I don’t know who is more perplexed: me or the deer? It’s dawn on July 4 and I hang out my inflatable sup in 14 feet and three dry bags through River Street in Troy, New York, roaring Bacon from Buffet Breakfast. The city center is watered and deserted, just me and the ungulated locking eyes in a hotel car park, two fish out of the water.
In a few minutes, I start on the Hudson river, an early start to catch the flow that will facilitate my passage along this 153 mile estuary to the Atlantic. In addition, with the temperature and humidity increasing, to beat the heat. My usual hacking to cool – two swim an hour, repeat – is not recommended today on this river section. Too much rain for the sewer system. “Watch out for floats”, had advised a room.
I celebrate America’s birthday for almost three weeks in a circumnavigation in the hourly direction of 1,200 miles from Ottawa, where I live, at home via Montreal, New York, Buffalo and Toronto. Corporated by apocalyptic climate change and toxic technology bros, at the dawn of 50 years and without inspiration by office work, I looked for deliverance by plunging a blade. As an obsessive paddleboard, I knew how well I felt on the water. I also struck the healing properties of “blue space” as a journalist, speaking to researchers who study the psychological and physiological benefits to spend time in aquatic environments. Why not test these theories on myself?
Which sound Like a good excuse to spend a few months to paddle, camp and hang around with other people attracted by water. Except that it promises to be one of the hottest summers of all time. And now, passing Albany, the clouds and the forest smoke have separated, the sun is dazzling and the E. coli-The curly tides turned against me.
Water can instill a feeling of being distant and unlimited possibilities, but also a feeling of compatibility with our location, comfort and belonging.
Feeling dizzy, I wing the lukewarm electrolytes and the energy bars of the conveyor terminal, trying to do 41 miles towards a marina whose owner gave me permission to try. Jet-Skiers Wave, families picnic on the shore, the eagles slide above the green hills. At the twilight, fireworks broke out above – followed by lightning streaks, thunder cracks and a swirling wind, a sudden thunderstorm from the north. I swing tribord on Catskill Creek and I sprinkle towards a group of boats.
Cut my leash on a quay, I rush into a building. It turns out that it is the bar.
“We are closed,” says a woman who with money without the eye.
I’m waiting for three men sitting on stools, half full drinks in front of them.
“Can I just have a beer and wait for the storm?”
“Whadyya wants?”
Pint in hand, I answer a dam of regulars questions. Then: Retro and High Fives. One of the bonuses in the blue space, I discover, is camaraderie. Which can be my most bodily desire.
Science is clear that being in nature rejuvenates our body and our brain. Bouillée: We are more active, less anxious. And although it is difficult to differentiate between green and blue spaces, water seems to lead a multiplier effect.
People are The happiest in marine and coastal marginsA pair of British environment economists has determined, bringing together more than a million pings on their “Mappiness” application. Blue districts are “associated with lower psychological distress”, reports a paper in New Zealand. Take a sea – breathing in “bioactive compounds that can come from seaweed”, in the language of the Belgian biologist Jana ASSELMAN –seems to give a boost to our immune systems. The oceans, rivers and even urban fountains also offer possibilities for social interaction, suggests a review of Scottish literature, Kindling “A feeling of community support (and) mutual support between people. “The botter of all this is this time on water, especially in children, promotes”pro-environmental behavior. “In other words, take better care of the planet.
The blue space triggers our parasympathetic nervous system, the environmental psychologist at the University of Virginia, Jenny Roe, told me before leaving the house, which essentially says to the brain what our bodies do, then acts as a brake, attenuating the response to stress. Water can instill a feeling of being distant and unlimited possibilities, but also a feeling of compatibility with our location, comfort and belonging.
“A feeling of belonging is easy to ignore, unless you are on the water. Water slows us down.
Evolutionary, it makes sense. Even looking at a stream or a swimming pool, just reduce blood pressure and heart rate, a pair of researchers from the University of California, psychology concluded. They attribute the link, in part, to our ancestors successfully detecting drinking water in arid environments. The warning, of course, is that in the middle of all this restoration, the water can be perilous (floods, storms, drowning, illness). And this exhibition – to advantages and disadvantages – is far from fair. We cannot all allow ourselves to spend the summer on a sup.
Catskill Creek is peckled by the fog when I left the platform in the morning, but in a few minutes, the rising sun begins to burn, and I can distinguish my legs raised from the herons looking in the water for their breakfast. COO and chirp birds of the swampy fringe; Large herbs rustle in the breeze. Daily ablutions of nature, biomass breathing.
My own breathing falls into the flow and the distance arrives easily and in two hours, I stop for a swim next to a historic headlight where a panel with arrows pointing to various landmarks informs me that the statue of freedom is 103 miles away. The rest of my day follows a familiar primordial motif: paddle, swimming, song song, eating, drinking, sunscreen, paddle, swimming, sunscreen, birds, drinking, eating, paddle, swimming, paddle. I focus on basic and immediate tasks, and none of the stress that sent me to this river seems to have any importance. The blue space may not have eradicated my existential anxiety, but that tends me some things about balance and perspective. To focus on people and places where I’m right now.
In the early evening, I bind myself in front of the Hudson River Maritime Museum in Kingston, New York. Created to preserve the history of the region, the museum now strives to link visitors to this revitalized watershed and feed sustainable communities. “A feeling of belonging is easy to ignore, unless you are on the water,” said Director General Lisa Cline, showing me at the school construction school, where I will bury. “Water slows us down.”
His words resonate. The flow of cold drinks and homemade snacks and hugs and encouragement and teasing and safeguarding and curiosity and care at the open heart that I receive during this trip, a kaleidoscopic reduction of foreigners, would not seem possible on earth. It is perhaps the decelerated rhythm, or the ancestral memories of its dangers, but we tend to pay attention to each other in the water. And for me, this is a sufficient reason to continue to paddle.
Dan Rubinstein is the author of Water limited: a pilgrimage of 1,200 milesto be published in June 2025.