When Rob Lyon and his buddy Steve take to Washington’s Ross Lake in their canoe (read part 1 here), strange and wondrous experiences await them – some expected, others not. Following in the path of writer Jack Kerouac, who spent a summer on Desolation Peak high above this North Cascades jewel, their story takes on some of the same poetry and discovery as his.

We had a little fire in our wooded camp that night and cooked the trout and the mushrooms over a little Coleman stove. We figured we were probably the only people encamped on the lake, excepting the guys back at Cougar. This late in the season most visitors kept to the comfort of the cabins at the dam. At one point we heard twigs snapping and watched a large black bear prowl past the edge of our headlamp beams. I yelled out it might find some easy pickins’ at Cougar Island. We stashed our food in a heavy metal food locker that the Park Service provided before going to bed. I kept my headlamp close at hand.

©Robyn Minkler

The next three days were like Indian summer, a last hurrah of warmth for the mountain country. We could smell it in the forest in the cones and needles. Even the off-gassing of the canoe seemed a pleasant thing.

Tom was right about the wind; it kicked up right about noon. We got on the water early each morning. The bitch with that was that our camps were all on the east side of the lake and slow to get that morning sun, which we dearly loved. Ah well, at least we’d have it at the end of the day. Hell, it could be raining.

We steadily paddled north, seeing only the odd motor boat buzzing down the center of the lake – rangers or border patrol, we figured, or someone from the resort. It was fine going early in the day. We hugged the east bank and probed deeply into the clefts in the mountain at Devil and Lightening Creeks where it was cool and still and ferns grew on weeping rock walls.

On the afternoon of the fifth day we decided to hold over a second night at a small camp at the base of the Devil’s Junction trailhead. The East Bank Trail runs right past this camp. We split up and hiked different directions along it hoping to find grouse. The trail winds through different micro ecosystems, crossing cold water creeks on planked logs or stepping stones. The woods are exquisite this time of year, the trail carpeted with yellow maple leaves the size of punctured basketballs. Then it swings toward the water, hugging a narrow ledge along the face of the mountain.

We were fortunate to flush enough ruffed grouse in the alder draws at low elevation bordering the lake to keep us in meat for several days. Hiking back to camp with a warm bird in the game vest bulging against our backs was a good feeling, and it occurred to me that it was largely from reading Hemingway and Ruark, that I first learned of of hunting, if not fishing, for game, while it was Kerouac that brought us here to this mountain lake in the first place. Goes to show how influential our literary icons are.

We hugged the east bank and probed deeply into the clefts in the mountain at Devil and Lightening Creeks where it was cool and still and ferns grew on weeping rock walls.

On the second day out of camp we took the entire day to hike up to snowline in the alpine near Devil’s Junction to hunt blues. Blue grouse live high up on the mountain, and hunting them in the snow above tree line is an extraordinary experience.

In fact, the daily drill of hunting grouse or trolling for rainbow, then hunting up mushrooms and gathering and filtering fresh water, were rituals that gave texture to our time on the lake. I was thinking that if fishing and hunting are to the acts of shooting and catching as driving to the supermarket is to picking out a plasticized piece of flesh, it is a sad comparison indeed.

Steve is a whiz with a Dutch oven, and he braised the game with olive oil, onions, garlic and a dash of Randy Waugh’s legendary (in it’s time) Chicaoji sauce (made by a friend on the island). We cut up some potatoes and threw in a can of roasted tomatoes. It was a cachatorie, really, a hunter’s stew, and Steve put the blueberries from the crops of the birds we shot in with it. Grouse are some of the finest eating wild game I know of as mild as most quail, with a subtle flavor. Compared to commercially raised chicken, bred to incite gluttony, eating wild bird and fish feels more like a sacrament.

Our sunny days were steadily marching along toward winter and we decided to take the full measure of the lake before climbing Desolation.

We paddled past Silver Creek the next morning, poking our nose across the international border near Hozomeen, trip apogee. Holding out in the middle of the lake, we had lunch and watched the BC shore-side, but detected no signs of life. Even Winnebago Flats, an RV area there, was devoid of life.

