Sarah Outen Around the World!

Kudos to Sarah Outen for completing her circumnavigation of the world! She rowed across oceans and kayaked many waters, and cycled across North America on her four-and-a-half-year journey. Check out her website (where we borrowed this excellent photo) and read about her inspiring trip, which began and ended in London, England.

Canoe paintings by Winslow Homer

I've been wanting to do some visual art that connects with what it feels like to go out in small boats and explore the waters around me. Recently I learned of a celebrated watercolour artist called Winslow Homer (1836-1910), whose work was strongly inspired by canoeing.

This painting, from a private collection, is called Canoes in the Rapids, Saguenay River.

Check out the website for Winslow Homer's art, where you'll find over 500 images of his paintings. There are small boats of many kinds to admire here, from sloops to adirondack flat-bottom boats and many canoes..

Messing About in Boats

"Believe me, my young friend, there is NOTHING—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats…In or out of 'em, it doesn't matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that's the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don't; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you've done it there's always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you'd much better not. Look here! If you've really nothing else on hand this morning, supposing we drop down the river together, and have a long day of it?"

~ from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, illustration by E.H. Shepard. Click here for a link to Project Gutenberg's free download of the classic book!

Under the Bridge -- a canoe trip on CBC Radio

Check out this link to the CBC Radio website, to see an article about a terrific piece of radio programming: a documentary on a canoe trip from Reindeer Lake, Saskatchewan to Baker Lake, Manitoba -- and the people who have never forgotten their trip even  28 years later.