No magazine with the word "canoe" in its title would be complete without some lessons on how to be a better canoeist. (Why "canoeist" and not "canoer?" We'll deal with that one in a future issue.)

Wildlife Research Team has always wanted to get as many people out in our canoes as possible. We always want them to have a really good time. We want them to come out again. In WRT's fifteen years, I've observed a very wide range of personalities pick up a paddle. I wish now I'd been a little bolder and had gotten nosy enough to ask them why they'd made the choice. But I've gleaned enough from these experiences to perpetually fascinate me. Certainly it has been my motivation to create this magazine.

Let's begin with an important fact: canoes are not unstable. Paddlers are. Horses are perfectly collected when they are running free on their own, but become insecure with riders on their backs, and must be re-educated to move properly and with balance. The same thing happens with canoes.

Since our beginning, we've always welcomed anyone in our canoes, with our unique "You Point, We Paddle" program. We've always wanted to share our fun with anyone with a taste for adventure. So not everyone has been required to paddle, especially if they had a disability or were very young or very old. (Many great memories come to mind but have to be suppressed for now, sorry.)

So let's face it, unless you are unable to paddle due to age or infirmity, you are going to have to take hold of this stick with a wide part on one end and a handle on the other and dip it into the water a few thousand times in order to get anywhere. And what I've seen is that when you don't learn to dip it correctly, you won't have the really good time WRT wants you to have. You may end up hating the paddle, the canoe, WRT, the water, the air, and Life itself. If you can't make that canoe go where you want it to—usually in a straight line, or what we call "on the rails"— then you'll be frustrated, sore, exhausted, and probably as mad as hell at whoever's in the canoe with you.

Not only have I witnessed this happen to many others of all ages and both sexes, I've been there myself. I was very lucky to have had a great teacher in my soulmate and partner, the late Dr. Tom Kazo, but must confess to being at times a really rotten, crabby student. Turns out I was more mad at myself than him, although it took a while to realize this, honestly (sorry, my darling). So when I see a couple yelling at each other from bow and stern of their canoe, I feel their pain and want only to make them happy with each other. To do that, we have to make the canoe happy first. And to do that, we have to learn how to paddle correctly. (I hasten to add, in Tom's memory, that he never yelled at me, although he did get aggravated, as he put it; all the yelling came from yours truly.)

Every moment in our canoes, we are influenced by countless factors beyond our control: weather, wind, tide, currents, boat traffic, other people, even wildlife. We may have improperly loaded our canoes and they don't respond well; happens to everyone. I can think of only one factor which is totally under our control, yet I so often see people ignore it and thus make themselves miserable.

In three words: Get A Grip!

Hold your paddle properly and you will improve your canoeing experience, your health, and maybe even save your life. Canoe paddles are like baseball bats, golf clubs and tennis rackets in that all must be gripped correctly for maximum performance. Hold your paddle improperly, however, and you may catch a wave wrong, or maybe hit a tree in a mangrove tunnel, and out of your canoe you go. I've seen it happen. On our trips, nobody's ever been badly hurt, only wet, maybe scraped up a bit and certainly very embarrassed, but people have been injured or killed while canoeing elsewhere. I'd love to know how they were holding their paddles, among other things.

What truly inspired this particular column is my never-to-be-answered question: why do people neglect a perfectly good handle at the logical top of their paddles, and grasp the area just below the handle? I see this happen all the time, and not just with beginners. The paddle is not a guitar, nor is it a broom (not that people really use brooms anymore, come to think of it, they use those robot vacuum cleaners!).

On the right: This is not a broom!

Continued on next page.