I went kayaking on Wednesday for the first time in a few years, and for the first time on a body of water more than three feet deep and on which I was not always traveling downstream. If I thought my arms were the weakest part of my body before, now I’m certain. The puniness of my arms forced all other sorts of body parts to take up for them: my back, my wrists, my neck. I don’t know how red my face was (from exertion, not sunburn – I wore SPF 50 and reapplied to my nose constantly because it wouldn’t stop sweating) when I returned to my parents’ house, but my mom reacted in horror when she thought my shirt was soaked entirely from sweat (it was from the river water that rained down from the paddle after each stroke, which also got into my coffee thermos, hence why I drank all of my coffee during the first five minutes of the trip).
Although I’d kayaked before, I’m generally bad at doing things for the first time after a long lag, and in particular things where I’m going to have to make intuitive decisions while not feeling much at ease (this is why I worried so much throughout seventh and eighth grade that I was going to forget myself and put my hands on a boy’s waist instead of his shoulders). In this case, although I was low-grade concerned I was going to get into the kayak backwards, or drop the oar, or generally look foolish, this fear was mitigated by the fact that the guy showing me to the kayak had just walked into a table on our way to the dock.
I made my way towards the middle of the river from the dock, trying to find the right spot for my water bottle, coffee, and gloves. I was wearing a long-sleeved SPF 50 shirt on loan from my mom, with SPF 30 on underneath it, and a pair of shorts covered by a towel. I had to find a space in the boat for the gloves because it turned out that wearing long sleeves and, effectively, a blanket over my legs, was rather hot for Florida at 9 am. The spaces between my thumbs and index fingers threatened at blisters for the duration of the trip, but never did more than threaten. I met my dad – in his own, newly purchased kayak – at the first inlet past the bridge, after managing to navigate under the bridge without disturbing anyone’s fishing lines.
There are so many signs in the water. Do they go all the way down? The river was maybe eight feet deep in the very middle, so that wouldn’t have been impossible. Or were they attached to buoys just below the surface? Many of them cautioned “Slow Speed, Minimum Wake – Manatee Zone,” but I would have to wait until the next day, at an island slightly south, to see any. Birds, yes, and jumping fish, and a small flotilla of canoes. You know how when you have a sprain or a cut or a sore on one part of your body it’s impossible not to think “If only this pain wasn’t right here on my hand/mouth/ear it would be so much more bearable” even when you have historical evidence to the contrary? (I experienced this the majority of the time that I had braces). I felt like that when I saw the rowers, as if pulling with both of my arms in unison would somehow make me skim effortlessly across the water.
After a brief stop in a lagoon, my dad asked if I wanted to head back the way we’d come, on the main branch of the river, or push on farther before taking an alternate way back through the marina. “I can do it!” I said, which wasn’t technically false. I’m here, typing, not stuck in a mangrove in South Florida or shored up on a tiny pebble beach waiting for my limbs to recover. It counts. Even if every paddle stroke was accompanied by a new grimace for the final 500 yards. Even if I had red patches on my spine from bumping against the back of the kayak (in spite of my shirt and a seat cushion). Even if, when I returned to the dock, I got the boat slightly wedged behind a pylon and had to work myself up for ten more strokes with my dying arms to turn it around, to return to land and my far more capable legs.
