Sometimes I am surprised at how slowly our minds can process information and make decisions when unexpected things happen. I went out paddling with an older friend today. In my mind, it was a casual paddle across the Bay, have a leg stretch and then amble back, pushed along by a light tail wind if we were lucky.
That is how it started. We paddled across the Bay. There was no wind, just a rolling swell from the north so we were relatively sheltered. Landing on the beach on the north side of the Bay we had a good half hour break, chatted to some people staying at the holiday cabins, and broke it to them gently that a 45 minute paddle under benign conditions is not that big a deal. I had a thermos of tea and a stretch.
My friend wanted to paddle on a bit further, at least out to the headland that borders the northern side of the Bay. I had no problem with this, I am training so any paddling is good paddling, although I thought we would encounter some wind. I was also mildly concerned that my friend who is rehabilitating a series of injuries and functional issues and has not been paddling consistently on the ocean should not do too much on this first day out.
We launched the boats again and started paddling along the rocky shore to the northern promontory of the bay, and my friend was in very close to the rocks, too close in my mind. I moved away from the rocks hoping he would follow me. The swell was getting larger and larger as we lost the shelter of the headland. Soon we arrived at a point where a long, mostly underwater, rock reef extends out from the headland. One rock was showing on the surface. We often paddle through this gap, on many days it is fairly safe - probably never completely safe - on other days, the waves break right through the gap and it closes out. Today was a kind of middle of the road day. Almost closing out, but not quite.
My friend paddled through, I went around. I did not want to spend the time observing the passage to make sure that even the bigger sets were not breaking. In my mind it was not that kind of day out. As I watched my friend paddle through, I saw one or two waves rise up incipiently, not breaking, but licking over at the apex.
I'll admit I am a catastrophic thinker so it was easy to visualise a big wave cresting higher than expected, my friend not having the capacity to increase his power output and either paddle through or paddle back, the inevitable consequences of the classic low probability high consequence event. At that point I realised I did not have either my long or short tow with me, nor did I have my marine radio, and my mobile phone was securely packed into two dry bags in a hatch behind my seat.
Instantly I flashed back to an episode I had almost a decade ago with another friend of mine in avalanche terrain. That day, much like this day, was flagged with small but poor decisions that through sheer luck alone did not lead to catastrophe. And here I was again, in the midst of what sociologist Diane Vaughan calls the normalisation of deviance.
In the avalanche literature, this is known as a negative feedback loop because snow is stable most of the time "bad decisions masquerade as good ones" and people survive for years and years making a long series of poor decisions that they believe to be good decisions growing ever more confident as the years progress.
Paddling too close into the rocks with the danger of breaking swells is the exact same thing but in a different environment. For years and years, a kayaker can paddle too close in without the skill or capacity to escape a breaking wave and believe they are making good decisions in a seemingly endless negative feedback loop.
How much of my friends behaviour was triggered by the people we had met on the beach expressing downright amazement that we had paddled "so far?"1 How much is the result of years of negative feedback, and how much is ego or simply hubris? I don't know. As a catastrophic thinker, I can always see the other side of the feedback loop, as I have simply had too many things go wrong in the outdoors to believe that negative feedback is accurate.
The problem when recreating with friends is that if the normalisation of deviance continues unabated at some point someone will get caught and then everyone in the party is sucked into the vortex of the accident because how can we simply stand by and watch as a friend gets carried away in an avalanche or crashes their boat, their body or both onto the rocks when a larger than average wave washes through. We cannot, we must go in to pick up the pieces and, in the aftermath of all these events, the hazard is not ameliorated; hang-fire from the avalanche remains, larger than average waves can still break. Your risk becomes my risk.
The obvious and rational thing to do is to break the cycle of bad decisions masquerading as good decisions but, as we all know if we have tried this, it simply does not work. The feedback of years or even decades of escaping catastrophe by luck builds up a very thick carapace of invincibility and one friend cautioning another about risk is easily dismissed by the risk taker who believes they are in control of the outcome.
The only other alternative is to remove yourself from the situation. Today, that was my choice. At some point, I simply said to myself, "I am done out here." I turned and started paddling back.
1Reality check - the distance is only about 6 km so only in a world where the average person has a shockingly low physical capacity is that distance "so far."
No comments:
Post a Comment