Adventure

MY SHEROES #1 : AUDREY SUTHERLAND

Adventure, Parenting

 

Once per week going forward I’m going to share one of my “SHEROES”. The wisdoms of women who have shaped my thinking and hoed the path ahead of me.

One of my absolute sheroes and a woman who has had a huge impact on my attitude in the outdoors is Audrey Sutherland. As a single mother of 4 she took up solo paddling in her 60s and paddled over 8,000 miles of the Alaskan and British Columbian wilds, crossing gentle paths with bears and wolves and foraging her food as she went. I could write many things about Audrey, but I would love to share a list she wrote for her children that offers an insight into her extraordinary leadership as a mother. 

“What Every Kid Should Be Able to Do by Age Sixteen”

  • Swim 400 yards easily
  • Do dishes in a strange house, and your own
  • Cook a simple meal
  • See work to be done and do it
  • Care for tools and always put them away after use
  • Splice or put a fixture on an electric cord
  • Know basic information about five careers that suit you
  • Volunteer to work for a month in each of those fields
  • Clean a paintbrush after use
  • Change a diaper, and a tire
  • Listen to an adult talk with interest and empathy
  • Take initiative and responsibility for school work and home chores
  • Dance with any age
  • Clean a fish and dress a chicken
  • Drive a car with skill and sanity
  • Know and take responsibility for sexual conception and protection when needed
  • Know the basic five of first aid: restore breathing and heartbeat, control bleeding, dilute poisons, immobilize fractures, treat for shock
  • Write a business letter
  • Spend the family income for all bills and necessities for two months
  • Know basic auto mechanics and simple repair
  • Find your way across a strange city using public transportation
  • Be happy and comfortable alone for ten days, ten miles from the nearest other person
  • Save someone drowning using available equipment
  • Find a paying job and hold it for a month
  • Read at a tenth grade level
  • Read a topographic map and a chart
  • Know the local drug scene for yourself
  • Handle a boat safely and competently (canoe, kayak, skiff, sailboat)
  • Operate a sewing machine and mend your own clothes
  • Operate a computer as needed
  • Do your own laundry

I highly recommend her books PADDLING HAWAII, PADDLING NORTH AND PADDLING MY OWN CANOE. Or for a quick fix, READ MORE ABOUT AUDREY on the Patagonia blog HERE

SATURDAY 27 MAY 2017

Adventure

This morning I woke up, packed up and got on the water from The Gorge, bound for Lilydale. I sung my song joyfully down the river, my trusty “River” by Leon Bridges.  I was wrong about it being flat water after The Gorge. The water is deep now. Very, very deep. Turbulent, bubbling, boiling, swirling. Deep, dark and fast. It felt very different to the previous week because while a treacherous tangle, it was generally quite shallow. Framed by towering granite, The Gorge and the waters below felt more intimidating. I felt more at the mercy of it’s moods. The Winter’s warned me about several sections, I noted their advice and blindly trusted it to be true (which I knew it would be).  There were sections I just had to run without knowing what was down the other side or without hesitating or being afraid of the speed of the water. “Look for the big rock covered in Shag shit, shoot straight through the centre, hang a left after the drop and stick to the left bank. Don’t go into the trees or you’ll have to get out and go back around”.

I started to feel tired this day. I paddled down the left side of the island in the centre and the water was a fast, tossing torrent of waves. I was praying the waves wouldn’t splash in, they did a bit, not enough to sink me but enough to make me very heavy. I pulled over to tip out and have a breather, then continued off into the fog. Rapids and runs continued to pop up, I couldn’t see much of where I was, finally the fog lifted to another perfect day. I got to another set of rapids, decent sized, I was feeling tired just looking at them. I paddled over to the bank, jumped out and decided to spend some precious battery power listening to music. I played “Happy” by Pharrell Williams then “Ocean Drive” by Duke Dumont. I jumped on a rock in the river, headphones blasting, and went crazy like I was on a podium and danced in ecstasy with the sunshine for about an hour. It definitely gave me an energy hit and the state change I needed from the un-resourceful space I was in to tackle the rapids ahead. I paddled to the left bank to scout the run but it wasn’t safe, so I paddled back out into the main flow to find a safe way through. I went over to the right and dropped into a beautiful big hole. Nearly all the rapids on this day were a joy. Beautiful runs, I noticed the river really dropping and descending down. It was still really remote and I didn’t see anyone. It was the most perfect day. So, so pretty. The stretch below the road to The Gorge was magic. Like everglades. Golf course greens! The rapids here were fast, deep and wide. I was careful considering my load, and my boat and person damage. I picked the lines that were slower and less unpredictable, no time for cowgirl tricks. The runs were long and powerful. I actually smiled at how much I’d learned on the job. It was exhilarating. Of course, the second I said to myself “You’ve actually learned how to paddle!” I was nearly turfed out! A little nudge from the angel on my shoulder to remind me who was paddling!

