By Mary Fairchild The bride with her flower girls; Mirror Lake State Park Amphitheater, 10/25/14. Picture by John Nicholls. An outdoor wedding in the woods can be an incredible experience especially in the fall as the cooler days and cooler nights begin to open and reveal more and more of the landscape. The playfulness of crisp falling…
Category: Paddle/Hike/Play
Sea Kayaking Narragansett Bay: Native American Footpaths and Soul Freedom
By Mary Fairchild (Mfairlady.com) Audubon Society George B. Parker Woodland, Coventry, Rhode Island. “Williams(Roger), lacking the resources… got about by canoe, sometimes likely with a sail rigged…Canoeing, even in protected bays meant confronting sometimes breaking surf and routinely strong currents, heavy swells, whitecaps, and wind; occasional exposure to open ocean increased the danger exponentially.” (4; Barry, p….
Kayaking the Apostle Islands: Kennedys, Native Americans, Religion, and Myth
By Mary Fairchild Paddling around Eagle Island, 2009; the island is protected by Critical Species Natural Area. Last fall, on September 24th, Chequamegon Bay JFK Day marked Kennedy’s visit to the Apostle Islands area thirty years ago (Sept. 24, 1963). Chequamegon was applied to the region by traders and missionaries which derives from a Chippewa(Ojibwe) word, shagwaumikong, meaning soft beaver dam….
Ladies of the Lake Sea Kayak Symposium: Details, Details, Details
By Mary Fairchild Can you feel the energy in this picture? That’s how our two days looked–everyone was beaming and having a lot of fun. Flickr Pictures Coach Bonnie Perry psyching up our group(above) before we head to the lake on our first day of training at the Ladies of the Lake Sea Kayak Symposium 2013….
Surfing My First Hole at Piers Gorge
By Mary Fairchild Sara Hartman, Ron Laird, Mary Fairchild, Alex Reily, Walter Afable, and Ryan Rushton; Terminal Surfer; July 26, 2013; 1800 CFS. Picture courtesy: Kat Kulchinski. Intentional hole and wave surfing are the bulk of what river runners call play. It means stopping at a river feature and exploring what it has to offer….
SUP on the Mississippi: Locks, Lilies, and…. Surf
By Mary Fairchild Mudd Lake just north of Dubuque 8/6/13; Big River SUPtours; SUP the Mag. It is strange how little has been written about the Upper Mississippi. …Along the Upper Mississippi every hour brings something new. There are crowds of odd islands, bluffs, prairies, hills, woods and villages–everything one could desire to amuse the children….