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                     Paddling the Royal River

Day Four

This day's canoeing effort, into a stiff headwind, brought to mind the metaphor of life as "paddling upstream." I realize that all my working efforts of late are just a way of keeping up; I'm not really getting anywhere. Furthermore, the rest of my life will be more of the same, rest is not an option; it is too easy to fall back into idleness and lethargy, which would have been a relatively harmless diversion when I was young, but is poison now. Use it or lose it. Three more portages, albeit minor ones, and three solid hours of fighting the whitecaps delivered us to a beautiful campsite, with an air temperature in the mid sixties. The wind died down for our supper, once again exhaustion curtailed any reading in the tent. About four in the morning, I heard the wind pick up again, it looked as if I would be facing another trial in the morning...