©Steve Thomsen

I was reminded of the desperate small-boat flight to freedom of Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley down a long mountain lake, crossing to safety into Switzerland, in Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. Ross is a popular smuggling route for pot, or was at least, until we legalized it here in Washington State. I’ve often wondered if any of the smugglers might have read that Hem piece. Years ago I pitched Outside Magazine about a story about that smuggling conduit, with me running a trash can full of BC parsley down lake in my kayak, paddling at night, in winter too, feeling what it might be like to stand in a smuggler’s shoes. That story is yet unwritten, and now I’d have to reverse the direction.

Silver Creek was a letdown. Low and almost marshy, the entire flat was like an effluvial plain created from what Silver Creek had carried out of the mountains, which was considerable silt and rock. It was boney, wet and rooty country. We nevertheless caught two trout at the mouth of the creek. We cleaned them and put them right in the fry pan. They were smaller than the fish we had caught, but this time we found a big patch of white chantrelles to go with them and had an exquisite Rafanelli zin along in support.

We paddled leisurely south the next morning, heading for the trailhead at the base of Desolation. Hugging the steep west bank, we crossed at the point opposite Boundary Bay. By this time into the trip the muscles in our backs and shoulders and arms were in game form, and we fairly flew along. We scoped Desolation as we passed by, getting out the topo and guessing on the lay of the trail up.

From the level of the lake, Desolation was an uninspiring, rounded knob of a mountain and nothing like jagged Hozomeen peering over its shoulder. Jack sketched Hozomeen in a nine word ditty: “Hozomeen, Hozomeen, the most mournful mountain I ever seen . . . .” Well, it was equally mournful camped right below the trailhead that night in a field of exposed tree stumps on a shingly, dry, mud-caked shore.

The stumps were mournful enough, but the shadows they made when the sun went down were downright weird. They flickered more like ghouls, less like wraiths, as the wind batted our flames around. We set lanterns on a couple of stumps thinking that might help, but it only exaggerated the eeriness. We grilled a trout apiece on a wire grill over the open fire, salted them up and dove in. Shut up to eat, we could hear the sounds surround.

They may have added to the eerie mood, but I was keen on them, nevertheless. They were wild and lonely sounds, a lullaby for my soul. We heard the loon again, this time voicing a crystal tremolo. A north wind soughed hard through the steep-ranged timber behind camp. A steady crash of waves swooshed up the shallow bank and had me getting up to make sure they wouldn’t bother the canoe. And the dull roar of Artic Falls across the lake waxed and waned with the whim of the wind. Only the crackle of the night fire had a friendly tone to it. We stayed pretty much quiet after dinner too; it was hard to want to talk and break the spell.

Whitecaps stretched across the lake the next morning. A bright early sun vanquished the ghosts and mournfullness of the night before to the netherworld.

“Good thing we’re not going anywhere,” I shouted over to Steve.

“Except up.”

“You bringing a tent?” I asked.

He looked around at the sky. “I’d rather not. It’s going to be a haul going up. I think it’ll stay dry. I might bring my rain fly though, just in case.”

“Shotgun?”

“Nope, not with the pack and camera and everything else. We’ve got those freeze-dried meals you know.”

“That’s right.”

We packed up and secured our things under the overturned the canoe. We took our time and were on the trail by noon.

At lower elevation, the Desolation trail reminded me of the mossy-rocked islands where I live. Mossy rocks and bouldery outcrops mixed with stands of fir and maple, the leaves winking yellow and gold. We took plenty of breaks along the 5,000 vertical foot ascent. We ate Clif Bars for lunch and made it to the campsite on the southern end of the ridge by late afternoon.

According to the topo, the cabin was a mile further north. We scouted around the knob, ate some blueberries and looked for bear, spotting a yearling in the distance. It seemed as if the wind had picked up, but nary a cloud could be seen, and we could see forever, it seemed like. The lake was a distant ribbon of steel, and an eagle gyred far, far down below where we stood, watching.

The trail to the cabin had been guttered to bedrock by snow and rain runoff, and there wasn’t much soil to begin with. It wound through a forest of twisted, fairy-tale sub-alpine fir. Bear scat was thick around the berries and I was fully expecting to bump into a bruin; we took up hooting on blind corners. Then, finally, late that afternoon we hove in sight of the cabin, perched like a pale blue hat atop the peak.

