I've mentioned here a few times in the past how much I loved going to summer camp as a kid. I was never particularly happy at the schools I attended, and camp was a chance for me to do some things I had some aptitude for and see people I felt like I could be myself around. It was also where I became a paddler for a lifetime.
The camp I went to, located in the mountains of western North Carolina, is still in operation. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced it to cancel all its sessions this summer. I cannot imagine how distraught I would have been if such a thing had happened during the years when I was a camper.
I bring this up now because I'm currently having a somewhat similar experience with the cancelation of the Gorge Downwind Championships out on the Columbia River. My trip out there has become a cherished ritual for me, and I was really looking forward to being there this week to continue my study of the art of downwind paddling and to reconnect with people I've met out there. Alas, this event too has succumbed to the pandemic, and I am sitting at home.
I am more skilled at coping with such disappointment now than I was as a summer-camp-aged kid forty years ago. Life has a way of kicking you in the gut and numbing you to the pain as you get older. I've basically accepted it with a sigh and a hope that maybe a year from now we'll have contained the virus enough to have an event like that again. But a touch of melancholy lingers.
It's good and hot here at home. I expect no less from summer in the Mid South. Fortunately my current home-improvement project takes place indoors where my air-conditioning system is in good working order. I'm plugging away at the slow process of tuck-pointing the brickwork in a room of the house. Recently my lower body has been stiff by the end of each day because I've been up on the ladder, sometimes moving up and down frequently between my mortar board and the part of the wall I'm working on, sometimes standing on the balls of my feet for balance as I reach high up into the rafters.
This week I paddled on Tuesday and yesterday, doing a loop of the harbor with Joe in the former session and pushing the pace out on the river in the latter. The heat was getting to me a little toward the end of my hour in the boat yesterday. By the time I was back in the harbor paddling toward the dock, I paused in the shade of each of the three bridges and splashed water all over myself. Then I took a lovely hose bath on the dock.
I'm not sure of my weekend paddling plan yet, but I expect to be hot regardless of what I do.
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