Never Quit

Today was Sunday paddle day. Numbers have crashed precipitously in the last couple of months, which is a bit ironic as it is now summer and great paddling weather. However, so far at least, I have avoided being the only person on the Sunday paddle. Just three of us today and Mike, at 77 years young, was feeling his age after a busy week doing way too much manual labour. We had an easy paddle out to the Tollgate Islands where we lapped around the islands before an equally lazy paddle back. Mike intends to keep paddling at least until he is 80 and I sure hope he does.

The sky was louring with dark clouds and I would have welcomed some rain but we only got a sprinkle. I knocked out a bunch of rolls at the Tollgate Islands to make practising rolling a bit more realistic than rolling on a sheltered beach on a sunny day. It's a strange sensation rolling out on the deep blue sea, suddenly it all feels a bit more real than a couple of hundred metres off the beach where if all goes wrong you can at least do the swim of shame. Similar to walking a knife edge ridge over a sheer drop in the mountains. Something that is easy two metres off the ground suddenly feels truly committing.

It is so easy in the modern world with so many distractions and anti-social media trying to convince us that we are never enough or never have enough to lose track of what is really important in life. Some people, I guess, have never taken the time to work out what is truly important to them moving straight from high school or university into a never-ending sprint to amass more money, more enviable possessions, a bigger house, a flashier car. Even the people chasing travel seem to be ensnared in a web of images trying to get the best photo that garners the most likes.

Doug and I, however, are quite clear. We want a life full of memories of adventures in the wild: big adventures, small adventures, paddling, skiing, climbing, bush-walking, all the grand adventures months in the planning as well as the Sunday paddles with friends, or the day out clipping bolts at our local sport crag, this is the stuff of life.

So here we are, living in our house for more than two years and we still have not hung our pictures on the wall, and that does not really matter because we have had another two years of adventures. The pictures can wait, the adventures cannot.

Getting old is mandatory, keeping on adventuring is optional. I know what I am choosing.