©Robyn Minkler

As we got closer, we heard a cooing sound from the tower. Suddenly two blue grouse busted out from under it. They were enormous up close and I actually thought they were eagles at first! The birds glided over the edge and down the east side of the mountain out of sight.

“I couldn’t have shot them anyway,” I said.

“Odd how they’ve habituated with the structure here, you know. They reverse the typical migration pattern, breeding lower in the valley in the spring, then the males hustle right back up into the alpine.”

“I like it that they’re up here in the mountains:” I said.

“Edgy birds, like chukar living at fourteen thousand feet in the Himalyas – I read that in Mathiesen’s The Snow Leopard.”

“Make those ruffies look like slackers.”

“Exactly.”

There wasn’t much poking around to be had on the tiny knob of a peak. We tucked in close to the lee side of the tower, out of a powerful cold wind, shucking out of our wet tees and throwing on fleece and down. To get a jump on the impending darkness, we decided to cook up our freeze-dried spaghetti immediately and button up early. This night would be one cold hombre, we figured. It was still blowing like a bellows, whipping raggedly over the brow of the peak, but we managed to measure out the water, heat it up and pour it into the bags. Then we sat on the front steps of the tower, heads tucked in down hoodies, eating out of our Mylar nose bags and watching the sun set.

We could see well out across the Canadian border and over to the Pickets in the west, all white-tipped and blue tinted in the gloaming, and south to Ruby Peak behind the dam.

“How cool would it be to live up here for a couple of months?” I said to Steve.

“It might get old,” he said.

“I bet, but I’d chance it. I’d take the job in a heartbeat.”

The mercury was dropping as fast as the sun. It was easily below freezing already, and that was out of the wind. We had scouted out the tower for a spot that might be a little sheltered and didn’t come up with much. We scuttled under the structure and set up our packs as wind breaks, but they weren’t worth a shit. We were spanked from the hike and would sleep like rocks if we had half a chance, but any dropping off we might have done was countered by cold fingers slipping into our bags as the wind rose to a shriek, whistling through the guy lines and rattling the shutters, and it was obvious we should have taken shelter in the campground.

After about ten minutes I called over to Steve.

“You awake?”

“You kidding?”

I laughed.

“I am FREEZING over here.”

It was quiet for a minute.

“What do you think?” I said.

“I think we fucked up.”

Episode 6 of the Wizard’s Eye series takes us to the Pacific Coast of Mexico where Tyler Bradt and his crew have at last set sail on their epic, potentially crazy attempt to circumnavigate the globe in a 44-foot sailboat while cramming in as much high-octane action sports adventure as possible.  But how far will they get before something goes wrong? That’s a question only the boat can answer. View other Wizard’s Eye episodes here. 

When Rob Lyon and his buddy Steve take to Washington’s Ross Lake in their canoe, strange and wondrous experiences await them – some expected, others not. Following in the path of writer Jack Kerouac, who spent a summer on Desolation Peak high above this North Cascades jewel, their story takes on some of the same poetry and discovery as his.

©Robyn Minkler

It was late autumn in the Northwest. I’d taken the red eye ferry from the San Juan Islands to rendezvous with Steve Thomsen, long time adventure partner and photographer, in the parking lot of the Airport Shuttler in Burlington. A quick schlep of swag from my rig to his and we were tooling north up the Skagit River Valley on Highway 20 heading for Ross Lake, a glacier-fed alpine reservoir in Washington’s North Cascades. When Jack Kerouac traveled north to take a gig above the lake on top of Desolation Peak in the fifties, his trip in sounded about like this:

Now I was really in mountain country, he wrote in The Dharma Bums. The fellows who picked me up were loggers, uranium prospectors, farmers, they drove me through the final big town of Skagit Valley, Sedro Wooley, a farming market town, and then out as the road got narrower and more curved among cliffs and the Skagit River which we’d crossed on 99 as a dreaming belly river with meadows on both sides, was now a pure torrent of melted snow.

Steve and I had checked out of our routines for a week-long canoe trek in the heart and soul of the North Cascades wilds, and we planned to hike up Desolation and have a look at the legendary tower.

We crossed the bridge over Diablo Lake and pulled into Colonial Creek campground. The place was deserted except for an overloaded canoe and two guys about to launch it at the boat ramp.

