When we set out on our two-month, 600-km kayak adventure from Bella Bella to Tofino, we sought to unplug from our city lives, see what extended time in the wild might teach us, and hopefully deepen our boyfriend-girlfriend relationship into something more. In the years since then, we’ve come to understand that many paddling journeys have psychological underpinnings similar to our own, and that many long-distance paddlers share a common creed – a common set of beliefs and aims which guide their actions. What follows is our attempt to capture this Kayaker’s Creed both in words of our own and from others, including several quotations from “Logbook at Burnett Bay.”
Kayaker’s Creed
Do it with an eye on the past, an eye on the future and an eye above.
Do it with someone, but alone if you have to.
Just do it and do it now.
Keep on doing it.
And do it with a smile on your face!
Do It With An Eye On The Past
In British Columbia, anywhere a paddler finds a nice beach to land, or a little grassy meadow just back from the shoreline, chances are First Nations have lived there for millennia. Be respectful toward those who came before and the First Nation cultures still alive on the coast today.
The past inhabitants of this coast developed the art and skills of seagoing canoe travel to a degree unmatched anywhere in the world. Using readily available virgin cedar and generations of woodworking experience, they built large dugout craft of sophisticated design, which when combined with these people’s strength and seamanship, enabled swift and reliable travel throughout the Pacific coast.
The Starship & The Canoe by Kenneth Brower
It can be said of most small-ship wanderers that they voyage not to acquire money or status, but to accumulate new experience. And beyond that perhaps, bare points of contact when the beginning, present, and future connect somehow with a ship, sea, sky and an individual, when for a moment the secret of life will stand revealed almost within reach.
Sea Quest by Charles Borden
At trip’s end, my kayak had become a magical waterborne carpet. There was an unparalleled freedom in gliding, self-propelled from one magnificent vista to another; passing fishing boats to orca whales to isolated native people’s villages to islands to the open sea. Indeed, over my past fifteen years of paddling the North Pacific coast, my kayak has bridged worlds. The act of moving quietly on the sea to approach and examine ancient native people’s middens and overgrown pioneer homesteads creates a feeling of timelessness and continuity. Present meets past and I am part of it.
Will Nordby in Seekers of the Horizon, Sea-Kayaking Voyages From Around The World
I love kayaking because it weaves back and forth across an interface, in several senses. It exists between two worlds, without being claimed by either. The craft is useless without water, and yet a kayaker cannot survive for long without land. I can float a stone’s throw out on the water and feel I inhabit a different universe completely detached from land. But a simple nudge ashore, and I am the prodigal son returning from years of wandering – people are astounded, curious, welcoming. As a vehicle, the boat itself spans the most ancient and the most modern technologies. Imagine, a millennia-old craft constructed of Kevlar, vinylester resins, and carbon fibre – what a figurative meeting of minds! And here I am in twentieth-century waters, with motorboats, airplanes, automobiles – the most complicated of machines all around me – pushing my hybrid craft along using muscle power and a simple lever device perfected somewhere in the Aleutian Islands perhaps 5000 years ago. What a titanic span of technology, of ideology, of humanity!
Greg Blanchette in Seekers of the Horizon: Sea Kayaking Voyages From Around The World
Do It With An Eye On The Future
Wherever you choose to paddle, be sure to follow Leave No Trace principles. For tips on minimizing your impact in a marine environment, see the Marine Trails Code of Conduct on the BCMT website. If protecting marine trails for future generations is close to your heart, consider volunteering for clean-up projects at your local paddling club or at BC Marine Trails. Get involved. Be a hero and take action!
He is a bad man who does not pay to the future at least as much as he has received from the past.
A.W. Pollard (1859-1944)
One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between man and nature shall not be broken.
Leo Tolstoy
The ultimate test of a man’s conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.
Gaylord Nelson, Founder of Earth Day
Perhaps there’ll be a reservation system some day to kayak the Cape Caution Trail, like the West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island. Things are changing fast. When I first came here in ‘76, I don’t recall ever finding a previously used campsite between Port Hardy and Bella Bella, anywhere. The frontier is closed here, for better or for worse, and the spirit of this place could be gone overnight. Let’s look for ways to keep it.
R.W. a.k.a. “The Cabin Maker,” From Cabin Logbook at Burnett Bay
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
Do It With An Eye Above
Many kayakers experience paddling as a form of communion or prayer in which all the wild is a vast cathedral. For such people, standing in the vastness of nature – in landscapes shaped by forces on time scales so far beyond their own – is a deeply spiritual experience. In the wild, they gain new perspectives in realizing how small they are, how limited their time is on this planet, and how insignificant even their greatest hopes and dreams are.
Thou wilt learn more in the woods than in books.
St. Bernard (1091-1153), Epistle 106
Wilderness has been characterized as barren and unproductive; little can be grown in its sand and rock. But the crops of wilderness have always been its spiritual values — silence and solitude, a sense of awe and gratitude — able to be harvested by any traveler who visits.
