Kayaking and King

As much fun as it is to kayak on the bay I have to admit it can be kind of creepy. The water is hypnotic. You know that the little fact that you don’t see any life out there other than the fish jumping doesn’t mean there is nothing out there. There could be anything in the water, just beneath as far down as you can see. The bay water is pretty dingy so that isn’t very far down at all.

I like to paddle out and then relax in the kayak, letting the water take me where it will. There’s always a point when I’m just staring down into the water watching the patterns of the sun and the chop. I feel like I can almost see something in the water, it’s just not quite close enough to the surface to see what it is. The brownish patch sliding under the kayak could be a manatee, it could be a shark, it could be anything.

I know that what I’m seeing is (probably) the light refracted through the water, a bit of plant or sometimes maybe a school of fish but my mind always has to bring up Steven King’s short story The Raft. Seriously, every single time.

The funny thing is my friend and I where kayaking last weekend and after we passed a large patch of (creepy, oily looking) seaweed he admitted he had been thinking about The Raft too.

It’s amazing what a reach books have on how we see things. I’ve always been a huge reader and the stories I like the best have always been either scary stories or spy books. Or anything with a super-hero in it. There’s more but I’ll leave it at that.

Point being it is amazing how often in day to day life I am reminded of a book I read, a story I heard, or a movie I saw. Without all of these stories I’m pretty sure my outlook on life would be completely different.

It’s probably thanks to Outbreak that if someone coughs in a movie theater I have an instant urge to cover my nose and mouth and leave. If an old man dressed in rags at a gas station tells me I should turn left a bit down the road you can bet I’m turning right. Or, more likely, turning around and going home. I’ll sleep in my car before I’ll sleep in that creepy looking house that I just happened to get a flat in front of.

I did stay in a cabin in the woods up in Flagstaff more than once, but I did NOT open any boxes or look in any closets and if someone would have knocked on the door I wouldn’t have answered, let alone walk out into the woods to see if I could find them.

Jaws anyone?