Logjams Not Traffic Jams: My Wild Kayak Commute (Part 2: Alewife Brook)

My kayak commute had started well. I’d carried my folded-up kayak across the street and a block to the river, then timed myself with my phone as I set it up, 10 minutes 26 seconds… Not bad since it was just second time I’d put it together! I paddled up the Mystic River and into Alewife brook in a world of green trees, herons, and birdsong… It was easy to forget the ‘urban’ part of this urban wilderness even though the highway was never more than 500 feet away from me… The trees blocked the sight of it, and the birds blocked the sound of it.

What price sanity?

“I hate this commute,” was all I could think as I sat in a river of stopped cars on my way home from work last week. “Why would anybody CHOOSE to do this?” I whined as the traffic jutted ahead 2 feet before stopping again. “I want to be hiking!” I screamed from inside my prison. I hated being confined to my metal box, but I’d sprained my ankle halfway up Old Speck on the Appalachian Trail in Southern Maine, and not just a little sprain, a severe sprain.