Paddling to happiness

"The Sound of Happiness," 5 by 7 watercolor, 300# d'Arches cold-pressed paper

"When have you been the  happiest?" is not an easy question to answer on your birthday or any other time. Too many years, miles, people and places. I can't paint weddings, or births of children, or...the list goes on.
But approaching each day without a plan for this month's daily watercolor challenge, to paint "Happy," one image came to mind.
Canoes. Canoeing. I was an amateur canoeist at best, and no longer have the red, 80-pound, 15'8" Old Town Discovery   from a few years ago, but thinking about it, lifted my imagination and memories.
It's difficult to be a canoeist in this country--we have almost no canoe water--clear, fresh flowing streams. Other than family trips decades ago to the Illinois River in eastern Oklahoma, my canoe trips were few, other than out to Lake Arcadia, and down two muddy rivers, the Cimarron from near Crescent to Guthrie, and from El Reno down the North Canadian to Lake Overholser.
But my time trying to learn, to be alone on the water early in the morning at first light, or being lost in nature's time down a river alone or with friends or loved ones, those are times of happiness.
I'm envious of those who are expert at canoeing and do so regularly. I know why. There is only your own effort, and no sound except the dip of the paddle and the slight gurgle of the wake.  Time to think, to solve the problem of the next stroke, to view the wildlife, to think. 
One image that stands out is at Arcadia Lake one morning, I was upwind and quietly floated within 100 feet of an osprey sitting in a tree with a fresh catch. Another time, a flight of Canada geese came in low over the brush and landed not far from me. Happiness.

Canoes transport history and craft and philosophy and romance and literature and cultures, one of the most ancient means of transportation in the world. You must read John McPhee's The Survival of the Bark Canoe, about a 150-mile trip in the Maine woods.

• "Everyone must believe in something.  I believe I'll go canoeing." --Thoreau
• "Refuse to accept the belief that your professional relevance, career success or financial security turns on the next update on the latest technology. Sometimes it's good to put the paddle down and just let the canoe glide."-- Simon Mainwaring
• "I thing it much better that, as we all go along together, that every man paddle his own canoe." --The "Indian" in Settlers of Canada, 1844, Captain Marryat.
• "There is magic in the feel of a paddle and the movement of a canoe, a magic compounded of distance, adventure, solitude, and peace. The way of a canoe is the way of the wilderness and of a freedom almost forgotten. It is an antidote to insecurity, the open door to waterways of ages past and a way of life with profound and abiding satisfactions. When a man is part of his canoe, he is part of all that canoes have ever known." --Sigurd F. Olson
• "Canoe Trip," on selling my canoe--Canoe Trip

My canoe

My radio column "Coffee with Clark" on KCSC-FM about the geese, from almost 20 years ago:

I could hear them before I saw them. At first I wasn’t sure, but then the sound was unmistakable.

I’d just pulled my canoe out of the lake. The sky was gray with the first cool front of autumn, the sun hidden almost on the horizon. A slight breeze. Quiet.

Then they came in low over the still-green treetops, wings motionless, gliding down in formation toward the water behind the leader.

Maintaining perfect order, they swooped in low over the water, rose, banked, wings moving in unison, voices almost quiet. They skimmed the surface of the water, never missing a beat, not slowing down, until they banked again and had scouted the skeletal old trees full of egrets, the shoreline foliage, the beaver dam, the shallow, almost still water.

After the second pass over the landing area, they curled up in the air, breaking formation. Then they spread their wings wide, putting on their air brakes--you could hear the air and wind rushing against those gray feathers--and they dropped down to smooth landings. The first feet skidded into the water with orderly furrows, settled down into the warm water. The rest of the flock followed.

In a few minutes another flock followed, finding assurance in their companions’ presence. 

In less than five minutes the water was full of them, occasionally honking, settling into the shallows for evening feeding and roosting.

I stood there spellbound at the aerial grace, precision, and promise of Canada geese. These early birds are the first harbingers of fall, when leaves turn, the light changes, the breezes rattle brittle leaves and seeds.

Once they were all down, talking to each other, I pulled my canoe up. I wished I’d been on the water in the middle of them, but if I had, they wouldn’t have landed and I would have missed it all. Our lives are richer when we stay out of the way and let the geese have their way. Theirs is the promise of fall.

Red canoe thoughts

Down the creek (river) with a paddle

A few summers ago with Susan and then Mark Hanebutt, on the North Canadian near El Reno, first day of what turned out to be a two day trip to Lake Overholser. I've since sold my canoe for lack of use and convenient places to escape. It was 15'8" long and weighed 80 pounds. Notice my Grizzly Bear paw on the bow. On the stern was an EarthFirst! decal.

Brought to mind by Ken Hada's poetry khada@ecok.edu and Duana Hada's watercolor http://rivertowngallery.com/ in "The River White," http://www.mongrelempire.org/Mongrel_Empire_Press/Poetry.html in Northwest Arkansas where there is a lot more canoe water. See my review http://clarkcoffee.blogspot.com/2012/01/rhythm-of-water-review.html 

Duane Hada, Parker Bend, Beaver Tailwater

Ken's words: 

"So much depends on red

canoes,..."

