As seasons change and another calendar year ends, and as friends, family, things and activities come and go, we should be ever reminded that “time and tide wait for no man,” as so eloquently stated by Geoffrey Chaucer some seven hundred years ago. A mere fifty years ago the Rolling Stones agreed, singing “Time waits for no one, and it won’t wait for me.” It waits for none of us, so what do we do with ourselves as time hurries past?

In his 1854 book Walden, Henry David Thoreau described time as “but a stream I go a-fishing in.” His purpose was not to focus on the passage of
time but rather to consider how we use the time we have. Go “a-fishing.” Engage in life with enthusiasm and thoughtfulness. Thoreau encourages us to make something meaningful of time, not simply to produce things, but to slow down and revel in the experience of life. It’s not so much about the catching of a fish; it is about the experience of fishing and, moreover, the process of quiet reflection, whether anything rises to the hook or not.

Thoreau says of the stream, “I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but  eternity remains.” His stream, representing the slippery silent passage of time, is a common metaphor but Thoreau implores us look farther. He continues, “I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars.” He’s telling us that we would be wise to go beyond the shallow
stream and turn our gazes to new directions. Looking up, for example,
we find in the sky and the stars something much deeper and even more
fascinating.

Recently I sat down again by the stream and gazed at its ever-flowing current. It drifted my thoughts to people and places past, and to more of
them hopefully to come, but ultimately it whispered a reminder that the here and now is what really matters. As my nine years on the WCHA’s Board of Directors comes to a close, I recall that even while focusing on
immediate needs and working to solve problems, I reveled in the friends we’ve gathered together in this organization, and I appreciated every day our active mission to preserve wooden canoe history and heritage. It has been good, and I am grateful. Paddle on, my friends, with purpose and passion, and with mindful appreciation of the journey itself.