One of them, a small, hatchet-faced man with close-set eyes and a scruffy red beard, was sitting in the stern holding a martini glass. His buddy was bigger and kind of fat, with a receding hairline and a broad, blank face. He was ready to push the boat into the water.

We walked down the ramp and asked them where they were heading.

“Ross Lake,” the little guy answered. “We’re going to rough it in the wild.”

He pulled out a slip of paper from his pocket, waved it and read: “Cougar Island. October 10th. Back Country permit.”

He looked at his buddy like we weren’t even in the picture.“A cute little island all to ourselves, Bill; it sounds so romantic. The clerk at the Ranger Station said it was divine. And no bears.”

“Bears swim, you know,” Steve said. “We’ve seen them crossing the lake.”

“Well shoot,” the little guy said with faint dismay, then a quick, toy smile. “Well, Bill will just have to patrol the perimeter to shoo them away, then. Won’t you Bill?”

“Good luck with that, “ I said. “Maybe we’ll see you up lake, though.”

The guy in the stern held up his glass and trilled a toast: “To adventure!” His buddy pushed the boat into the water as he lipped his glass, sloshing it down his shirt. The big fella was smiling then, I noticed.

Steve and I walked back up the ramp to the rig, looked at each other a moment and laughed.

“Laurel and Hardy,” Steve said, snorting.

Sure, I thought, but feeling a darker vibe, more like Steinbeck’s Lenny and George.

 ***

Finally we were on the water ourselves. We paddled out across Diablo Lake, a smaller reservoir just below Ross Dam, into a cool-aired, shadowed cleft in the mountain. Sheer rock walls towered left and right before we reached the landing at the dam. We unloaded and staged our boat and gear while awaiting the shuttle around the dam to Ross Lake.

Riding on the wooden bed of the open flatbed shuttle truck, our canoe bounced unmercifully until I took out a pad and slipped it under the hull. We had the truck to ourselves driving the 600-vertical-foot switchbacks up through thick-ranged fir and boulders the size of cars, to Ross.

I leaned out over the rail to ask the driver if he’d hauled the two canoeists up earlier.

“Couple drunks?” he shouted back through the open cab window.

“One, at least.”

‘’Yup, heading for Cougar. They’ll need a little luck to make it, I’m thinking.”

 ***

The name “Little Brown Jug” was burned into a wooden plank above the door. It was a small, rustic cabin with a kitchen and a bunk room, floating on a raft of ancient cedar logs. Tom Barnett, old friend and owner of this unique floating resort, had offered us a room for the night.

©Steve Thomsen

The evening chilled up quickly and clouds moved in with rain. The wind was picking up. We figured the canoeists were safe at Cougar Island by then. We stoked the stove so hot that the sides glowed orange and the cabin rocked from the hammering waves.

While Steve hunched over the fly tying vise wrapping up some big sexy soft hackles that Tom was keen on, I prowled around the floating dock, chatting up the few fishing neighbors on the float with us and taking in the mountain air. Suddenly it was dusk and I stood transfixed at the sight of white-capped peaks glowing a soft lavender in the fading light and mirrored across the surface of Ross Lake. Man, it was great to be in the mountains again!

It did not get cold enough to snow that night, but reared back and poured at about two in the morning instead. I woke up to a timpani of hail on the metal roof and sheets of water and ice pellets funneling into the barrel of aluminum cans outside my window. I scuttled out naked and dragged the can back under the eave, wondering how the martini adventurers were making out. Back in bed, I didn’t wake again until dawn.

A low sun cleared the ridgeline when I stepped out the door. Tendrils of mist lifted off the surface of the lake like wraiths from the grave. We brewed some coffee and prowled around putting the canoe to rights and packing the few things we’d taken out. It was a big canoe and full up with our stuff, but considering we were geared up to camp, fish, hunt, photograph and backpack, there was no getting around the pile.

We walked down to the office and said good-bye to Tom. I mentioned we were thinking of climbing Desolation. He told us he’d been up just a few days earlier, rescuing a couple in an early blizzard.

“Watch out for those winds, you know,” he called out as we paddled passed the office. “They’ll kick up like a cranky mule in the afternoon with this high pressure settling in.”

