic or just plain moronic. Tell someone you went paddling in January – in Wisconsin, no less – and the response will be something like legendary Colts’ coach Jim Mora incredulously parroting “Playoffs?!?” to a disjointed reporter asking about the team’s chances following yet another loss in a losing season.

Yes, it’s cold. No, I don’t personally enjoy being cold; I’m not Nordic. Moreover, I have Raynaud’s syndrome, so my fingers and toes are frozen already by the first frost in autumn (and will remain that way until Memorial Day). But I do my best to adapt and be outdoors in fits of feisty stubbornness, no matter how ridiculous. The bloodless clods of my hands just have to deal with it, although I am not above voicing obscenities…

Maybe you’re asking, “Fine, but why?” Why would anyone, but for losing a bet, willingly paddle in such harsh conditions? Because the sacred geometry of the earth is most revealed in its stripped essence – what the religious scholar Mircea Eliade referred to as “hierophany,” or the manifestation of the divine in the everyday, the supernatural in the natural world. That’s why. And hierophanies abound in winter landscapes, many of which are only found while paddling.

Let’s start with ice. Where a river had been higher days before, now an ice-terrace vestige cantilevers from the banks, diaphanous and dangling. Icy skirts encircle tree trunks, prickly limbs wearing shawls of frozen water draped around their scrim. Ghoulish flukes of ice-floes appear like wraiths. Now look up: gluey pools of ice ooze out of porous outcrops, or dangle like angry daggers – sandstone a crucible through which groundwater freezes in the compact of cold air. The scene is surreal and spectral, a sleight of hand from mischief to metaphysics.

Listen to the imperceptible slip of ripples like a harp to the heart of ice, a soft sound of crystalline tinkling. Where else can one hear such subtly percussive slush, water-wave to soundwave at the acoustic tip of liquid to solid? You might also hear the torn-silk shriek of a hawk. Maybe the mellifluous fusillade of eagles. Perhaps the shadowy whoosh of snowy-owl wings. Or the silent Zen-hymn of weightless water fluttering like feathers from the heavens, dissolving invisibly in the river called snow.

But you won’t hear engines or machines. Or babbling rabble.

The stern serenity of the season is a discipline in simplicity. There’s no embellishment, no ornamental bling. Everything present is necessary. Winter is black acrylic on white canvas, a kind of calligraphy like a Franz Kline painting. There is a primitive intimacy with water in winter, a cursive signature surging through the stiff landscape. It attracts wildlife as wild as your own willingness to be outside, whose pilgrimage will thrill your soul. And you will never know the color red as deep or rich as when a cardinal lights upon a whitened branch.

Here is a splendor of solitude, brutal but beautiful.

Adulation aside, there are sobering considerations to bear in mind. For starters, getting wet could be perilous. Remember the 1-10-1 Rule: you have one minute to steady your breathing after being submerged in cold water, ten minutes of normal motion and muscle function before physiology hits the skids, and one hour before hypothermia sets in and you’re blubbering like a tone-deaf reporter asking about the Colts’ chances in the playoffs with a 4-6 record.

Accidents happen. The joyless cynic will state that the only way to avoid such mishaps entirely is not to winter-paddle in the first place, but that reductio ad absurdum likewise tsk-tsks that the only way to prevent a broken heart is never falling in love. Not helpful. There are, however, simple precautions to help prevent calamity. As Hamlet said, “the readiness is all.”

Now is a time to care about proper attire, so layer up! You’ll want to think in threes: base, mid, outer. For your base, you’ll want synthetic fabrics or wool that are lightweight and can wick moisture from your skin. Your mid-layers should be medium-weight fleece or wool, with the sole role of keeping heat in. Finally, the outer layers should be a hard shell material that repels water and resists wind.

Needless to say, wear your PFD.

The extremities are trickier. I’ve tried just about everything from mittens fit for polar bear paws with various inner linings to hand warmers running the gamut of disposable, Zippo, and even electric. For my feet, I’ll wear a half-shorn sheep ’s-worth of wool socks swaddled with toe warmers, enclosed within insulated rubber boots. Just make sure there’s wiggle room for those little piggies.

The objective is to stay warm and dry. Neoprene is popular and affordable for most, but it’s meant to get wet (think scuba divers). By contrast, a drysuit is an impenetrable barrier protecting your inner sanctum. It’s pricey, but isn’t your life worth it? Also, be sure to have a dry bag of changeable clothes in case you take a cold plunge (minus the sauna). Inside that waterproof bag should be an entire outfit – including a vest to keep your core warm and a hat to retain heat on your noggin. For more information, please seehttps://milespaddled.com/how-to-dress-for-cold-weather-paddling/.

Kayakers have the advantage of sitting inside enclosed boats – and discreetly cover their legs with a blanket (no shame!). Wearing a spray-skirt provides additional insulation. But canoes can be outfitted with aftermarket spray decks, too. Red Leaf Designs, in Michigan, offers a variety of options. We should be so lucky as to have fresh snow fall while on the water without our spirits dampened by sitting in puddles.

So now that you’re dashing in the right apparel, where should you go? Obviously, one’s options will be limited by the weather and whether the water is open or iced over. Wind is always more fiend than friend, but it’s a menacing nemesis in winter. As humidity makes summertime heat feel hotter, winter wind is an obliterating pain along the lines of fraternity hazing. Sunshine is another matter, and there are two schools of thought: some Midwesterners will seek it out like scurvy-fevered sailors seeing fresh fruit and veggies; others will steer away from that siren’s song, however longing, knowing that clear skies mean cold air.

It’s best to keep it simple – we’re lucky enough to be getting out at all. First, paddle somewhere you’re familiar with, preferably close to home. This is not the season for exploration and taking chances on the unknown. For me, it’s typically Badfish Creek or the Yahara River, about 30 minutes away. Next, keep the trip short – say 5ish miles long or about 2 hours. This is a qualitative experience, not a quantitative one. Finally, find a friend who’s similarly immune to common sense and willing to paddle when it’s only 20 degrees outside. There’s safety in numbers.

It’s been 14 years now of paddling at least once a month – or 166 months consecutively – but the tradition itself is timeless, the fellowship of a friend like Jeff, unlike another. In life, there are those who do not suffer fools, and we fools who have the last laugh. We’ve been laughing ever since that first trip.

Winter itself is an “eternal return.” Borrowing from Eliade’s idea that, through ritual, we reconnect with the sacred, winter paddling demonstrates how something ordinary, turned inside out, can become extraordinary. As my paddle blade dips beneath the water’s surface to propel me forward, I practice reverence as well as revolution. Far from a dumb stunt attracting attention to itself – like sledding down a hill in a kayak or other TikTok schlock – winter-paddling slips inside a liminal space that is otherwise forbidden: sneaking inside a chapel closed off for construction to commune for a moment shorter than usual but no less urgent.

On my knees in my canoe, I find renewal.