shifting perspectives

By: Kim Nesbitt

By KAVU

November 26^th, 2019

Nov. 2019 - far from home

I was 18 when I left the flat lands of the US east coast for "bigger" adventures in the mountains of Colorado. Recently however, I’ve found myself in the low-country of the American south.... and missing my mountains.

To fight that mountain nostalgia, I teamed up with fellow adventure-seekers Emily and Nick for a paddleboard camping weekend getaway in Bladen County, North Carolina.

Emily and I have guided in Alaska together, and Nick is born and raised North Carolinian.

And...... no getaway is complete without (wo)man’s best friend!

So, Beau came along too.....

even though he snuck into my food cache and ate all my sausage!

the mysterious Bladen Lakes

It astounds me how little we know about our own backyard. No one knows how Bladen Lakes were formed, although I did hear one conspiracy theory involving aliens.

Other theories involve meteors, groundwater seeping up through the Earth’s crust, and leftover water from the receding Atlantic. But who knows?

Maybe they were created by aliens.

The best part of these lakes, interestingly enough, is how murky they are. Not much can live in the acidic water, and all the tannins that seep up from the peat underneath make the water look like tea you’ve let steep for too long.

Not pleasant to swim in, but it makes for some incredible reflections!

Human-powered watercraft is my favorite way to explore coastal environments. No motors, no extra noise, and it forces you to go slowly and really appreciate all the nuances that make one particular area special. My new favorite part of this area are these bald-cypress trees coming out of the black water.

race to inflate

Friendly competition ensued to see who could inflate the paddleboards the fastest!

In North Carolina, if you want to ensure you won’t encounter other humans in the forest, go camping during a weekend with a freeze warning. One of the state park rangers kept warning us about the freeze warning, but I passed it off saying that I just came from Alaska......

.... we’ll be fine!

Sleeping outside in the cold also makes the next morning’s breakfast burritos taste so much better;-)

Finding our crew to be the only ones exploring these mysterious lakes...... we were either the most hardcore or the dumbest. Ha ha ha!

With sunset around 5:30pm, we ended up on the wrong side of the lake as it quickly got dark..... and without headlamps, we paddled back to find the state’s friendliest park ranger looking for us with a spotlight from her Jeep. Apparently, the cars that looked abandoned were a source of worry in a part of the country that doesn’t often get below freezing.

pretty sweet backyard!

Well.... the Carolinas may not have huge mountains, fjords, or snow but, they just require a perception shift relative to all of the awesome stuff to do! The gorgeous trees with their roots systems sticking out of a perfectly reflective body of water doesn’t happen many other places!

Of course, great company makes a huge difference too;-)

For a long time, I was so focused on getting as far away from here as possible, but now that I’ve spent some quality KAVU time here, it’s..... for sure.... a pretty sweet place to be.