The Fools Pilgrimage – Up the Creek Without a Paddle!

I love Paddle-boarding and what’s really brilliant is that Lisa does too 😊

The first time I ever stood on a Paddle-board was when I went to the Queen Charlotte Islands 🇨🇦 back in 1999 and went to the oldest North American Native tribe and tried out one of their wooden paddle boards whilst I was kayaking around the islands! That was the ‘original way’ for those Native Peoples to move about!

Fast Forward some 20+ years and It was during lockdown 3 that we got our own paddle board (The cheap Waikiki) and Lisa got the bug and that spread like wildfire into our regular routine.

Looking through some of our Paddle-boarding adventure the other day I came across a paddle we had done along the River Dart passing thru the ancient and rich bio diversity of the countryside around Dartington, and it reminded me why a long time ago I was pulled to move to the South West of England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 

Paddling along that River and soaking up the wonderful peace and beauty of nature generates a great feeling of awe and wonder for the fantastic environment that we are all part of. 

I’ve always felt most at home in the great outdoors. Growing up in the countryside around Bristol camping was a common holiday experience, and as teenagers camping around the surf spots of Cornwall was like a right of passage. 

My first US summer camp I led groups of kids into the wilderness on camping adventures 🇺🇸

And today as I sit in my kitchen my mind cascades thru all the brilliant and far flung environments I’ve been too – from the glacier fields of Alaska 🇺🇸 to the Rainforest in Central America 🇧🇿 from the beach on the Gold Coast of Australia 🇦🇺 to the Mountains in Canada 🇨🇦 the rivers and forests of Thailand 🇹🇭 and the areas of South East Asia – they are all lovely and that feeling of being ‘out there’ actually exists right here looking out my back room window into my sunny garden – you just simply have to look for it!

I often use the journey of the paddle boarder as a parody to life – we are just floating along on quite an unsteady ‘craft’ with only our paddle to help us! Sometimes the current, like the flow of the river or the ebbing of the tide helps or hinders us! 

Other factors like the wind or the rain can increase or decrease our efforts – the choppy waters can make us unsteady – but with an active core and good balance we can navigate our way to calmer waters 😉

And of course sometimes you’re up the creek without a paddle!

That’s the real test then! How do we cope – well, the hope is that all the ‘training’ we’ve gone thru helps prepare us for those times when we have to dig deep into our reserves and draw forth the fortitude and skill to cope in those moments.

Sometimes – in the pursuit of happiness, awe and wonder you have to go somewhere, then you realise it was not a destination, it was the way to get there 😉

Namaste 🙏 Have a Great Day