It was a fantastic canoe trip...sometimes walking in shallow water pulling the canoe...down below the sounds of traffic. Lots of birds--owls, egrets, hawks, even two very lost Rosetta Spoonbills, turtles, and more. Having to stop after noon, tie the canoe up, climb steep banks and walk a mile to find a phone for a ride because we'd tipped the canoe and ruined a cell phone. I've notice when something unexpected or problems arise on a journey, those are the trips you remember...not where everything goes smoothly.

The rhythm of water--a review

The rhythm of clear water moving over smooth stones, shining in the sun or lost in fog, filling your senses with sight and sound and memories.

How else to describe the new book with a unique pairing of watercolors and poetry, "The River White,"  by brothers Duane and Ken Hada? 

This graceful 104-page  volume from Mongrel Empire Press mongrelempire.org  is a work of art in itself in design along with 46 poems and double the number of watercolors tracing the White River for 700 miles, from source in Northwest Arkansas to the Mississippi. The title of each poem is a location on the river. It and a small watercolor on the right pages face a full page watercolor on the left.  Twin brush strokes--words and color. A masterpiece of publishing and talent.

Poetry and watercolor have much in common--Economy of brush and pen stroke and words, vivid imagery, and emotion and meaning beyond the surface. But less is more. It may be a small book, but the poems reach deep and the paintings shimmer. How better to capture the spirit of a river and its wildlife and a humid atmosphere than with transparent watercolor?  On the back cover, there's a photo of the two brothers as kids in 1970 along the banks of the river, a creel and fresh caught fish in front. Today Ken's a professor and poet in Ada, and Duane a watercolor artist and fisherman in Mountain Home, Arkansas. I expect they've been working on this book all their lives.


There's more than a touch of literature in Ken's words. 
A touch of William Carlos Williams' "Red Wheelbarrow"--Ken's words in Parker Bend, Beaver Tailwater: 
"So much depends on red

canoes, on water

purling past white rock."

A touch of Shelley-- Ken's words in Rosey:

"If winter always comes

do we not feel certain

our bareness is destined?"

There's outright Zen in the closing lines of the opening poem The Source at Boston:

"You cannot see

700 miles  until you

muse the bubbles

before you. Truth 

more than what is,

but also, what

likely will be."

There's more than a touch in the entire book of John Graves' "Goodbye to a River," though Graves was looking backward as he floated the Brazos, and the Hadas are looking inside themselves and downstream in life.

Obviously I'm hooked. I'm not a fisherman, though  there's a forward by a fisherman. But as a watercolorist, once a canoe paddler with a red Old Town canoe, a traveler of rivers and backroads and a lover of being alone, the book takes me on journeys.

It'll take you on journeys too, especially if you're an aging male, I suspect. The brothers are a little young, I think, to feel the mortality flowing in this book, but going down a river will do that, awaken and feed the muse. If there's an underlying theme, I suspect this is it. It's not morbid though--it is full of life. You can't escape that theme with the quote from Norman Maclean in "A River Runs Through It" on the opening page.

Some favorite excerpts (already underlined in my twice-read copy) follow.

From Headwaters Near St. Paul:

"Often we need 

to  be reminded of

depths below the surface."

This book does this on every page.

My favorite--Duane's painting of Morning Fog: State Park
Some of Ken's words on the opposite page:

"Be honest now-you

feel what you cannot name,

you fear to articulate what you feel--"

Partee Shoals:

"We're just wildflowers

blooming on a

sandy bank."

Cotter bridge:

"Dreams, like rivers, are forged

in valleys of desire."

Poetry and painting...the confluence

"the rhythm of water"

Shipps Ferry:

"...ferries

were used by men

to transport their

economy

as bards float words

but in truth it

is the river

that moves us...

so much more than metaphor."

Upper Boswell:

"Do you see the tracks 

in the soft shallows'

where life has preceded

you?"

Boswell Shoals:

"I am shadowed

though I bathe in sun. 

We live the rays between

pigments of history."

The Bend at Oil Trough:

"I have journeyed far,

my life's canoe seems

spent, feels flexed, old

But an end is not yet.

These tired oars, scarred by

use, rise and dip in

disciplined measure."

Newport Bridge:

"If you go with me far enough

you will recognize yourself

swinging through the coils of 

time--…."

Jacks Bay:

"There is one current

 in us, keening

beneath various faces."

I had one wish as I read the book--that the authors had included a rough sketch map of the river and the location of the paintings and poetry. I grew up with National Geographic and love maps, and Graves' book also had sketched maps. So I started pulling up maps from the Internet, trying to find them all. Alas.

Then I remembered Ken's words in Rim Shoals:

"I always feel

like I'm on top

of a world here

like teetering 

at the edge of 

things unnamed

a place unmapped."

Maybe you can't map the emotions in this book, except with poetry and watercolor..

In View from the Mississippi, he writes

"…I

cannot imagine life

without a journey."


I'm ready to go. You will be too, and the book will take you on unexpected journeys as well. You can order it signed by Ken Hada at his email, from Duane's gallery website,  or from Amazon.I'm getting two copies for friends and relatives who know the river and live not too far from the headwaters. I've reviewed his earlier poetry on this blog if you want to sample his prolific work, just search his name.


Thank you, for the adventures.


khada@ecok.edu 
http://rivertowngallery.com/