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magazine / ma07
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March/April 2007 issue |
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Rollin' on the River
A second-hand canoe, an easy breeze and a lazy paddle along
New Brunswick's Saint John River
Excerpt of story by Mark Anthony Jarman with photography by Brian Atkinson
Staring out my window at the
Saint John River, I had water on the
brain. I knew I had to get out there,
learn this other indigo world that
pulses under eagles and turkey vultures.
Wake waves hitting shore were so close that
my lunatic terrier barked at them, yet
I had no boat, so the waters remained a
mystery, a foreign realm a foot away from
my muddy shoes.
Then a friend sold me her Old Town
canoe, a shiny blue crescent of Kevlar laminate.
It lacks the authentic swagger and
romance of birchbark or canvas, and it's a
devil to turn in the wind, but it is tough as
nails and travels over dew. I can carry it
across the road, shove it down the tall grass
to the river, step in and float.
I do not pretend to be an expert canoeist.
I do not know the difference between flatwater
paddles and whitewater paddles. I do
not know the J stroke. I just dip the paddle,
and I get where I'm going. I muddle
through, the same approach I take to bass
guitar and matters of the heart. I am not a
coureur de bois, not a Grizzly Adams outdoors
hero, but I am on the water, a citizen
of the scalloped waves and easy breezes and
diamond light on rolling swells.
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