I’m not sure how many paddlers on the American side of the Pond have read Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. Not many, I imagine. Perhaps a few had it read to them when they were young, however, and others may have seen the movie. Disney first attempted to commodify the story in 1949, reworking a smattering of threads plucked from the book into a hodgepodge of an animated film (The Adventures of Ichabod and Mister Toad) and then building a “dark ride” around the film’s theme. The movie crops up now and again in Disney Classic packages, and the California ride is still operating, but there really isn’t much of the book in either the film or the ride. Happily — there’s an anodyne for all distempers, if you only know where to look — Grahame’s tale has also been adapted for radio and television many times in Britain, and most of these adaptations have kept faith with the original. I don’t know if any of them have drifted across the Atlantic, though.

But this much is certain, at any rate: There isn’t a canoeist, kayaker, or sailor anywhere who isn’t familiar with at least one phrase drawn from the pages of Wind in the Willows. Who among us hasn’t heard someone speak of “messing about in boats”? There’s even a monthly magazine by that name, a rare (and welcome) print survivor in our pixelated age of digital ephemera. In fact, the “messing about” catchphrase has now reached the status of a cliché, something that careful writers take pains to avoid. Well, you can call me careless, if you want, but I’ve invoked it on more than a few occasions, and so has Tamia, and no one seems to be any the worse for our transgressions.

Anyway, here’s the moment when “messing about in boats” entered the language:

“This has been a wonderful day!” said [Mole], as the Rat shoved off and took to the sculls again. “Do you know, I’ve never been in a boat before in all my life.”

“What?” cried the Rat, open‑mouthed: “Never been in a — you never — well I — what have you been doing, then?”

“Is it so nice as all that?” asked the Mole shyly, though he was quite prepared to believe it as he leant back in his seat and surveyed the cushions, the oars, the rowlocks, and all the fascinating fittings, and felt the boat sway lightly under him.

“Nice? It’s the only thing,” said the Water Rat solemnly, as he leant forward for his stroke. “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing — absolutely nothing — half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing,” he went on dreamily: “messing — about — in — boats….”

Few paddlers would disagree with the Water Rat, though fewer still would own up to even a nodding acquaintance with what is, after all, a children’s book, and one that’s over a century old, into the bargain… Read more…

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Some say the world will end in fire,
    Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
    But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
    To know that for destruction ice
Is also great,
    And would suffice.

    - Robert Frost, “Fire and Ice”

For a quarter of a century, Farwell and I lived alongside the reservoir we called the ‘Flow. Our home had few modern conveniences. We got our drinking water from a nearby spring, and drew water for washing from the ‘Flow itself, casting tethered five‑gallon pickle buckets from shore and hauling them back again. Sometimes we’d find more than water in the bucket: a belligerent crayfish, perhaps, or a frantic minnow, or even a swarm of the tiny creatures known as water fleas. We called this daily exercise “water‑fishing,” and it certainly gave us a good upper‑body workout.

When the ‘Flow froze over, however, we had to change our approach. Freeze‑up usually came in mid‑December, though there were years when the ‘Flow iced over before Thanksgiving, and other years when we were still water‑fishing from shore on Christmas day. But this much was certain: Sooner or later, every year without fail, we’d find ourselves chipping a hole in the ice some 10 yards offshore. And for the next few months this hole would be our water source — for washing ourselves, our dishes, and our clothes. We were ice‑fishing now.

I suppose this sounds like a great hardship, but it wasn’t. Far from it. In fact, it was quite pleasant work. I preferred it to summertime water‑fishing, when the ‘Flow’s surface often bore a rainbow sheen of oil from jet‑ski exhaust, and a seemingly endless parade of speeding powerboats churned up clouds of sediment — clouds that took hours to settle out again. And I enjoyed standing on the ice in early morning or late evening, amidst the long shadows of the white pines, while I lifted bucket after bucket of water from the frigid depths. Every so often a large fish would drift into view, and on rare occasions I’d see the tracks of the mink who used our waterhole as a convenient portal into the hidden world beneath the ice. Morning or evening, the time I spent fishing through the ice for water was a magical interlude in my day.

But nothing lasts forever. And sometime in late March or early April, winter’s arctic northers gave way before the soft imperative of an impetuous south wind, bringing with it the first hints of the spring to come. We knew then that the icy thoroughfare on which we’d been walking for the last three or four months would soon break up and drift away, carried off by the secret river that was imprisoned deep within the waters of the ‘Flow, a river long lost to sight, but a living river still.

In short, we knew that ice‑out was upon us… Read more…

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Winter’s grip is loosening, and the land is waking from its long sleep. Soon even shaded mountain tarns will be wholly free of ice. Of course, cyclists have been working out winter’s kinks and canoeists and kayakers are already making the most of the high water on many rivers. It’s a good time to be out and about. But this is also the time when trip‑planning takes on a certain urgency. Summer will be here before we know it, and there’s still a lot to do. There are routes to be studied, menus to prepare, and gear to overhaul… Read more…

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