By Merisa Sherman
A few lights litter the shoreline across the way, seemingly more like super bright fireflies than the building that they truly are. Different colors, ranging from white to yellow to red, mark the hillside and the farthest location along the 360 degree outline of the mountain range. The dark hillside seems more like a black and blue painting, as the green mountains turn black in the darkness while the ridgeline sky is a bright sunset blue.
Looking farther upward, the sky darkens to the deepest of blues the color of deep space. True stars glitter in the sky, their reflections sparkling in the calm waters below. There is nothing else around but sky and mountain and water as I float in the middle of the largest planetarium I have ever imagined.
The moon reflects off the ash gunwales of the canoe, the light so bright that you could see the grains of wood of my paddle. Below the boat, is a reservoir full of stars and I cannot decide whether to just stay here in the middle of the lake and float along or whether to paddle amongst these stars.
A mirror on itself, above water level and below. You cannot tell where the water ends and the sky begins, which is why we were told as children never to swim in the dark. Because you can’t tell which way is up and you end up swimming in the wrong direction, drawing as you swim to the bottom of the lake.
It’s why I had my life jacket on. Besides the fact that I was literally the only person on the reservoir. There were no other lights level with my canoe and I felt I could see forever into the darkness. I had no idea where the shoreline was, and I have faith that as I paddled in the direction of the boat launch, I would eventually be able to see the rocky beach glistening in the moonlight.
But I was camping that night, my tent set up nestled into the treeline just off the shore. I was desperate to keep warm as the temperature randomly dropped closer to the freezing point than it had in a long time. Of course that’s the night I picked to solo camp on the reservoir, the first cold night in weeks. But as I looked out across the lake, the cold had done something magical. The water was perfectly flat, like a bottomless glass floor. The sky was crisp and clear, the moon was almost full and everything was perfect. Despite the warning in my head, I chose to get back in my canoe and paddle around in the darkness under the moonlight.
Paddling across the glassy reservoir at night can be disorienting in the best of ways.
The night was perfection. I paddled around and around, my canoe cutting gracefully through the starry sky. Floating along in a planetarium globe. A clear, starry night on the water is the the closest I believe one can come to floating around in deep space.
According to an interview in Scientific American with Dr. George M. Pantalos, a cardiovascular and thoracic explorer astronaut, a zero gravity atmosphere feels like “floating in water without the feeling of water on your skin. Because you feel so light, you can move about with the slightest bit of effort.” And I have never read a more apt description of paddling on crystal clear flat water than that.
Is that what we are as paddlers? Are we the future of space travel, used to the weightless floating sensation of traveling on water like in situations of zero gravity, making us the perfect people to choose for space travel? Should I have become an astronaut instead of a ski bum? That is an interesting thought to ponder as we watched the lunar eclipse this morning. Should I be out there amongst the stars instead of sitting here in a canoe floating on the water?
But those are questions for another lifetime. For now, I will simply enjoy the feeling of my paddle slicing through the water as the stars surround me not in 360 degrees but in the 64,442 degrees of a sphere or 41,253 square degrees (I did not do the math myself). That is amazing. To be sitting here, in the middle of a lake surrounded by nothing but the feeling of deep space in all directions. How can we not take the opportunity to experience such magical moments when they come along?
I can only presume that we must, which is why I ended up in the middle of the Chittenden Reservoir in the middle of the night surrounded by stars and a never-ending ridgeline of green mountains. Oh man, I cannot wait to ride those ridges in my snowmobile this winter! Braaappp!!!
