The first sea kayak I bought was purchased to fulfill a dream and a promise I'd made to myself when I was 25 years old. I told myself I would return one day to Igloolik, a community in Nunavut, Canada where I'd lived for the better part of two years. It had been a wonderful period of learning and growing up among the best of all environments, the arctic and with the best of people, the Inuit.
Walking into a kayak shop one day 30 years later and seeing some kayaks on the wall, I knew I had the means to return to Igloolik, to work that dream. A year later, I paddled into the community under the mid-night sun with many of my old friends waiting for me on the beach.
I am selling that kayak. I have put up ads here and there and will have to let go if a purchaser appears with the cash. Life is about collecting and letting go of our collected goods. I will be sad, but I've moved past that particular boat. It really is time to move on. With a smile.
4 comments:
I haven't parted with my boat yet. I think as long as I can squeeze into it its going to stay.
There is something about our attachments to things that we associate with great memories. Still, it is a boat and, after it is someone else's, you will retain all the memories. Good for you.
I don't know, Michael. That's a very big step to take.
Perhaps you should have also brought it with you on your travels south, with a for-sale sign on it.
Sailors have a saying - "...Sail it or sell it" - that sort of applies. If you've got a good boat you're not going to be using, someone else would probably love to have it. Better to see it used, cared for and enjoyed...
For a number of years, I kept an acquisitive eye on a Westerly 22 in Grand Falls, a little twin-keeler that was the sistership of our friend P.D. Smith's MOLLY. Perched on a trailer, it just sat there, summer and winter, year after year, the teak hatches and trim deteriorating and a general air of neglect enveloping the boat. Don't what ever became of it, but we mightn't be kayaking these days if her owner had followed the dictum...
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