It was bad enough when corporate America interfered with my kayaking.##M:[more]## In those dim years, my ideal was to be on the canal in a bright red “Loon,” three times in three short weekend days. Now I’m my own boss. There’s no one to blame. But I have pulled on the orange personal flotation device and picked up the yellow paddle but one single time this entire spring. Even today — a Saturday! — I’ve chained myself to the computer from 10 to 5; half-hour break for lunch.
The boy behind Princeton Canoe and Kayak’s sign-up table is puzzled by my urgency. Yes! — they stay open to sundown — 8 p.m. I’m off! As soon as I leave the womb-like basin (where barges turned in days of coal transport) for birth passage into D&R Canal water, timelessness descends. Publicity, clients — what are they?
Dippy swallows flit, brightly serenading my chute beneath the Alexander Road bridge. People picnic in Turning Basin Park, playing folk music that could be any land and language.
Overhead, two vultures play the wind — serene and majestic, as I have become by taking up this paddle. What’s that atop the water? Who knew bagels could float? Well, that’s two vultures and a bagel I wouldn’t have seen if I had stayed at the computer.
Weather — finally for 2005 — is flawless. Not quite 80 degrees. Barely a breeze. Humidity imperceptible. No insects. White floof from some invisible tree coats waters like the glaze of ice that covered our canal for too many months this trying year.
No one else is anywhere in sight. With the white bridge behind me, I encounter nothing man-made, save kayak and accouterments, the canal itself. Except this waterway doesn’t look man-made — everything is so lush. The still water mimics a burnished sheet of platinum; then the hall of mirrors at Versailles. I stop paddling so I don’t destroy these stunning, shimmering reflections. Canal-side trees bend to kiss their own fingertips. The perfect circles they form in water could be wrought of iron, lit by chartreuse flames.
I become aware of fragrances — a certain white blooming viburnum, then that of the waters themselves — clean clothes dried on lines. Silence is my other blessing: I lay the paddle astride the kayak, to immerse keyboard-stressed hands in cool liquidity. The only sound is a sputter of bubbles at the stern.
I have progressed far enough into the Institute Woods to encounter birdsong. Robins rejoice despite lowering light. This is the wood thrush’s favorite time — they salute sundown to my right, then my left. I whistle back — until we all create a human/avian round. I think of other watery excursions, friends and I singing “White Coral Bells” and “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” out across ripples. I dare to sing aloud myself — find it helps the paddling rhythm.
To the left, wild iris — “yellow flag” — erupts, like spurts of melted butter in air and on water. Pale lavender iris-relatives transport me to Holland. A grove of sensitive fern emerges — so fat and sturdy, you’d never guess they are first to “cave” with frost. Disreputable invasive multiflora rose creates absolute bowers. Flat snipped blossoms of snow white, ivory, and ice pink tower above as I glide along. The French would describe their shallow saucers as “feerique” – fairy-like. They are so much more comfortable with enchantment in my adopted land.
Overhead my favorite spring bird swoops to a tulip tree’s lofty top. No matter how many years of alumni march in how many P-rades, wearing how many orange and black combinations — nobody does Princeton colors better than the Baltimore oriole. He’s silent tonight — courtship over. No more serenades. No comment.
Too soon, I realize honeyed sun is slipping behind western trees. On purpose, I have not brought a watch. Left-brained self-organization has held sway entirely too long. I’m almost to the golf course bridges, but can I make it back in time? Actually, like the song we sang at Tiger Stadium, “I don’t care if we never get back!”
Plunging my paddle deep and determined, in order to turn, I alter ripples along canalside trees. They’d been stately, striped and silvered. Swirlings now transform each slender trunk into a dappled sycamore.
One swift dark shape swoops at the bank — a muskrat, rambling. Up ahead, something breaches and thrashes — great white shark. (Wanted to see if you’re paying attention.) In this liquid world, in dusk’s incandescence, anything is possible.
— Carolyn Foote Edelmann