Wilderness Sojourn by David Douglas
We are alone at last with the sea and the sky and our great friend the sun, which pours its wealth upon us generously and unremittingly, browning our bodies and mellowing our philosophies. Willy, flat on his back, stretches his arms luxuriously. “I’m almost convinced,” he says, “that sun-worship is the only true faith.”
The Cruise of the Talking Fish by W.E. Bowman
“Are you a God?” they asked the Buddha. “No,” he replied.
“Are you an angel, then?”. “No.”
“A saint?” “No.”
“Then what are you?”
Replied the Buddha, “I am awake.”
The World’s Religions by Houston Smith
Burnett Bay was a welcome reprieve from the Byzantine waterways of the Inside Passage. For the first time, we felt the wind coming in off the ocean instead of spilling off some cold distant mountaintop. Tomorrow we’re headed for Smith Sound. We’ll be slivers on the sea again; it’s a humbleness you learn out here and never forget.
George and Liz, June 1988, From Cabin Logbook at Burnett Bay
The happiest man is he who learns from nature, the lesson of worship.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do It With Someone
Many kayakers find their paddling experience enhanced by companions: perhaps a friend, a romantic partner, a family, or a guided group. Laughs are shared. Personal bonds are formed, and then strengthened through the quiet accumulation of shared experience and earned familiarity.
And yet, even while I was exulting in my solitude, I became aware of a strange lack. I wished a companion to lie near me in the starlight, silent and not moving, but ever within touch. For there is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly understood, is solitude made perfect. And to live out of doors with the woman a man loves is of all lives the most complete and free.
Robert Louis Stevenson
There is – or should be – a moment in all expeditions when the members cease to be individuals and become parts of a whole. It is at this moment that the experienced campaigner relaxes for the first time, knowing that whatever hardships and dangers lie ahead, there is not one of his companions who will not offer his utmost in the common cause…This was such a moment. Ceasing to be an individual, I saw my fellow-members in a new way.
The Cruise of The Talking Fish by W.E. Bowman
But Do It Alone If You Have To
A solo paddler circumnavigating Vancouver Island once landed on our beach after sunset and left before sunrise with barely a word or wasted motion. That’s just how some people roll. On a different beach, another solo paddler hungry for companionship landed just in time for dinner. We prepared an extra boil-in-a-bag meal for him, then shared dessert, wine, stories, and laughter around a driftwood campfire deep into the night. That’s also how some people roll. Do what works for you!
Go light, go solo, go now.
Motto of Audrey Sutherland, author of Paddle My Own Canoe
Sea kayaking was instantly more than just going places in a little boat; it became a pathway toward understanding myself in the mirror of the wilderness.
The Hidden Coast: Kayak Explorations From Alaska To Mexico by Joel Rogers
Today I made love to the earth and sky…None of us held back.
Irene, solo paddling from Seattle to Ketchikan, From Cabin Logbook at Burnett Bay
Alone, you are reduced to the basics, the elements of paddling that we all started out with once upon a time in a pool or a quiet bay somewhere: body, boat, paddle, water.
Greg Blanchette in Seekers of the Horizon: Sea Kayaking Voyages From Around The World
Henceforth I ask not good fortune, I myself am good fortune.
…From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute.
Song of the Open Road by Walt Whitman
Just Do It
Those Nike advertisements from a few years back, they were on to something!
Thou shalt go on quests.
The Ten Commandments Of Sea Kayaking by Eric Soares
A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.
William Shedd
Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life.
Bertolt Brecht
The cure for anything is salt water — sweat, tears, or the sea.
Isak Dinesen
So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.
Christopher Reeve
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Anais Nin
I went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived.
Thoreau
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve imagined.
Thoreau
The simplicity of the concept was irresistible: to set off in a kayak outside our house and keep paddling around Vancouver Island until we returned to the place where we had begun.
Visions of the Wild: A Voyage By Kayak Around Vancouver Island by Marie Coffey and Dag Goering
“I had always wanted an adventurous life,” I said. “It took a long time to realize that I was the only one who was going to make an adventurous life happen to me.”
The Bridge Across Forever by Richard Bach
A man must choose his life’s desire, and the warrior in him agree to the unpleasant labors that will follow. We must choose “the one precious thing”, rejecting all others, and pay for that choice through poverty, conflict, deprivation, labor, and the endurance of anger from rejected divinities.
Iron John by Robert Bly
Had a fantastic sail down the west coast of Calvert Island before a northwesterly wind. Made it all the way from Pruth Bay to Grief Bay in a day. Hard to stop for long when the wind says “Let’s Go.”
R.W. (aka the Cabin Maker) solo kayaking from Bella Bella to Port Hardy in 1993, From Cabin Logbook at Burnett Bay
Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been an accomplice to human restlessness.
Joseph Conrad
My new year’s resolution is to spend more time on my sea kayak. It possesses almost miraculous properties: it is a four-meter, plastic rejuvination machine. After a day on the water, ideally paddling as far as I can, sometimes until the coast is out of sight, I feel ready for anything.
