The St. Lawrence River flows in a northeasterly direction. The prevailing wind in its watershed area is from the southwest. With the combination of the wind and the river’s sometimes brisk current, it’s a challenge for a sailboat to make it from Cornwall up to Kingston, the river’s source.
In the course of the last dozen years, my wife Juliet and I have paddled our canoe the entire distance between those two cities. Since neither of us are of Olympic caliber anything, as we both qualified for the seniors’ discount well over two decades ago, our paddling accomplishments are achieved through brain rather than brawn.
How so? We aim to travel the St. Lawrence in a one-way direction, with boosts from both the wind and the current. At our take-out point at the end of the day, I head for the roadside, (#2 in Ontario, NY 37 on the south shore), and confidently stick out my thumb, holding my paddle and a destination sign in hand (GANANOQUE, ALEXANDRIA BAY, BROCKVILLE, OGDENSBURG, MORRISBURG…).
At day’s end, while I’m hitchhiking to get back to my truck at our put-in place, Juliet stays with the canoe, awaiting my return, preferably at a hospitable place, such as the pub atRockport. Its slogan is, “A little drinking village with a fishing problem.”
One late September day, the forecast was for balmy temperatures and a brisk 20 – 40 kilometers per hour wind from the northeast. We seized the day, canoed upstream against thecurrent, but with the tailwind. All Juliet had to do was to hang on to the umbrella, not as a parasol, nor as a parapluie, but as a sail. All I had to do was to hold the paddle, not as a paddle, but as a rudder.
As Robin Williams exhorted his students in the 1989 film “Dead Poets Society”, “Seize the Day!” We did! We covered 25 kilometers with ease, with the tailwind, despite the opposing current.
When Life confronts you with a stumbling block, use it as a stepping stone. When 3M employee Spencer Silver attempted tomake a stronger adhesive, the only outcome was a weak one. He turned his failure into a successful product, Post-it Notes.