 ***

There was no sign of weather on the horizon as we paddled north, but it wouldn’t take long for a storm to catch us by surprise. The entire horizon was jagged with white peaks and ridge lines. But the glory of the day was heady and I let out a yip.

The smell of mountain air was wine for the soul, and the surface of the lake mirrored the dark-firred banks. The red and gold of sumac glinted where avalanche had razed the slope, and high up on the flank of Little Jack we could see patches of red.

“Check it out.” I pointed. “Blueberries.”

Blue grouse liked the berries and we liked the grouse; pan-fried fowl would make a nice addition to a diet of fresh trout. My shotgun was behind me in its case, but you didn’t just run off up the mountain.

We passed through the narrow channel in the log booms and rounded Green Point. Not much later we could see Cougar Island in the distance and a stream of black smoke spiraling up from the top.

“Looks like our friends are home,” Steve said. “Want to stop in and say hi?”

“I don’t know why I would.”

He laughed.

“Might figure into a story sometime.”

I snorted in reply.

 ***

Hiking up from the floating dock on the north shore, we found their camp on the top, and what a wretched scene it was. The small man was laying in the tent, half in and half outside in the mud, with the tent collapsed on top of him. His buddy looked as sullen as ever, tending a fire of smoking green wood and tin cans.

Man, did we feel out of place.

“Should have called first, eh?” I said.

The big dude just looked at me.

“We just thought we’d stop in and say hey,” I said. “Looks like that storm spanked you pretty good. You guys need anything?”

“No thanks.”

“Weather’s on the im-prove at least. Well, maybe we’ll see you up lake.”

“I doubt it.”

The scene was too tawdry for pity. We made short work of social and hiked back down to the boat.

We paddled north under blue sky sucking up fresh lake air, mountain air, fir- and lichen-dosed air, and we hung our souls out to breathe. We were silent for a good half an hour.

We closed on Roland point, on the north side of which was our camp, but we veered west toward the Big Beaver Valley instead. We could just make out the mouth of the creek where it debouched into the lake.

The spunky Beaver cascaded from just below the suspension bridge on the trail for a hundred feet down into the lake. Peering closely into the roiled water we could see fish everywhere! But it was closed at the mouth and we had to hike upstream a ways to fish.

It was close and dank and cold hiking up alongside the Beaver. We couldn’t get to the water easily because of the brush and deadfall, and the bank was steep and muddy and no good to fish. We talked about the time we’d floated it in kick boats, the bitch of portaging the giant log jams with our fins on, and the thrill of catching one huge trout after another on big drys as we floated along in single file taking turns with the fish. Steve had been along on that trip, along with Ken Morrish and Tom. I will never forget that float. But the Beaver was just not happening on foot, and we hung a U after only a mile and hiked back down to the lake.

Near the canoe we found the fixins’ to go with some pan-fried trout (which still needed catching). We collected a dozen prime Matsutake mushrooms, poking their caps up through the duff. We carried them in our hats and they smelled fragrantly of almonds. We flushed a ruffed grouse foraging on alder catkins in sight of the lake, but had left our shotguns in the boat.

“Good omen, at least.” Steve said.

“It would have gone real good with these mushrooms though.”

“So will those trout.”

”Well let’s go catch them.”

And we did.

 ***

As we paddled out of Beaver Bay and across the lake, I caught sight of Desolation Peak bumping the northern horizon. It was getting late, so we fired up the little folding Evinrude. About a mile out we killed it and tossed out our lines. With my rod tucked under my leg I warmed up my arm muscles and found my rhythm.

We got in synch and were fairly flying along when Steve called out, “Whoa Chief! Our flies are hoppin!”

We slowed the pace, and our flies slipped back under the surface. The only sounds were the yodel of a distant loon and the swish of paddle blades.

©Robyn Minkler

Then my rod bent double and a bolt of silver arced out of the lake! We brought the boat around and I played it in steadily, giving and taking line, but leaning on it whenever it rested, finally bringing it to the net.

It was beautiful big rainbow trout! Silver sided and dark, moss backed with a pink swoosh down the side! The lake was lousy with big fish these days.

“Nice, “ Steve said. “One more.”

Moments later I heard Steve call out: “Fish on!”

