No need to get excited–just another day at the office. This office has unpredictable air conditioning and a great view.

That's me out doing fieldwork for more landscape paintings. The canoe is still the most practical mode of transport for this, at least around here.

Whether I really want to be a professional landscape painter, or a professional canoeist, is not entirely clear in my mind.

The canoe provides an efficient way to gather images of the water, rock, and trees that make up much of this land. But every new painting is also a great excuse to pack up and head for the nearest river or lake.

Do I paddle so I can paint, or paint so I can paddle?

Whichever way it is, the canoe is important to me, both in my creative work and as an enchanting aspect of life that stands very well on its own.

"The perfect machine", it has been called, though one hardly thinks of it in mechanical terms. The perfect shape, perhaps? It surely is the perfect way to move yourself and just enough gear to be truly comfortable.

The next few paragraphs are for people who have experience with canoes–and maybe just a small subset of those.

As you saw in the picture at the top of this page, I paddle a solo open canoe with a double-bladed paddle. It is not something I invented, but I did work out, on my own, how best to do it.

The rationale is to retain the flexibility and comfort of the open boat, and combine it with kayak-like solo paddling efficiency.

Where I live, absolutely no one paddles this way, or has even thought about paddling this way, apparently.

Over at our neighbours' to the south, some people do paddle this way. I have personally met only one or two, but then, I don't get out in the southern direction as often.

About a hundred years ago, paddling open or partly decked solo canoes with double-bladed paddles was commonplace. So, what happened?

If you paddle a solo canoe and use this style, I would enjoy hearing from you. How, where, and why?

(Traditional "Rob Roy" and "Wee Lassie" boat designs, and more modern ones like my 14-foot Jensen, all qualify.)