It was an early September sunny Sunday and I knew I had to wake up for a kayak along the Hudson River activity.
The train was early and I am not a morning person, but I did have to wake up.
My friend knows me, he would forgive me for being late on a Sunday morning, I could have slept just five minutes longer. Or a few hours more and apologize later. I managed to open one eye, just a little bit before turning to the other side of my bed and keep sleeping. It was so sunny, the sunshine had stated its verdict: I had to wake up.
Grumpy and yawning, I put on an old swimming suite and run out of the door, if my friend could have waited for me, our train from Grand Central definitely wouldn’t. When I arrived, breathless but just in time, I was even grumpier because I hadn’t had my coffee – it is never a nice morning without it. The train left and started to pass through Manhattan, finally leaving it behind us. The scenery opening up to our eyes was something just unexpected and beautiful. It made me regret regretting waking up, at first. We were running along the Hudson River, Cold Springs bound. Our plan was to rent a kayak along the Hudson River and follow an instructor with a group of people through a trail in a natural reserve.
When we arrived all the group kayaks were taken and the renters told us the trail was too hard for beginners (I knew I had to wake up earlier, arrive earlier, rent a kayak earlier and meet the guide earlier!). Well, it wasn’t the first time our plan of doing kayak along the Hudson River wasn’t going to happen, but we weren’t able to make fun at ourselves about it. My friend looked at me, I looked at him – he knows I’m clumsy and I know he’s a control freak. «So can we just rent two kayaks for a bunch of hours?» I immediately smiled and suddenly woke up.
Good morning, I thought, finally sitting on my red kayak along the Hudson River. How the heck were we going to get to those waterfalls? No idea. Did I know how to paddle? Absolutely not. Did he know any infested-by-plants lake orienteering? Nope. Did we know any orienteering at all? Both of us use google maps to get around the grid of Manhattan! Whatever, we started paddling and passed under a low bridge that was full of spiderwebs and probably bats. I was already hating the whole idea of being there, when suddenly my stomach had a jump. I couldn’t hear any noise or think any thought, my eyes were filled by a landscape that I had never seen nor imagined in my life. My heart jumped realizing we were finally in a silent place. The only thing we could hear was the water moving next to our kayaks and some cicadas or grasshoppers playing their concerts. I couldn’t use my feet and had to think about which arm to move and how in order not to be stuck in the water plants. Everything was different, not too different, but different enough to enjoy the new point of view, the new height of our eyes in the non-solid street.
There’s not much one could say about the whole thing, words are always so overrated. We spent three hours paddling, interrupting each other just by sharing a good laugh or making fun at how we were sometimes turning around our kayaks or still despite trying to use the paddles. We saw certain species of birds elegantly landing over some water lilies. We whistled a little, not much, as the experience of our silence was allowing us to hear nature more and more. We found a waterfall and swam underneath it, inside a forest. The water was cold, it made me feel like it was washing away last year’s worries. It made me feel clean. It reminded me I am free.
It had been a while since I was not able to enjoy something as simple as a silence in my ears during the kayak along the Hudson River activity, green in my eyes or water in my nose. It had been a while without doing something for the first time.
