What kayaking taught me about the nature of illusions and the power of perspective

How often do we find ourselves perceiving one thing, convincing ourselves that our perception is the way things are, only to discover that we’re looking at things the wrong way? What if we turned the lens? What might we see differently, and would we accept it? My husband and I were faced with these questions one summer day a few years ago when we first tried kayaking.

Feyodi Park on the Arkansas River, Northeastern Oklahoma

The wind catches the brim of my turquoise sun hat as I get out of the car. If not for the strap dangling beneath my chin, it would already be in the river.

“It might be too much to go out today,” I shout to my husband over the gale. “What if the boat flips or something?”

One moment the water is an orangey brown, the river’s bed of clay and sand churned to the surface by the wind and reflecting the sun’s rays, a muted sister to the red dirt that defines Oklahoma. The next, it’s the gray of an artist’s putty rubber, yellow light of day absorbed by graphite clouds moving in and out of each other in a rhythmic dance. A shocking crest of white appears on the water with every gust, waves propelled down the low valley of the river’s path as if rushing to catch the last train to some nameless haven.

“The boat won’t flip,” Derek says. “It’s practically impossible given how it sits in the water.”

My husband’s demeanor betrays the nonchalance in his voice. Wind whips his long hair in a frenetic dance around his shoulders, protected from sunburn by a red and yellow tie-dyed T-shirt. He grips the brim of his Detroit Red Wings ball cap, eyes squinting against the sun, lips pursed against the grit of blowing sand.

Our kayak arrived yesterday, and we are like children on Christmas morning with their favorite toy, unwrapped and ready for play. Derek inserts the nozzle of the plastic bellows into the valve and steps repeatedly until the boat begins to resemble an oversized Pillsbury Doughboy, limbs swelling and curling into a protective fold with each successive rush of air.

“Ready?” I ask when the boat appears seaworthy, although I’m nervous about Derek paddling for the first time in this wind.

“Think so,” he says as he slides on his life jacket, cinching the straps tight before situating himself in the boat’s only seat.

Between growing up with hydrophobic parents and living in the countryside with the closest body of water a small roadside creek, Derek never learned to swim. Given the stability of the boat, his life jacket, and the narrow stretch of river, its sandy bottom a few feet below the surface, I’m not concerned. Not too much, anyway.

I grab the front handle of the kayak and lead it and my husband into the river. The boat’s rhythmic bobbing becomes more exaggerated with each step. When we’re far enough out, Derek starts paddling toward the opposite bank, there and back again according to our plan. I watch him glide away from me and think he’s doing okay despite a bit of wobbling with the waves.

Suddenly, mixed with wind’s shrieks, I hear shouts and barely make out the words: “We shouldn’t have done this! This was a bad idea!”

Confused since he’s directly in front of me, I yell at him to turn around.

“How?!”

Dang, I think. We should have gone over this before we started. Not everyone was on the crew team in college. I yell out strokes as fast as I did when I was a coxswain and steered my team away from a dam we didn’t expect, but the wind snatches my words. After several minutes of fighting to keep the paddle from flying away, Derek manages to turn the boat around. He sees me straight in front of him, twenty yards away, and I hear wisps of laughter float to shore.

My husband experienced an illusion of self-motion. The waves created by wind blowing across the water’s surface at an angle to the opposite shore gave him the impression that he was drifting downriver, a branch separated from its trunk floating anchorless to destinations unknown. He perceived himself in danger, but once he refocused the lens, he saw the reality of the situation.

When we attempt something for the first time, it’s easy to perceive it as daunting, as something larger than it really is. Moving out of our safety zone, becoming open to the idea that things are not always as they seem, is a risk we must all take at times. Otherwise, how would we know who we are and what we’re capable of?

If my husband had been so shaken by his fear that he vowed to end kayaking right then, we never would have experienced the quiet of the water when no one else is around, the sudden burst of pelicans from a tributary tucked around a bend, the silky feel of the paddle as it slips beneath the surface, the soft lub lub of the boat bouncing on gentle waves.

If my husband had let his perception color that day, we would have lost these shared experiences, these moments that we treasure.

Originally published in Indelible Ink on Medium on July 17, 2019.