I rounded a bend and some horses took off from the bank, it was so beautiful. I focussed on enjoying every stroke. There was a fair bit of flatwater paddling after this. I had to stop and let a little water out but I couldn’t be sure whether I was actually taking water or if it was splashing in from the river waves. After some long flatwater sections the Lilydale bridge finally came into view. I was so excited, it had been a big day. I saw two figures on the bridge, I waved, they waved back. As I got closer I realised it was Simon and Kate Dougherty. They’ve been so amazing this entire time, just wonderful. They were so happy to see me and I was so happy to see them. They gave me Jatz crackers, gosh they tasted good, they said they’d been chasing me like Pokemon, watching my online track dot trying to find me. While I was catching up with them, Dad’s car rolled up! Mum, Dad, Mick, Archie and Phoenix! The reunion was the SWEETEST. 10 long days apart. We all hugged and kissed forever and were so happy to see each other. Simon and Kate stayed for a little while then they got going. Dad also happened to know some people who had set up a camp site nearby, Col and Imelda Harvey. Dad used to work with Col at the Sugar Mill when they were young. They charged up all my gear for me, gave me some firewood and were lovely to chat to. Mum bought a yummy picnic out for dinner, spinach pie! I couldn’t resist. And my brother Jack and Jade drove out too which was so wonderful. We really had a wonderful time together. The kids made my fire, Mick set up my camp, I was spoilt by my boys! I felt a bit sad when they all left but it’s OK, I know I’m out here for a purpose and I’m getting closer by the day / night / stroke to getting home.

After they left I chatted to Col and Mel, wrote in my journal by my fire, and mucked around online a little. I just got a little bit of reception for the first time so it was nice to read some of the messages people have been sending me. I stayed up for a little while then got to sleep for another big day tomorrow. Little did I know how big it would be…..

PERCEPTION

Adventure, Philosophy

“A young girl sits in a classroom, staring out at the river. The river gleams, twists, coursing past the boxed-in schools, the boxed-in minds. Trapped in her classroom, she sits, and stares, and pours all her isolation, all her resentment, into the river below her. Years later, the girl is Hayley Talbot, mother of two, and she is ready to meet the river again…”

[Lucy Stone for Travel Play Live Magazine, see the full article here]

I’m so passionate about challenging perceptions, especially in young minds (that tend to create their realities and accept them as gospel). We construct our truths with habits, values, and beliefs and one way or another, if we couple this with the auto-programming of society, we find ourselves trapped by our convictions. I was SO strong minded as a young teenager. Nothing could have crow-barred me out of the mental chains I shackled myself in, out of sheer will and contrarianism. But I’ve always loved a challenge. And if someone had have challenged my perceptions by causing me to see and think of things a different way, by doing something a little differently, by going at the same set of circumstances from a different angle, I’m sure it would have caused me to reassess my own views and my own comprehension of my capabilities. I hope that it would have caused me to try new things. To question. To seek my purpose. And to gain the confidence from accomplishing the things I set my mind to. To grow beyond those things and to try new ones. Bigger ones. This is what drives me now. Because on this river that I hated as a teenager, this stretch of water that I found so undulatingly boring, I had the adventure of a lifetime. And it was under my nose all along. This same body of water that remained manifestly unchanged taught me that perception is everything.

If you change the lens, you change your life.

QUESTIONS

Adventure, curiosity, Philosophy

Exploration transforms the soul. The water and the wilds are where I go to be spoken to. That’s where I’m told what to do. That’s where I listen. It’s where all my questions go to be resolved and is the birthplace of all the new ones that provoke me to grow beyond myself. Answers are merely the result of questions. Questions define everything.

SHADOW OF STARS

Adventure, Philosophy

I’m writing by my fire under the stars. Now 9 days in and through most of the wild and impenetrable part, I can finally reflect a little. The whole thing has been a gift. My family gifted me this time and trusted me with my life, and heaven has gifted me a guided safe passage. I feel so incredibly grateful. I have become attuned to the different sounds of water and what they mean, it’s speed, its power, the beauty of its dance. I have tuned in to different scents, to the deeply dormant olfactory wisdom that preserves life and warns gently of danger, to sounds and textures new to my consciousness, old to my DNA. To the infinite glamour of the night sky and to the twinkling eyes of loved ones watching and lighting the way home. One part woman, three parts the crushed glitter of a billion stars, the alpha that once frightened me, solidified in my soul.

I’d been so afraid of the dingoes before I came out. It was a power that felt too close for comfort. Now their howls echoing over and around me are my song. Never have I been more in my body and yet out here it is anything but my own. It belongs to the earth and it is behaving in the ways of a mother heavy with life. The river draws, gives, takes, sustains, I commit myself and she takes her commission. It is a tryst I hoped for but am shocked by the reality of. It’s breathtaking majesty makes me crave the compass of science as a way to explain it all, but it is the sun dial of the spirit that proffers its power. The most logical and conservative explanation I can arrive at, is the comparative mediocrity of magic.

So many times my own words have echoed in my head. The narration of dreams. All the dreaming words I was writing, they’re all becoming my realised truth. The living, breathing birthright of deeply held Pinocchio convictions, that if untrue, would have dismantled everything, rendering my perceptions crushingly wooden. A line I wrote some time ago floats by: ‘choose your words wisely; fate is a light sleeper‘. All of the things I wrote were my dreams, and now they are real. I’m real. Tonight I lay neath a blanket of fire, casting a shadow of stars.