Waiting for the crisis to pass, our thoughts go out to friends and loved-ones, who also shelter in place. News arrives of old friends passing away, people we knew and admired. Immobilized as we are, we can all relive our travels. I invite you to join me in celebrating the joys of Quaranteam travel. These are also messages of hope, not just for our own survival, but that we might begin to treasure what we had been taking for granted, to draw strength, wisdom and compassion from deeper engagements with nature.
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Outrigger Canoes Passing Peters Island. Sunday, June 10, 2018. Schuylkill River Sketchbook.
Famed as an international center of amateur competitive rowing, the Schuylkill River passing through Fairmount Park is also a magnet for paddling clubs. The oldest of these is the Philadelphia Canoe Club founded in 1905. Since the 1980s Philadelphia Dragon Boat Association has competed with distinction around the world. With roots in Hawaiian culture, Philadelphia Outrigger Canoe Club was founded in the 1990s. Competing with other outrigger clubs in the annual Hoe Wa’a Challenge ocean-race off Brigantine, New Jersey the Schuylkill River provides a waterway for training and practice.
On June 10, 2018, I set up along Kelly Drive, making quick sketches of rowers when a pair of outriggers paddle by, A braided steel cable stretched across the channel marks lanes used by crews in rowing competitions. The paddlers were middle-aged women enjoying a pleasant turn on the river, displaying for the moment none of the fierce competitiveness exuded by determined oarsmen and women rowing in sculls.
Later in the day I noticed another paddling-sport in action, as a woman completed several circuits around Peters Island on a paddleboard. Looking for information on what clubs may exist, I found a webpage for Stand Up Paddleboard Philly with a contact portal but no physical address. Its promotional language promised ways to “…stay fit and learn about Philadelphia’s unique urban geography and ecological systems. Based on the Professional Stand Up Paddleboard Association, the sport seems to be geared more toward personal enrichment than organized competition.
Stand Up paddleboard off Peters Island. Schuylkill River, Philadelphia PA USA. Sunday, June 10, 2018. Photograph by the author.
Remembering Philadelphia fifty years earlier, I am heartened to find such a diversity of people making use of the riverbanks. I fall into conversation with an African-American woman who shared that her military daughter was deployed in the Middle East. She comes down to the river at least once a week, she tells me, to soothe her mind. She waves at a fellow walking by, carrying a fishing-rod and white join-compound bucket. I ask if she knows him. No, she says, but he’s always here, hoping to catch a big one. I tell her about the fifty-pound catfish somebody pulled out of the river at East Falls. A hundred yards to the north along the sunny esplanade, a couple spreads a blanket on the grass. Hearing behind us a loud crash, glass breaking, people screaming. I jump up. Darting out of the parking-area, a hatchback was broadsided by another vehicle on Kelly Drive. Fortunately the only damage was to the machinery.
(A preview of SKETCHBOOK TRAVELER by James L. McElhinney (c) 2020. Schiffer Publishing).
Copyright James Lancel McElhinney (c) 2020 Texts and images may be reproduced (with proper citation) by permission of the author. To enquire, send a request to editions@needlewatcher.com