This last week I got to experience a completely new activity and it was amazing.
It made me realize that trying new things is such a gift and that I should continue to be intentional to make it a priority.
We had talked about attempting a Glow Paddle earlier in the spring but it wasn’t until a friend, Jennifer Durr, planned the event for last week that we finally made it happen. We did a trial run a few nights before the event so we got to do it twice, which was awesome.
The activity is really simple but the results were epic. We invited paddlers of any sort to meet at the Souris River and to deck themselves and their watercraft out in glow sticks. We had about half the group on stand up paddle boards and half in kayaks and everyone was so creative.
I’m positive our local economy is benefiting from the sheer number of glow sticks that were purchased.
Glow sticks were taped to the tops of boards, Saran Wrapped around paddles, hooked to life jackets, and strung from the back of paddle boards and kayaks. I giggled every time I looked at the friends who had taped fibre optic lamps to their helmets and boards.
They were amazing in the dark. I even rigged up underwater lighting by protecting mini LED’s with saran wrap and packing tape.
The crew of 17 people all lit up and traversing the river was a sight to behold. Kind of like Disney’s Enchanted Boat Parade. We even had music. The sky was beautifully decked out in stars and paddling in such darkness was a totally foreign and exhilarating experience.
We had so many laughs and fun moments of camaraderie as we developed roll calls and called out warnings of stumps and other obstacles.
We only ran into one swamp monster, which elicited many screams and faster paddling than we thought we were capable of. Thanks to the nifty underwater lights, the swamp monster was identified as a massive snapping turtle.
It was epic. Go do new things.
