(reverse) Heat-testing my friendship with nature

In which Hari discusses how f**king cold the water is right now

Image by Judith Hayes from Pixabay

The beginning of January is something of a blessing in Wales. After months and months of grey skies and wet weather, the sun returns for two glorious weeks of bracing winds and clear, cool blue skies. Then the third week of January comes, and it’s still cold, but it’s also wet and grey again. This weekend, on the third weekend of January, Tom and I decided we would try our hands at kayaking.

Tom and I canoe semi-regularly – I would say once every two months or so. We’re very fond of it; we did it for Tom’s birthday, in fact, which is what inspired us to take a kayaking lesson. Canoeing, especially on canals and gentle rivers, is wonderful. You get to see birds and bugs up-close, get to immerse yourself in the changing seasons, you are forced to be sans-phone and sans-responsibility (other than obviously water-safety) for hours at a time. Tom and I almost always have a learning curve when we get in a new boat, which inevitably means we nearly crash into something, and we have lots of fond memories of shouting at each other in panicked tones as we try to avoid an impending collision. Well, Tom has lots of fond memories of me shouting at him, at least. I’m the one at the front of the boat.

Kayaking, we discovered, is a slightly different thing. For one, you don’t have a little seat – you’re sat inside the boat, the boat sort of, is you.

(As an aside, I’d never gone canoeing before I was 19, and a previous boyfriend insisted that he take me, then insisted that you had to kneel the whole time and that you couldn’t sit on the seat. I loved it, I was living my best life, but his knees hurt after 5 minutes and he refused to use the seat, so we had to go back. Don’t be like my ex – there’s no medal for making yourself uncomfortable; if you’re not on rough water, you can absolutely sit on your arse).

Anyway, yes, kayaking is different. Nice, but different. I have to say that I think I found it easier on my back, as the double-paddle meant I had more control, and my legs being extended out flat from my bum meant that I had more natural leverage. I’m not here to talk about that though, and you’re not here to read about it. We’re here to talk about me falling in.

Our instructor was lovely, he was so nice, and he knew we’d done things like white water rafting and paddle-boarding before as well. As there was only the two of us in the session, and it was a white water rafting centre, he was like ‘how do you fancy trying your luck at the bottom of the rapids?’ We didn’t need to get close, we were nice and safe, it was just about us trying some other types of water out since we were pretty confident on the flat.

I will be honest with you, my job when we’re canoeing is to make sure we stay on the right side of the waterway, stay alert for any canal boats and to identify ducks and celebrate them (in Kingston last year we saw a wonderful group of Mandarin ducks, which are stunning and have an interesting invasive/non-invasive status. For another time). Anyway, Tom is the one who makes sure we hit wakes at the right angle, and makes sure that the boat is doing all the good physicsy things that keeps us upright and afloat. I have written a play about physics, and I’m a big physics nerd, but the sad thing is that these concepts leave my head almost as soon as they enter, so working out the right angles and things is not within my gift.

Anyway, you can see where this is headed. We went towards the water; I managed to successfully use the moving water to gently turn myself around and paddle straight into a wall. The instructor said ‘lean towards the wall!’, so I promptly leant away from it, and fell straight in. Very cold. I am a plus-size woman. The poor man had to hold onto the side of my craft for grim death while I free-willied myself in. I actually had to get back out because I flopped into the craft the wrong way, so the poor man had to go through the whole ordeal again.

We reconvened; he explained what happened. I said I understood. He encouraged us to go at the moving water with some force and try to stay at an angle and use the momentum to get ourselves through an eddy. I heard ‘stay at an angle’ and plunged straight in like I was fleeing Scylla straight into the mouth of Charybdis. Fall number two. Tom also fell out that time, so that was something, at least.

I want to say here that the water was extremely cold. Like, a decimal point away from Wim Hof temperatures. Apparently, the sea temperature yesterday was 6.8oC which is about 44oF, and I’m going to say it was a little colder where we were because it was self-contained and there was moving water. I don’t know if that’s true, but it feels true. One of you will tell me, I’m sure. I was fully doing the open-mouth HOOOOO HOOOOOO to cope. I never thought I’d say this, but it’s just as well I watched the Goop documentary.

Times three and four were entirely self-inflicted. Our poor instructor must have been so sick of me. He decided to play a game to help us manage the changing angle of the boat in moving water, where he took us on the still and got us to see how far we could comfortably tilt. I comfortably tilted myself all the way out of the fucking boat. After getting me back in, he explained that he wasn’t finished, and that we had to use our oar to catch ourselves and stop ourselves from falling in. My oar plunged straight in, Olympic-diver style, and both of us plunged into the icy depths. This time, Thomas got me out, and I hit him in the face with my oar while I was trying to pass it to him. I politely declined any more games.

How do I feel about good lady nature after almost freezing to death four times? Well, let me tell you, I wouldn’t mess with her without a wetsuit and a life jacket. Sailors used to – I don’t know if they still do, probably, but I’ve never met one – have a huge respect for water. I think hobbyists often see nature as a harmless grandparent you can visit from time to time. Even in the safest, most contained conditions, it is pretty freaking fierce. You wouldn’t catch me on a cruise this time of year, let me tell you that. I think what I’ve learned about my friend nature is that I need to learn how to navigate her safely. West Mercia Search and Rescue actually offer a free short Water Safety course – I’m going to do it, and I recommend you do too.

Overall, what’s the biggest lesson here? That I’m as clumsy off-land as on, to be honest.