Emily STEFFEL

It’s well into the night.  I’m sitting in the front of a canoe in the Boundary Waters.  To say it is dark is an understatement.

I’m about 75 yards from shore. I am paralyzed with fear and regret.  I’m not even paddling. The guide behind me is paddling. I’m just sitting in the boat, gripping the oar like I might use it to hit some vengeful sea witch that decides to pop out of the water in front of me. 

The two of us have turned off our headlamps. Everything is a blur of velvet blue shadows: the trees, the sky, the water.  I think I see a flying loon? It looks like a dirty, blurry snowball.  

True, the stars are spectacular. They’re a smashing celestial parachute of orange dust, violet sparkles, and champagne shimmers, unlike any stars I’ve ever seen in the city or even the country.  We’re talking a full-on cosmic buffet, stretching across the sky from left to right. 

Still, I’m so disorientated I can barely look up to stargaze for more than a few seconds before I’m dizzy.   

At tonight’s community dinner, the basecamp guides said night paddling is a don’t-miss experience. Skies are perfect, they said.  Water is calm, they said. 

These people are clearly cut from a different cloth than me.  They are the real-deal people from the rugged REI advertisements.  Right now, I am some sad clearance shelf in Fleet Farm.  No matter how successful and brazen my daytrips, in the night waters, I am hereby outed as the helpless denizen of “the Cities.”

My guide is paddling alone, tooling us around the water, sending us further into the bowels of some dark monster blob.  I can tell when he dips his paddle into the water by the soft “pffffooop”, and the consequential smooth slosh of water against the bow.  I clamp my hand on the canoe for balance. 

I want to ask him to go back.  I fear if I open my mouth too long, the air is so thick with blackness I might swallow it.  I might choke on blackness. I open my mouth and this is what I can manage: “Schhhhyeah.  So this is great?”

I miss the land so freaking much.  

“It helps if you kneel on the bottom of the boat,” my guide advises with empathy and respect.  “Disorientation happens, especially the first time.  It happens to nearly everyone.”

“I appreciate your help, but I am not moving.”  I clench my butt-cheeks.

However, it does dawn on me that his voice is helpful.  I could orient myself a bit in the canoe when he spoke.  It gave me an anchor, a firm feeling of direction behind me.  Up felt like up. Down felt like down. For a moment it didn’t feel like the water was coming up over the boat like a thick blanket, ready to push me into the depths of a watery grave.

“Tell me a story,” I say.

“What?”

“A story.  Any story.  Just keep talking.”  Pause.  “Please.”

So he does.  I think it was about high school football, or maybe it was about his first job as a wilderness guide.  Maybe it was about living “in town,” in Duluth.  I can’t say for sure.  All I know is that with his voice behind me, my panic ebbs a bit.  It doesn’t just feel like that voice is behind me, it feels in me, in my chest, around my body.  

He softly laughs at something in his own story, I couldn’t tell you what, but just from hearing his laugh, I giggle a bit, too.  He laughs a little more.  “I haven’t told that story for a while.”

“Another,” I say.  My knees shake. 

It turns out, most everyone actually does love the chance to tell a story.  He starts up again with little convincing.  This time I can pay attention, and it’s a story about one of his past campers, a man who came very ill-prepared and who was so terrified his voice was stuck at volume level ten the first half of the trip.

 I am so attentive to the words I can almost count each syllable, like when you used to clap along with sentences in elementary school. I can tell when he goes tender in his recollection, using “fellow” instead of “man.”  I can tell when he is nostalgic as I hear him exhale through his nose.  I listen as he drifts between rational thoughts about this man and actual memories of the moment, then memories recounting his own self.  The cadence of it all slows my heart beat, takes the jagged edge off my breath.  Even feels like my kidneys have a little more space.

My fear is pacified a great deal.

When the story is over, things grow quiet again, but I don’t panic.  At last, he says he could stay out a long time on that lake, looking at those stars. 

He and I are different in that way. I work up the courage to tell him I’d like to return to land. 

This time I can turn around to express my gratitude for the experience.  I am proud of the fact I can turn at the waist without vomiting or drunkenly tipping myself overboard.  I turn about as smoothly as a spinal surgery patient, but I turn.  I see his smile, the whites of his teeth barely peeking out above his neck gaiter and below his mustache. He returns a tight nod to me.  We paddle together towards shore.

I thought I’d start writing because many of us feel crippling uncertainty, at one time or another.  What happens when everything goes dark, when you least expect it, out in the middle of unfamiliar waters?  I don’t have many answers for you. But I do know you likely didn’t do anything wrong, and you likely don’t need to do anything more. 

Sometimes you just need a voice.