Well. Go home, pay bills, chase the collie around a wee bit, fight a rubber chicken & then think. What am I doing here, I need the sea. It takes hours rather days for a fix need to start attacking my senses. Sometimes, often, those fixes lean selflessly towards others. When teaching it's two-step. I get to get wet & pass on knowledge. What is knowledge but stale bread unless you share it amongst a community. It's almost payment in itself, a complete contract by default that enhances the days of those who satellite through my life. Next week I will set off in the sea taxi -that's the Calmac ferry to you lot- back up through winding Harris roads & onto the streaking Northern Lewissian tip to teach a long standing pal, the art of the hand roll. GASP! Wee arty farty •≈Helen≈• is a classic novice...full of expectation, questions excitement & trepidation.
We will use a thin black knife to roll her & I will use the harbour at Port. It's a perfect place, high walled from a raging ocean 30ft away, it provides gentle rolling swell as well as stillness & security. She has never made a complete unassisted roll...ever, so these issues are important to address. Towards the back of the harbour, freed of fishing vessels & towing tractors over winter, a peat burn cascades out of long grass into the clear seas, turning the whole arena into dark brown bathwater.
She says: Oooh, I love waterfalls.
I say: I'm sorry...but I'm seeing a cows ass here.
Either way the resultant waters will do wonders for her spacial awarness. When you invert, you can taste the transition from fresh to saline water. You can feel the temperature barrier. It's one of those things you never mind doing, standing chest deep, building confidence in someone who generally, hides from maruading waves. I'm confident I will be able to get her to balance brace quickly...hand roll as well. Bendy females aye. She did well on her first session at the Stornoway pool - Tim & Murdies local haunt. The lads allowed her to focus on play, which is excellent. Play & familiarization with a strange enviroment is an underrated teaching device. One on one clinics are special, in that they allow you to direct so much more focus & input toward the novice. You can gesture to them directly, & indeed, some of them gesture back. It allows them to focus their frustration directly at you when they can't grapple a sequence directly into submission. Maybe that's a downside but minimalst workshops allow you to address brilliant questions like:
What will happen to my nose when I roll?
With a greater presence & clarity. We'll move onto using a paddle maybe one day soon. In contrast, the things others find awesome, my ability to perform straight jacket rolls & solos out to far flung dangerous & pelagic rocks are almost day-to-day for me. I have my own celebrations in life which they find humorous, like buying a frying pan. I will happily stalk people in the village for 3 days until they fully understand that I have indeed, bought my own frying pan. We each have steps in life that make us feel as though we are progressing, & none of them are wrong. Well ok, maybe the stalking bit....So these rolling clinics with friends...what do I get out of it besides getting wet? Chicken dinners & floors by wood burners normally. Payment in full aye.
One silent arc, swept through one spineflow, thread me, torn complete along a knife edge.
& I have displaced the priest within.
My body is born of stone mountains, my blood is run over with sea.
An avalanche of a million green boulders,
Tumbling in my ears, the suspension of state,
Rotating over existance surfacing into silence.
Now I am become death & Shiva, destroyer of worlds, my anthem immigrant,
a soul harbourered just offshore - & I can no longer speak, carrying a mouthful of stars.
Follow...or walk away.
Labels: Hebrides, kayak rolling
