By Mary Chellis Austin
Until a few weeks ago, the last time I’d sat in a kayak was when I was 15, and a storm rolled through a calm Florida bay and thrust a friend and me out into the choppy Gulf of Mexico. My biceps, though strong from years of field hockey, hardly stood a chance. My mother recalls the situation, saying I became a dot on the horizon. After eons (OK, maybe 30 minutes), a family spotted us from their motorboat and took us to shore. Needless to say, I wasn’t ready to get back on the paddle again for a long time. But recently, when I heard that you could casually glide along Harrods Creek, I felt ready to test the water.
On an overcast Friday afternoon, my fiancé and I show up to Nachand Canoe and Kayak, which rents boats ($30-$50 for four hours) from the dock at Darkstar Tavern near the intersection of Wolf Pen Branch and River roads. Now in their third summer of business (the place was previously River City Canoe and Kayak), Brittany Nachand and her son Anthony Blankenship run the 30-boat operation, though he does most of the “muscle work,” Nachand says. Blankenship hands us paddles and life vests, pushes us out in a tandem kayak and gives us the sole instruction not to go out onto the Ohio River. I think to myself, No worries there!
We head upstream past marinas with boat names such as On River Time, My Mate and, from Kona, Hawaii, Ona Ona Honu. One fork takes us underneath the construction of the East End bridge (scheduled to open to traffic by the end of the year). This part’s noisy and littered, but down the main path, which runs all the way to Henry County, we find wildlife — hens and their ducklings, turtles lounging on logs, and several blue herons hunting for fish — and the to-do lists leave my mind.
“On a couple occasions I’ve seen a bald eagle,” Nachand says later. “This grassy area will flood and fish come and get stuck and the eagle comes and eats the fish.”
We paddle to the mouth next to Captain’s Quarters and curiously nose out onto the river just enough to see the new bridge, which is little more than a few towers right now. The taste of the open river is enough to make my stomach drop like it did when I was on the ocean. I vigorously get us back on the creek to hang out with the turtles and the fish and the birds, where, for me, paddling is peaceful.
This originally appeared in the June 2016 issue of Louisville Magazine. To subscribe to Louisville Magazine, click here. To find you very own copy of Louisville Magazine, click here.
