The Cedar Journal – Adventures

• June/July 2017:

We spent these two months learning how to canoe.  Not an easy task but not impossible.

First I had to give up everything I had done for years as a independent kayak paddler.  Occasionally, I still took my kayak out to enjoy a nice paddle on my own but the focus became our goal of entering the BWCA well prepared and working as a team.

Becoming a team was not going to be as easy as we thought. We realized after our first time out on the water that one of the team had to relinquish power and control to the other person.  That was finally accomplished and my husband became the Captain of the canoe.  It wasn’t a female/male thing it was the choice of who was sitting in the stern of the canoe.

He also had told me I wasn’t paddling correctly!  Serious?  I have paddled a kayak for years!  I questioned his YouTube paddling advice but for the sake of peace within the canoe I took his suggestions and changed a few things with how I paddled.  OMG!  We started doing better, moving faster through the water and started to have a rhythm to our paddling.

We experienced several nearby lakes.  Landsmeer (just north of Amsterdam), Noordeinder Plas (Nieuwkoop),  De Kaag (between Amsterdam and Leiden), Oosterduinse Meer, De Biesbosch (just outside of Dordrecht), and Westeinderplassen (Aalsmeer).