Apprentice Kayakers

Tracy looks out on Willapa Bay

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The image I recall from that trip was the naked woman. Willapa Bay is one of the nation's largest surviving clean and intact estuaries, as important in its own way as Chesapeake Bay, but it's on the Pacific Coast so no one has heard of it, its chief advantage. If known at all, it is because of its oysters, not its naked women.

Toward the south end there is an island, Long Island, not to be confused with and, of course, in no way other than name confusable, the East Coast version. It is a wildlife preserve, habitat for the last great migrating flocks of black brant, which is a sort of goose. We were paddling the long length of the island, checked out finally with a series of lessons and now on a first trip loaded, the hatches of our kayaks stuffed with gear. It was Memorial Day weekend and Highway 101 and related arteries were choked with the touristy effluent from nearby cities: Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver. Because cars cannot get there, the island was nearly empty of people, and we were paddling to a campsite on the north point to sit alone on the sand and watch the sun set over the bay.

There was another campsite south a ways along the island's shore. As we paddled past, the woman arose from the beach, then tipped, weight of breasts urging her down, to bathe in a stream that was washing from ancient cedars to sea. Properly thought through, a place dedicated to the preservation of wildlife should allow for this, and it does.

I also have a tangible image from that trip, a photograph I took of Tracy. She was fully dressed and kayaked, but I kept on snapping her photo that morning just the same, like lapping at a bowl from which I could not get my fill. I'd set an alarm clock even, to not let that morning get away, something we rarely do in a tent, but the tides gave us a short window into the day. Willapa is ruled by tides and at low ebb is half its normal size, given then to miles of fecund, fetid mud flats, which explains the oysters. At low tide, the only activity available to a beached kayaker is waiting for high.

We slipped into our window just as the sun cracked the day open and the water was serene. There were brant and herons. It was as if friction had been canceled and a single paddle stroke was sufficient to push the boat to the edge of the planet. Trace seemed molded in her native grace so that, even as I was seeing her in a setting I had never seen before, I was finally able to see her as I always had. I wanted to have what she had just then, but I only had a camera.

We rounded the north tip of the island and pointed straight up the narrow channel that separates the island's east edge from the nearby mainland. Ebb had crescendoed to a riptide and the channel looked like a river, standing waves and all, and we were at the wrong end of a six-mile uphill paddle, the tide's full-force current dead against us. The sensible thing would have been to pull to the bank and sit and snooze and snack and so forth through that sunny morning, waiting for the rhythms of the place to turn to our favor, then ride the flood tide on home in early afternoon. Trace votes for the sensible course. An hour and a half later we were at the truck, aching and beaten by the tide.