By Mary Fairchild At the CASKA gathering last night, held at Chicago’s Jackson Park Yacht Club, I had a chance to catch up with Gary Steinbauer. Gary and I attended some of our first kayaking with the club together in 201l. We’ve both paddled not only Lake Michigan, but the whitewater park in Yorkville which had just opened in 2011. Taking…
Category: Paddle
Kayaking With Team River Runner on Armed Forces Day
By Mary Fairchild (Craig Esposito [upside down] teaching the bow rescue to a veteran at Menomonee Park, Menomonee Falls, Wi.) I needed to fill out the questionnaire for this event last week when I first saw it on Facebook on the CASKA page which read, “Please help us get two more RSVPs for this event…Adaptive paddling–kayakers wanted.” For…
Baja Winter Kayak Expedition: Wind, Waves, and Lipstick
By Mary Fairchild Loreto Bay National Marine Park. Pictures on Mfairlady Flickr here. Our trip began in the little seaside fishing village of Loreto where we had breakfast together in a local restaurant with a local Chihuahua that sat near our table while I caught up on the local news in the “Gringo Gazette.” The waters around Loreto and the…
Adaptive Paddling: Drawing a Line in the Sand
By Mary Fairchild Bay Cliff Health Camp “Camp Yes I Can” tucked up in beautiful Big Bay, Michigan on Lake Superior. Sam Crowley and Nancy Uschold of Sea Kayak Specialists, in nearby Marquette, have been a part of the Bay Cliff Health Camp kayaking program since 1994. In September they will be teaching a 4-day ACA…
Cultural Ecology of the Atlantic Coast: Shell Middens and Ancient Tidal Forests
By Mary Fairchild (Dungeness ; Cumberland Island.) It was just a year ago that I had first stumbled across some ancient scattered shells by the Carnegie Ruins on Cumberland Island and couldn’t stop thinking about them… Cultural ecology is a map of relationships between living things and their group dynamics over time. The Dungeness Historic District on Cumberland Island(pictured) and the…
St. Patrick’s Day: Kayaking on the Chicago River
By Mary Fairchild My daughter and I had a bird’s-eye view as we were herded over the bridges along with some 350,000 others who came out for the annual St. Patrick’s Day festivities including the dyeing of the Chicago River this past Saturday. The paddle tour was organized by Paddle & Trail, Geneva Kayak, and CASKA (Chicago Area Sea Kayakers Assoc.). Kayak instructor Mark…