The sea and sky are both gunmetal grey and a gusty southwest wind is blowing. The wave buoy is showing a two metre southeasterly swell with an average six second period. I have paddled out of this bay so many times, I know what to expect. We will be relatively sheltered until we reach the headland and reefs south of tiny Circuit Beach. Beyond there, conditions will gradually build, the sea and swell getting larger and more confused, the wind blowing spray off the wave tops and into our faces, clapotis and rebound will make the sea lively and unstable. Already, I can see a line of breakers along the reefs near to Black Rock and we are still a kilometre away.
I rarely go out to sea in my small kayak without feeling a frisson that is half fear, half expectation. Without the challenge of the changeable sea, ocean kayaking would be a dull sport, like always climbing easy routes or skiing groomed runs at a ski hill. The joy is in the challenge of the unexpected. Although I know this coastline well: where you can stay close inshore, where there are a half-hidden bommies, where the currents run fast, this is still open ocean and oceans, like mountains are places uncontrolled by man.
As the developed world once again descends into ‘rona madness it is interesting to think about how well the post-modern world assesses risk. Risk is something I think I know a reasonable amount about. After all, I have survived multiple decades engaged in risky sports like mountaineering, backcountry skiing, climbing, ocean kayaking. I have been caught in snow avalanches, been hit by rockfall while climbing, had my gear fall out on long traditional climbs, slipped on snow slopes, skied for four days without food trying to escape an epic avalanche cycle, been rescued off a mountain top. I have had friends injured and even killed in climbing and skiing accidents. You could almost say if it could go wrong, it has gone wrong.
Whether you are climbing a big mountain or paddling across Bass Strait, decisions have real and immediate consequences. At the other end of the spectrum, we rarely make decisions in the modern world that have immediate consequences, and developed societies, like Australia – with strong social safety nets and what might generously be called a “nanny state” – have developed the idea of moral hazard to its illogical conclusion. There is almost no consequence for poor decision making.
Australians have notoriously shitty diets and most do inadequate to no reasonable exercise1. Exercise and nutrition are choices everyone makes everyday of their lives with real consequences in terms of death (mortality) and disability (morbidity), yet most happily continue to engage in what I would consider high risk activities (poor diet and sedentary behaviour) because the deleterious outcome (chronic disease and disability) is so far removed from the action (occurring up to decades later) that the conscious mind makes no connection between the two.
Unfortunately, at this point in time, the onus is on the individual to make reasonable decisions that fully anticipate the consequences of those decisions. We live in spectacularly unhealthy environments, with an increasing preponderance of public funding and discourse going towards a problem that is minuscule in comparison to the real health issues we face. Fear porn is everywhere as is misinformation, censorship, outright corruption. Our public health agencies have been completely captured by Big Food and Big Pharma. A highly effective money making machine that creates preventable illness and then sells expensive and ineffective remedies with rafts of side effects. It is much easier to line up for the autumn, winter, spring, summer … booster than it is to stand back and assess real risk and make an appropriate decision.
1Bearing in mind that official dietary and exercise guidelines are a pretty low bar and will barely fend of morbidity and mortality from the diseases of civilisation.
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