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| Jake at the Wolf River launch. |
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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