Paddling, hiking, and bicycling with other like-minded folks can be a richly rewarding experience. Sharing heightens the pleasures associated with nearly everything outdoors. It even adds to the fun of the post-trip debriefing. Paddling, hiking, and biking in company is also safer than going it alone, and this is especially true on any Big Trip. But what about less ambitious jaunts? It’s easy—too easy, perhaps—to offer the familiar advice: “Never go solo.” It’s not so easy to find the right partners, however. Like fast-moving rivers, the deep waters of interpersonal relationships are roiled by conflicting currents.

No surprise there, I’m sure. You’re lucky if your paddling partner is a spouse, a relative, or a close friend. Such partnerships can work out very well indeed. Of course, success isn’t guaranteed. More than one marriage has foundered on the rocks of a turbulent river, and lifelong friendships have ended in disputes over who gets to paddle in the stern. Still, if your partnership first blossomed elsewhere, you’ve got a head start. A very different state of affairs arises when a casual acquaintance asks to come along on a trip. What then? Do you embrace the idea enthusiastically, glad to have any opportunity to share your love of your avocation? Or do you reject it out of hand, fearful of the prospect of shepherding a novice—or worse, someone whose confidence exceeds her competence—through her first days? Or maybe you steer a middle course, making tentative plans to meet up in undemanding conditions, on some warm and sunny afternoon, sometime in the indefinite future. In any case, it’s never an easy decision, but it’s one that every paddler has to make sooner or later. Read more…

 
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