Light and Space

Wednesday, 27 October 2010

I was going to say that this where I was at 6.30am today as it sounds so impressive but the camera actually timestamped the photo as being at 7.11am today - although we had been kayaking for a while before I actually I took the photo so it is still a little bit impressive - especially if you knew the week I'd had! Basically it started with running a cupcake course last Tuesday requiring 140 cupcakes to be made, then I lost my voice.  Then having regular work for the rest of the week with Jon going away for the weekend and cake stuff flowing over and keeping me up until after midnight every night since Friday. Then when you add to that some sad family news with grandfather passing away on Saturday it's really been quite a fortnight.  And I don't really think it will all start to calm down until after Friday what with the funeral and all.

So this moment felt like a little bit of light and breathing space amongst everything else.  I was paddling with my friend  Mark (whose family we are organising some orienteering events with) who provides the kayaks, gear, lifting power and motivation to actually get down to the meeting spot at the agreed time.   We were paddling in Browns River in Kingston and you can just see the start of the mountain ahead on the right although I like to think the sky is so blue and the water so calm it could have been the middle of the day in Sweden in summer, or even in the canals around LA (as seen in Californication), or somewhere in a lake in the Algonquin in Canada.

The reason I'm kayaking is to make myself the most popular girl in town by becoming skilled enough to tackle the kayak legs in the Freycinet Challenge next year.  Given my dodgy ankle (stankle) and the fact that I don't have an aversion to paddling in fact I quite like it - I think it's the way to go for the immediate future anyway - and if it provides moments like these then it's already proving to be a good option.