I took just three hours short sleep, and woke up at twelve midnight. After a preparation for departure, I paddled the kayak out from Warehouse Beach into the darkness in the Columbia River at 4:30 a.m. before dawn, relying on only a narrow light of a headlamp. I saw only very faint shadows of shore and island floating in the space.
I greeted the dawn on the river. The atmosphere fell completely silent with no wind, the earth who still slept did not make a single noise, and the water which did not sway was a mirror reflecting the sky. The morning sun was gradually emerging and told that only time was flowing in the world, as he was dyeing the sky and the water in dark red, both of which divided the world in exact half. If we experience the moment of a sunrise on a small kayak floating on water, our hearts get a wing.
For making a detour from McNary Dam which blocked my way as a massive man-made structure, I landed into a boat ramp. I tied up two simply-structured double-wheeled-kayak-carts with belts on a kayak-bottom for moving the kayak on the land. I started to push to wheel the kayak for a downstream of the dam, and then, first, went up a steep incline.
A weight of the kayak including loads was perhaps around 260 Pounds. Once the kayak is lifted from the water, like a stranded whale, we cannot see its graceful swim again. Since the double-wheeled-kayak-carts could not be tied up in exact parallel with the kayak, the kayak could not move in a straight line but moved in an arc and went off the road in a minute. I could advance only about twenty feet, and then, lifted the tip of the kayak with all my might and shifted in a horizontal direction for a directional correction. Along a gravel road ascending a hill, because not only the uphill road but narrow and tiny wheels stuck in the deep gravel, the kayak could not be wheeled easily although I brought the full power of my body together for pushing the kayak.
Because I was tired as I almost felt sick and then I felt the limits of my physical strength, I decided to pitch the tent in vast empty grassland beside the gravel road, although it was just vast and empty. The sun did not go down yet, but, since I began to take the action at twelve midnight, finally I was acting without a rest for fifteen hours.
