Haiku IV

Mosquitos at Dawn

Whine desperate for blood:

The birds are silent.

The Coach

Photo credits: Paul Munton

Why is it that some people always look good in a kayak? Here are two photographs of Dennis who coached Hal and Josephine on the Tryweryn in July 2006.



Look at that stretch

Look at that committment which, paradoxically, manages to be relaxed at the same time... as he prepares for a dry head roll...

If you want to be coached by this man try http://www.kayakojacko.plus.com/start/


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Kayak and White Water Phobia.

Have you ever had a fear of white water and of kayaking?

Have you ever just wanted to escape?


Credit: Paul Munton.
Hugh Woods (well in control) on the Tryweryn, Wales, July 2006.

How is a phobia acquired and how is it overcome?

During an attempt to master the Trywerin during May 2005 I took a swim down a rapid known as The Graveyard. It is called The Graveyard because it has a lot of black rocks sticking out amongs the swirling foam and they look like gravestones. Before I got out my thigh hit a rock; by evening I could hardly walk; two days later the bruise had come out on the opposite side of my leg to where the blow had occured. I was off walking and much else for six weeks. In August I took another swim on a fast rapid on a river in the Pyrenees, the Noguera Pallasera. Although unhurt physically the experience was traumatic and I could not get back in my kayak. (It is generally agreed that it is best to get straight back into one's kayak after a bad swim if this is possible). In December the sight of minor rapids on the Usk in Wales filled me with anxiety and I felt unable to kayak the first day of a weekend, instead I spent a day just watching the water and having a quiet pint. Just saying no made me feel more relaxed and in control. On the second day I was able to kayak a part of the river which was mostly just drops. A trainee coach (Elmo) had said to me the previous evening "How about doing some drops?" I automatically replied "yes" and immediatly realised it was specifically swirly white water over rocks that was the source of my anxiety. In December I managed a day sea surfing but had had enough after one day. In January I was unable to paddle with my club because of a dislocated little finger. I supported the group by doing car runs and again I watched the water and thought about how one might approach particular rapids. At Easter I managed two runs of the Ceou, a small river, in easy grade II water and two days later went on the Gorges de la Vezere in rising water. The volume increased by over one third during the paddle and by the end it was some of the biggest water I had ever done. I swam once but it was not traumatic. Nevertheless I was pleased to have felt in control but still anxious at the thought of doing it again, so did not do so. I was stimulated enough to write an haiku about the trip. In July I watched my wife and son do a coached weekend on the Trywerin and felt nervous at the sight of the water but as I studied it and thought how I might deal with it, the water seemed to slow down and become less threatening. In August I paddled the Tarn twice which is easy, and then some grade 3 on the Orbe, a short technical rocky run which I repeated half an hour later. Two days later we moved to the Allier, a beautiful river which was new to us. I did the 2+ 3 run on this and felt well in control and enjoyed the beauty of the river. In the night I had a dream about kaying in which I emerged through an open door on to a river. In the morning I felt very relaxed and from then on I have had no anxiety thinking about white water.

The process seems to be: 1. being able to say "no!" at any time to any kayak trip 2. to watch white water in a relaxed frame of mind and from a secure place and think about how one would deal with it in a kayak; 3. identify which elements of the experience generate anxiety; 4. gradually work back up the grades of water, feeling confident on each in turn but remembering to say no if it seems likly to regenerate anxiety. 5. Maximise all the accompanying pleasures of kayaking at all times, ie. the beauty of the scenery, diversity of the wildlife and of course the pleasures of being with friends.

If anyone else has suffered this problem I hope these comments will be useful. It took two serious swims to generate my phobia and a year of work to overcome it.

Paul Munton

Of Moles and Men.

My neighbour Patrick looks after the walnut trees. He has an orchard of 400 splendid trees which he tends, preventing anything much growing underneath them as these trees do not like competition. He looks after our few trees too and last year complained that we had too many moles and the mole-hills were breaking the cutters on his mowing machine. Would we please get rid of them? It was time for a crisis of concience, of choosing between the needs of the local wildlife that live with us and the tradition of the maintenance of the partrimoine in the traditional manner.

One evening, after a few months of appropriately agonised reflection, I put an old metal wastepaper basket in the ground below a recently used mole tunnel in the hope that the creature would fall into the wastepaper basket and I could move the creature elsewhere. Early the next morning I crept out, lifted the lid on the hole I had dug and found the wastepaper basket had been backfilled by the mole, such that it was now two thirds full of earth and any mole could easily scrambled out. The small creature responsible had moved many times its own mass of earth. Had there been a dramatic rescue of mole A from the trap by doughty digger mole B, or was it just the natural response of a mole to a chasm appearing beneath a runway, fill it in? Clearly I had been outwitted.

My next idea was to go into town to see what the local agricultural co-operative offered. Here I encountered a whole new world of magic realism. Every form of cruelty that human kind is capable of has been devoted to the destruction of this delightful creature - the mole. There were breakback traps to be inserted in the creatures burrows; there were sound systems to make life intolerable by blasting certain unpleasant frequencies through their living space; there were mechanisms for blowing them up using explosives and of course there were poisons and baits. There was even a video showing a man fitting an explosive charge and sensor in a burrow leaving an opening to the air above. This was followed by a lengthy description of how the mole would push a mass of earth along its burrow to fill the opening, in doing so it would trigger the explosive charge. The owner of the lawn was then shown retreating to a deck chair to read his magazine whilst the poor mole was exploded by the develish device (cost about 55 Euros including a set of six explosive charges).

The diversity of method clearly showed that men and moles have had a long and difficult relationship. I felt like someone who has had revealed to him some dark family secret. I should have known better, after all, in my childhood walks in the bosky Hampshire countryside I had once come upon evidence of an atrocity: I counted 19 dead moles tied to a fence wire, evidence to the landowner that the gamekeeper or farm labourer had been doing his job properly and the clumsy cows in the adjacent field would no longer trip over the mole-hills or break their legs by putting their feet down holes.

In the end I distributed a bit of bait and asked them to leave the field of walnuts. By the end of summer the field showed almost no signs of mole activity but the garden was a mass of molehills and shallow tunnels grooved the lawn. They are welcome there, who cares about a flat lawn when they can instead support these silken coated wonders of nature?

Paul Munton.