This one stayed deep and dogged around under the boat for a while. Steve’d been running a light leader that he’d forgotten to swap out from another trip and couldn’t lean hard on the fish.

“Dolly,” Steve said.

“Yup.”

After a long stubborn fight we brought a second large fish to net. It was another beautiful fish but it was a Dolly Varden alright and illegal to keep.

As we trolled off the flank of Roland Point within sight of our camp at McMillan’s, Steve hooked up again. Another fine bow, it leaped three times across the darkened, metallic surface of the lake before he finally swung it head first into the net.

We would feast this night.

I dug out a couple of beers, cracked the seals and handed one back.

“To predators,” I offered, leaning back with my can.

“Roger that,” Steve replied, stretching forward with his.

Read Paddling in Kerouac’s Path: Part 2 here.

After months of work preparing to sail across the Pacific, the 44-foot sailboat Wizard’s Eye finally left port on April 10, but a faulty steering component has led her back to land. Here, captain Tyler Bradt, a kayak stunt man turned world explorer, takes a moment to meditate on trials passed and those to come.

Usually when I think of myself perched on the edge of the world, I am looking out on a watery horizon line that seems ridiculously high. So high that while sitting on the river in a kayak it looks as if the planet plummets away and the drop to come could be two thousand feet tall if it is twenty. These are the moments that I love, and my desire to safely put my body into seemingly ludicrous places has made those experiences commonplace in my life.

Today I once again feel as if I am perched on the edge of the world, but instead of looking out on tall mountains and blue skies, I sit looking out at a long, skinny, perfectly horizontal horizon line over the Pacific Ocean. I know that on the other side of that long, skinny horizon line only more await…

I’m sitting on the tip of Baja, which juts into the Pacific in one last dramatic statement of land. It’s the land of giants – rock pillars reaching hundreds of feet into the sky, flecked with sea spray from the Pacific Ocean lapping up their sides in a continuous futile pursuit to reach their tops. On one side sits the Pacific in all its glory, and on the other side the human race is engaged in a frenzied competition to stack as many drinking establishments beside the bay as possible. The only thing that stands in-between the people and the Pacific are those rocks and one small community of sea lions which fitfully protest the continuous flow of booze cruises coming in from Cabo, a place we have managed to summarize in one word: Babylon.

On one side sits the Pacific in all its glory, and on the other side the human race is engaged in a frenzied competition to stack as many drinking establishments beside the bay as possible.

It’s an interesting place to be, and to be somewhat stranded here is more interesting yet. Our course should have thrown us well clear of the edge of the world at this point, but instead we sit in a haze of jet skis, only loosely operated by their inebriated drivers, ripping along at such tremendous speeds that sometimes when I hear them coming I brace myself, wondering what kind of impact a five-hundred-pound, 40 MPH projectile running headlong into 40,000 pounds of floating steel might create. Luckily we’ve yet to find out.

In a matter of days, and after a few transfers of numbers between accounts, the last piece of the puzzle will arrive from the States: a new Kobelt 7050 2” diameter balanced hydraulic steering cylinder with a 12” stroke. If you asked me years ago what I would finally spend the rest of my worldly money and current life savings on, I probably wouldn’t have said that. Lucky for us, this trip has been a lesson in non-attachment with an emphasis on being present, and now the idea of sailing around the world with minimal resources doesn’t only sound possible, it actually sounds like a pretty damn good idea.

On Friday morning, we will say goodbye to that small community of sea lions and jutting rock spires and quietly drop off the edge of one world and into the next until our floating life capsule reaches the other side, many degrees of latitude and one hemisphere away. A strong north westerly wind tugs the boat against its 60-pound anchor and 100-foot chain, waiting to suck us out into the Pacific Ocean and the trade winds that, we hope, will take us the rest of the way to French Polynesia where crystal clear waters and abundant surf will keep us fat and happy until it is once again time to move on.

Our loose route will take us from here to the Tuamotu Islands, onto Tahiti and Fiji, finally ending in New Zealand in October, just in time for summer. What transpires in-between now and then, and whether we realize our goal of getting to New Zealand before the next storm season, will be decided on by the gods. From here on out our job will be to listen as intently as possible to the boat beneath us and the world around us with one eye on the horizon and the other on the Wizard’s Eye herself.

