Saturday, November 12, 2011

A common man recounts an uncommon paddle

Jake at the Wolf River launch.
By David Horst
sandhill7@gmail.com

Jake Stachovak was making a point about how you don’t have to be an extraordinary person to accomplish an extraordinary feat.
The video clip playing over his shoulder did an effective job of it.
Stachovak (pronounced Sta-HO-vee-ak) was addressing a crowd of 110 at Mosquito Hill Nature Center near New London on Oct. 14. He was this year’s Charlotte Bates Fenlon Memorial speaker.
Charlotte was a very early volunteer at Mosquito Hill and the first wife of Dr. Charles “Chick” Fenlon, who established an endowment fund to support an educational speaker each year in her memory. Chick, a wonderful guy, died a year ago May. I had the pleasure of serving with him on the committee that picks the speakers, through my day job at the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region, which also is where the endowment fund is located.
Jake’s video shows him talking about the rigors paddling in the cold early in his 5,740-mile kayak trip around the eastern third of the United States. In the background is his beached 17-foot Kevlar Seda kayak. As Jake is talking away in the foreground, the video shows his boat slip off of shore and drift farther and farther out into the water.
Point made. Jake has accomplished an amazing test of endurance, but he has his bonehead moments like the rest of us. He did have the foresight to be wearing a drysuit when he had to wade out chest-deep to recover his boat.
Some might think his decision to take this trip was one of his weaker cognitive moments, but I doubt anyone listening to him at Mosquito Hill felt that way by the end of his talk.
Jake, a carpenter and paddle guide who found himself between jobs in 2010, kayaked from Portage, down the Wisconsin and Mississippi rivers, out into the Gulf of Mexico, around the Florida Keys, up the Atlantic inland passage, through the Erie Canal and Hudson River, through Lake Erie, Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, up the Fox River and back to Portage. Jake had wanted to take this journey since, as a kid, he traced the route with his finger on a map and discovered we all are linked by water – the theme of his trip.
His story includes his gear being stolen in Missouri – and recovered within four days – being maced in an apparent robbery attempt in Mississippi and the pure bliss of discovering an all-you-can-eat pizza place after paddling from dawn to dusk.
Another amazing video clip shows Jake paddling around the tip of Florida with a dark storm cloud ahead of him. As Jake narrates, you see a small tornado start to form out of the cloud. He is well out from shore, but the cloud is moving away from him and he assures he was in no danger.
A smaller group of 35 joined Jake the morning after his talk to paddle a short stretch of the Wolf River, from New London’s Riverside Park to Shaw’s Landing. One couple didn’t make the trip. Still in the process of launching, they shifted in their canoe and went over. Given the day’s very strong wind, they made the wise choice of taking their soaked selves home.
We launched into a stiff headwind and fought it all of the way to the turn at the County X bridge. There, the woods gave us relief from the northwest wind.
Seventeen of our number road in the 27-foot voyager canoe piloted by Glen Gorsuch and Jerry Disterhaft of the Princeton area. They had enough paddle power to defy the wind. Still, about two-thirds of the way into the trip, our paddle became more of a float. Participants were content to talk and take in the scenery of the Mukwa Marsh.
We landed without incident and went in search of, as Glen says, a neon sign – where we could replenish lost fluids.
It left us with about 5,734 miles to go to match Jake, but it was a morning well spent.
The evening before, Jake was asked what he learned about himself from the Portage-to-Portage paddle. He said that, not very far into the trip, it became apparent that failure to continue was not an option.
When ice blocked his path in Wisconsin, he jumped ahead to St. Louis and filled in the gap later. When thieves took his gear, he was on the phone to an outfitter arranging replacements. The trip was a part of him that had to be fulfilled.
Few of us have such a clear calling. Jake may contend that he’s nothing special, but certainly what he accomplished is.

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