against the flow

View from my hotel in Louny.

The river ahead; from Kadan into the hills of western Bohemia...

Things got a little tight on my portage through Kadan.

The massive dam spillway I had to get around and over to get to the lake.

Parked my canoe for a bite to eat.

Too tired to smile for the camera.

The embankment from hell.

Ah yes, the serene beauty of a canoe cutting gracefully through the water...

Not too much to report on this leg of the journey, except my own thoughts, which is about all i have left to me now.

Four days of hard slogging from Louny have brought me to Kadan. I came down with a little flu bug (i bet i picked it up from a 2-litre plastic bottle filled with draft beer i shared with a couple of boys at a portage), which knocked me out for my day off in Louny (i'm sure this is no coincidence - illness with me will usually wait until i have a moment to spare for it), then sapped my energy for the next two days of journeying. Together with the rainy, cool weather, this was the low point of the trip so far. But then my strength returned and i actually started to enjoy the struggle against the current. there's something satisfying about going where - or in a direction - you're not supposed to. And my body is starting to feel like it might be shifting into a higher gear, getting accustomed to this new physical regime i'm putting it through. I don't wake up in pain anymore.

I had what was probably my most physically challenging day yet yesterday. It began with the usual upriver paddle, for 4km. Then I dragged Sarka and everything else up a steep concrete embankment (see photo), then up a rocky path, then along a level bit for about 4km, then up and over a high man-made embankment holding back a lake. Then I paddled across said lake, for about 10km (this was the easy part of the day). Then had lunch. Then paddled for another 7km upriver, through a new kind of rapids: these ones had less water in them, but were full of bigger rocks, so even though i could paddle into the current, i'd invariably get caught up on rocks.

Then I came upon a stretch of four dams in about as many kilometres, and was happy to find a trail along the side of the river that took me past them all - almost. After walking my canoe through Kadan (and stopping for the best spaghetti carbonera of my life at a riverside restaurant), i had to paddle across the river to find the portage for the last dam. I set up my tent in the last of the light.

Now I'm enjoying a day off in Kadan. I had another plate of spaghetti carbonera for lunch.

Having said all this, what I've been thinking about lately is, well, the same thing I've been thinking about for years, which could be summed up as the 'excitement of discomfort versus the bordom of comfort'. And again, the book I've been reading, "Haunted", by Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk, sheds much light on this subject. It's about a group of people who go on a writers retreat but get locked there, and then they all go about trying to make the experience as agonizing as possible for themselves so that, when they are rescued, they'll have a great story to tell and will be famous, loved, rich, etc. It's basically what I'm doing to myself with this trip. I know that the more misadventures i have (enter Vikki?), the better story I'll have in the end. Palahniuk takes the idea further, basically saying that humans in general love pain, suffering, drama, stuff to happen, and they love flaunting their suffering for others to see. he (or a character in the book) makes the analogy that the earth is like a big rock polisher, and we're the rocks, banging together for years and years until all our hard edges are worn off, and we're smooth, refined. He implies that then, when we've reached this stage of enlightenment, we can finally just sit back and enjoy life. He says this takes many lifetimes to accomplish.

I'd say that humans, as a group, are not headed for any spiritual enlightenment. But individually, for one human lifetime, his metaphor does makes sense to me. as we get older, we do, hopefully, get our hard edges worn down by the drama in our lives. And maybe after enough of this suffering, we're wise enough to find all the enjoyment we need looking at a flock of birds, or whatever turns your fancy, and no longer need to seek out difficulty.

But until then, I know that I still need at least the occasional injection of struggle and strife that a trip like this provides for myself. And i know that it will help me be a much happier person when i return to my real life.