The Wind and Waves. The westerly, or Westie, as I call it since we are on a first name basis, is the familiar one. It is the friend who brings me home some days and others, well, other days when it wants to be difficult or contrary, prefers to send me home. There is a difference. Some days it will fetch all the way from Michigan just to make its point. The billowing chest of clouds and distended belly of waves on the horizon build in a crescendo, a long and steady wuthering moan. But I see you coming, Westie. I know your game. I know your signs.
But oh, the easterly. The wind who should not be named. Conjuring it thusly will summon streaking clouds like dementors in a discordant staccato of conflicting signals. Nature’s capricious middle child with a vindictive side. A favourite Canadian author once wrote, as he was lamenting whether to leave in his float plane, that the wind had shifted and was now coming from the east. “Bitch Wind”, he called it. And that is what I have called it ever since. I do not like you, Bitch Wind. You bring change, but not for the good.
We live at the tip of Cape Hurd. If we meet in conversation one day and you notice that my mind appears to wander as I look past you to the water or to the trees overhead, it is for one of two reasons. The first is that I am still listening to you, but I have noticed a change in the waves. Are they waning? At what rate? Will it alter if, when or where I slip my seventeen-foot sea kayak into the water? The second reason is that I have in fact stopped listening to you. There is not a breath of wind but over your shoulder I have caught the subtlest tremor in the leaves of a poplar tree. These are the first of nature’s elements to yield to the slightest change in pressure. A harbinger perhaps but then again maybe not. Regardless, I’m afraid that considering whether it is or it isn’t is more interesting than what we are talking about.
Wind means waves, in all her personalities. Will today’s paddle be an adventure that will require all of my instincts, skills and muscle memory? Or will it be a day where I can look beyond the wind and waves to the trees, the eagles, the shipwrecks, the sunset?
The Kayaker: In the summer of 1998 I was the first person to cross Lake Ontario in a sea kayak, always admitting: It wasn’t that big a deal. People swim across the lake, after all. Still, it was my thing. A friend said to me, Well done, because you’re no spring chicken! I was 35. Last summer I paddled around Cove Island from the tip of Cape Hurd (30km) in five and a half hours and this summer I plan to paddle the perimeter of the Fathom Five National Marine Park in a day. Well, minus the shoreline portion. From the tip of Cape Hurd to the Cove Island light house, to Flowerpot, to Bear’s Rump to Dunk’s. This trip will be 40 km. I am 57 now and patently No Spring Chicken so it is with a complete lack of bravado that I stick my neck out and say that I will be the first person to do this. Mostly in the hope that like-minded kayakers will connect with me to either set me straight or to share their stories of wind, waves and kayaking the beautiful waters surrounding the Bruce Peninsula.
Pat Hills
Cape Hurd, Tobermory