George Monbiot, The Guardian, January 2, 2020
Do It Now!
Even the best laid plans get overtaken by events. Things happen. Windows close. Be sure to have a crack at it while you still can.
The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy, without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity.
Mark Twain
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads to good fortune
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries
On such a full sea are we now afloat
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
Julius Caesar by Shakespeare
Whatever you can do or dream you can…begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Goethe
If you want to do something, you have to do it now, otherwise who knows? It would be a tragedy to let your dreams pass you by without having a crack at them.
Dare To Do: Taking On the Planet By Bike and Boat by Sarah Outen
‘I’ve always wanted to sail to the South Seas, but I can’t afford it.’ What these men can’t afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of ‘security’. And in the worship of security, we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine – and before we know it our lives are gone. What does a man need – really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in – and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment That’s all – in the material sense, and we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, and playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade. The years thunder by. The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed. Where, then, lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life?
Wanderer by Sterling Hayden
Keep On Doing It
An ancient parable states: Omnia bona dura est – all good things are difficult. The strongest steel is forged in the hottest fires, and it is always darkest before the dawn. At such times, it is essential to continue pressing forward. The hero responds to difficulty with perseverance, to setbacks with resilience, and in so doing builds character, strength, and skill.
Letters From A Stoic by Seneca
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas
Pray that your way be long and your journey full of adventures and experiences.
Ithaka by Cavafy
In any difficult journey, the self of the traveler is reduced to its essentials, allowing one to see what those essentials are.
The Mind of the Traveler by Eric Leed
Exploring is delightful to look forward to and back upon, but it is not comfortable at the time, unless it be of such an easy nature as to not deserve the name.
Erewhon by Samuel Butler
Come what may, all bad fortune is to be conquered by endurance.
Virgil, first century BC
Have ever you stood where the silences brood,
And the vast horizons begin,
At the dawn of the day to behold far away
The goal you would strive for and win?
The Land of Beyond by Robert Service
We live only when we adventure and give expression to the results of our adventure.
Lawren Harris, Group of Seven, notebook, 1920’s
When everything goes right it’s a great trip. When things go wrong it’s a great story.
Deviate podcast by Rolf Potts
The days became indistinguishable. We pressed on south, and the straights and channels gave way to other straights and channels. In the end these became indistinguishable too. Our hands, blistered by the paddling, were painful and felt larger than life. They were patterned with salt from the seawater that ran continually down the paddle shafts.
The Starship and the Canoe by Kenneth Brower
Reminder for next trip: more warm clothes, beer and time off work.
Thomas, October 1995, From Cabin Logbook at Burnett Bay
Bound for Ketchikan, solo, in my inflatable Semperit kayak. Great cabin. We need another 20 miles north.
Audrey Sutherland, June 12, 1988, From Cabin Logbook at Burnett Bay
Next logbook entry after Audrey’s:
Audrey did a handy job fixing things and left the cabin in spotless condition. God, here’s someone who paddles solo in an inflatable kayak to Alaska and we surf land in a kevlar double sea kayak, feeling like we’re Hans Lindemann, or Thor Heyerdahl, thinking we’re a hot item, until we get to your cabin and find out a grandmother in a rubber boat stayed in the same place and acted as nonchalant about it as if she’d just walked across the block. People have called us crazy. Little do they know to whom that description really applies.
George and Liz, June 13, 1988, From Cabin Logbook at Burnett Bay
Up at 4:30am every day for five days. Whitecaps out there even then. A.M. window tomorrow for the wind, so I’ll make a run for Skull Cove. Running out of essentials.
W.M.P., July 1993, From Cabin Logbook at Burnett Bay
En route from Port Hardy to Ketchikan. Going as far as the boat, the lady and the weather permit.
May 1990, From Cabin Logbook at Burnett Bay
What then? Shall we sit idly down and say
The night hath come; it is no longer day?
The night hath not yet come; we are not quite
Cut off from labor by the failing light;
Something remains for us to do or dare;
For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
Longfellow, from his Morituri Salutamas poem about old age
You’re only as old, or as young, as your next adventure.
Jerry Kaye
Ultreia – Latin for “onward with courage” and used as a greeting amongst pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago.
And Do It With A Smile On Your Face!
A smile costs nothing, weighs nothing, and packs neatly in your kayak. So on every trip, plan to bring your own!
There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.
Thoreau
Kayak more. Worry less.
T-Shirt Wisdom
Sometimes you find yourself in the middle of nowhere, and sometimes in the middle of nowhere, you find yourself.
T-Shirt Wisdom
At the end of the day, your feet should be dirty, your hair should be messy, and your eyes should be sparkling.
T-Shirt Wisdom
Last night’s full moon had me jogging naked in the surf at midnight. Had moonlight bouncing off the waves eastbound, bioluminescence on the return trip. Very therapeutic – I highly recommend it.
W.M.P., July 1993, From Cabin Logbook at Burnett Bay
Yabba Dabba Do!
Fred Flintstone