We will continue to release two-week film updates from the expedition here on Souls + Water and on our vimeo page: www.vimeo.com/wizardseye

We will also be bouncing small chirps of communication off of space and back down into the digital world where we hope you’ll be interested in seeing how the expedition is going and following along: www.facebook.com/wizardseyeexpedition

Join team NRS paddler and world adventurer Tyler Bradt and his Wizard’s Eye crew as  they take stock, make final preparations and finally cast off the bow lines on their ’round-the-world adventure sports extravaganza.

View other Wizard’s Eye episodes here. 

After years of planning and months of sanding, painting, welding, wrenching and rigging, NRS paddler Tyler Bradt and his merry crew put the Wizard’s Eye in the water and get ready to sail across the Pacific. The excitement and anticipation is palpable in this fourth episode of the video series that will document the team’s five-year-long quest for the ultimate global action sports adventure.

Episode 3 of the Wizard’s Eye Expedition series tells the rag-tag story of BASE jumper and most recent Wizard’s Eye crew member Jordan Kilgore. The crew is now assembled and the boat is nearing completion for the Pacific crossing.

Combining kayak instruction with philosophy as only she can, Ginni Callahan explains the secret of the draw stroke, and the life lessons contained therein.

Ever notice how when you pull your kayak or canoe sideways towards a dock, sometimes it doesn’t move parallel like you intended? The bow hits first, or the whole boat moves forward as well as sideways? Some days it miraculously works. This is called the Luck of the Draw.

It’s a magic trick, and some people just seem to have it up their paddle jacket sleeve. Want a magician’s secret? I got it from a fellow in a pointy hat and long sleeves.

The secret comes down to one main thing: center. Kind of like life.

What is the point around which it all pivots? The cockpit, right? If I’m the paddler, it all revolves around me. Like life, as I said. Except there are outside influences.

In a swimming pool, the pivot point may be different from one boat to another, but the pivot point in your boat will be the exact same spot every time, assuming you don’t move that pile of pool bricks from the stern hatch to the bow. You can mark it right on your kayak where to put the paddle for this magic trick. But only if you paddle exclusively in pools.

Take it outside, and evil forces will incant black magic and foil your luck. Wind, current, even your own momentum. It doesn’t take much, as black magic is powerful stuff.

What’s even trickier, is you will not know how the black magic will affect your luck. Will it turn the bow towards the paddling side, or the stern? What’s a budding magician to do?

Back to life. When something doesn’t go quite as planned, what do you do?

A. Cry, scream, beat on kayak
B. Reach out your paddle for somebody to pull you in
C. Look under the kayak to find the source of the black magic
D. Adjust

Well, “A” won’t win you too many paddling buddies. “B” is so community-minded of you! “C” may happen accidentally; just roll with it. “D”, as boring as it sounds, is often effective.

Applied to the Lucky Draw, adjusting means shifting the paddle placement forward or back along the hull. Once you’ve got this one securely up your sleeve, you can intentionally bring the kayak in at an angle, or from an angle to parallel. When you succeed, just nod your pointy hat and wink at any spectators.

Knowing where the center is and how to adjust for outside influences usually does the trick. However, it’s the Luck of the Draw, remember?

There are other nuances, like torso rotation, blade angle, and the angle of force relative to the line of the hull. Like life. The deeper one wants to look, the more mysteries reveal themselves. Most folks stop at “good enough for now”, but deeper rewards are also there for those willing to ask.

In Episode 2 of the Wizard’s Eye Expedition, Team NRS’s Tyler Bradt takes us on a journey to a dusty Mexican shipyard where the Wizard’s Eye awaits her journey across the Pacific Ocean to New Zealand. We also meet Ryan Lambert, the ship’s skipper, and join the crew for some kite boarding in the Sea of Cortez. This month is crunch time for the expedition. In the next two weeks the boat will need to be ready to go if they hope to make the crossing before the next storm season sets in.

For each thing we lose, we gain another…

When a skiing accident left Greg Mallory paralyzed from the waist down, he turned to kayaking to help him escape his wheelchair. Now he’s an accomplished Class V whitewater paddler who finds strength, challenge and meaning on the river. This is his story.

Walk on Water

A film by Andy Maser andymaser.com

Presented by NRS