Swing

The meadow pond. Late afternoon. I slid the old, weathered canoe off the bank into the water. It was cool, but the sun was strong and it warmed my bare back. As I trolled the shoreline, bass and bluegill eyed me curiously. The water was flat and every tree reflected its perfect twin. 

Impulsively I dug deep. The bow rose and the canoe accelerated. Another deep stroke with a perfect “J” to hold the bow. I dug again, strong measured strokes, my ash wood paddle an extension of my arms. 

I held form careful not to graze the gunnel. Muscle memory took over, along with another long-forgotten memory. At fourteen I had won all my summer camp mid-season canoe races. Those competing canoes were only ghosts now, but the exhilaration was the same. 

In rowing there is a term the swing - "an elusive sensation of near-perfection; a state in which all rowers in the boat are seemingly in a symphony of harmonic motion, with no wasted energy." I don't know if there is an equivalent term in canoeing, but now almost forty years later, if only for a brief time, my “swing” was back.