"Lake" Nippenicket is a little over a mile long.
I've spent less time on the water this boating season than any since I launched my first boat in '05. This is partly due to the graduate courses I've been taking, and the boat-building day camp I ran in July. But it's also an odd side-effect of my being without a job: I'm just a little off-balance, and feeling I can't take a real vacation without having a job to take a vacation from. So big trips (like a week around Cape Cod in the Beatrice Ann) are off the table, and smaller trips (like hanging out in New Bedford Harbor using Surprise as a sort of shanty-boat) are waiting.
But.
Less than fifteen minutes from my driveway is a pond that glories in the name "Lake Nippenicket." Never mind that it doesn't fit the definition of a lake (deep enough that light doesn't reach the bottom somewhere)--it isn't even a large pond. But it is pretty, with little coves some wild shoreline and a few islands that make it possible to get quite lost. And its accessible.
Today I put my little store-bought kayak Speedbump on the roof of the Corolla. Five minutes after I shut the car off I was paddling away from the ramp. I spent an hour-and-a-half paddling at a relaxed pace around the pond. I drifted amongst the water lilies and milfoil, past banks with marsh grasses or willows. I paddled by houses large and small and wondered what it would be like to live in this one, with its expanses of glass, broad deck, and kayaks on the little dock, or the little summer house with comfy chairs on a patio overhanging a little cove.
The far end of the pond is surrounded by wild land--some of it wetlands, some of it conservation area. It makes a nice contrast to the time spent slipping through people's backyards and admiring their homes.
Seeing a landing and signs of a recent campfire, I stopped just long enough to stretch my legs at what a large stone announced was the Harry C. Darling Wildlife Management Area. Soon it was time to abandon the circumnavigation (just beyond the halfway point) to get back in time to meet my son coming home from school. I paddled back vigorously in building wind and little waves.
A motorcyclist greeted me at the ramp with, "made a good decision." I looked over my shoulder to see a cartoon-style thundercloud--the sort Thor's fist might explode out of at any moment. "It was time to come in anyway," I said. "My back can't take too much at a time."
As I tied the boat on the roof, he ambled over. "You just put it up there like that and go? "You carried it that easy with a bad back?"
"It only weighs 25 or 30 pounds," I said. "Takes maybe 5 minutes to load or unload. But don't hit a rock with it." He laughed. "And it's cheap--the boat only cost a couple hundred on sale."
He shared a bit of his philosophy of life, and the need for solitude, which I readily agreed with. He eyed the pond appreciatively. I've got to try that," he said. I nodded.
This is a "vacation" you can take any time--almost at a moment's notice. No days of planning, no shopping for supplies, no hours packing and readying the boat, driving an hour or more to a saltwater ramp, another hour to get under way, then a good day to clean-up when you get home. With the little kayak, I can be paddling less than half an hour after I think of it, and drinking coffee 20 minutes after I touch the ramp once more. The big boat takes me on big adventures to faraway places; the planning and remembering are part of the adventure and there is no substitute for the challenge--not to mention bragging rights--of real adventure. But sometimes, in between big adventures, the right faraway place can be close to home, and as easy as thought.
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