Waves and Wheels and Waves: A four-day, 108 mile, doorstep kayak adventure off the coast of Connecticut and Rhode Island gives me the opportunity to surf, contemplate connection, and think about my role in the burgeoning climate apocalypse.

Waves from Tropical Storm Henri approach Rhode Island's Charlestown Breachway

Doorstep adventure: Noun. An adventure in which the traveler refuses to use motorized transportation, usually for personal and environmental reasons.

 

Quick Stats:

Start/stop: Ledyard, Connecticut

Farthest point out: Narragansett Rhode Island

Elapsed adventure time: four days, three, nights.

Total distance paddled: 86 miles

Total distance portaging, jogging, walking, biking: 22 miles

Total distance: 108 miles.

Key terms: Doorstep adventure, kayak wheels, tropical storm, kayak surfing, William Butler Yeats, breachway, climate change, connection, disconnection, The Extended Mind, seal, dorsal fin.

Click here for an interactive map

 Part One: A Widening Gyre

The nose of my fiberglass sea kayak met the fist of the furious ocean.

A hard rain pocked holes in the whitecapped waves. To the right, the Rhode Island beachfront was a pitched battle where looming giants toppled into angry froth. On the left lay thousands of miles of open water. The tropical storm was yet days away from landfall, but it made its presence known.

I was three days into my self-supported, kayak doorstep adventure from southeastern Connecticut into Narragansett Bay. I had only recently beat a path through the surf to get offshore. Sanctuary lay only a few miles ahead in sheltered Ninigret Pond. Paddling those miles would test the limits of my skill.

For all the adrenaline that had marked my surf launch, I was surprised to find lethargy creeping in. The agitated water left no stable frame of reference, leaving me exhausted, disoriented, disembodied. The drifting sensation was even more frightening than the waves.

I started bellowing songs, then reciting poems at top volume. (No need to be embarrassed; no one on shore would hear.)

The words of William Butler Yeats fit:

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre…”

That would be the storm, I thought.

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”

 

Apocalyptic words resonate with our times. Unsurprisingly, many writers have wedded Yeats’s themes of gathering chaos and subjugation to current events—i.e. the fall of Kabul.

Disaster piles on disaster. We’re left feeling disembodied, as psychically disoriented as I felt discombobulated by the churning sea. It is as if we were only seeing a movie about terrible events unfolding, with no part to play except to watch.

I felt helpless rage at the western wildfire smoke that dimmed New England skies. Here was more evidence that we are far from in control; we can hold back neither fire nor rising water. Things have fallen apart. The gyre will carry us where it pleases.

We have only entered the outside circle of the sizzling hell that climate change has prepared. Yet, instead of slamming the brakes, many are stomping the gas pedal. Come heat wave, come storm, come fire, they’ve got a full tank, AC and places to go. The highways are jammed again; the sky full of planes, carbon trailing in their wakes.

 

The need to connect with nature is, in fact, much deeper than the vapid pursuit of selfies. Nature is linked to our profoundest, most spiritual selves. This is not cliché, but science. I have encountered some of the most persuasive arguments for this truth via Ann Murphy Paul’s recent book, The Extended Mind. Paul’s research shows that people who experience awe, perhaps a waterfall or double rainbow, exhibit greater empathy and willingness to help others.

Critically, the book pointed me to the three-day effect. This principle holds that nature’s greatest psychological benefits tend to accrue to those who can get out in nature for three days or more — ideally, while disconnected from electronics. Nature, to paraphrase Edward Abbey, is not a luxury; it is the foundation of a good life.

The fundamental question: How can we fulfill our need to connect with nature without harming it?

My compromise has been the doorstep adventure (see above definition.) I accept the added effort and time dealing with traffic, as well as other irritants I’m trying to escape.

Not only would I ditch the car, I would have to find campsites on a heavily developed shore.

Despite these obstacles, the four-day trip presented an opportunity to utilize the three-day effect and still have one day left over. I intended to detach from noise and make fresh connections with nature. However, although I eliminated the car, I couldn’t eliminate the pavement. This created conflicts with some of the very systems I sought to escape — roads, crowds, noise. I hoped that four days would nonetheless provide lessons and renewal.

Launch in Old Mystic

 

Part II: Conviction

So, who is willing to roll a 16-foot sea kayak down four miles of asphalt while dodging traffic in 90-degree heat?

It’s a rhetorical question.

It was Day 0 of my doorstep adventure: Preparation.

I had to roll the kayak from Ledyard to Old Mystic on a makeshift cart. Here, my future landlord has been kind enough to let me store a boat near the river. Ledyard was still the doorstep, still the official starting line. I wouldn’t a roof rack to get the kayak to the water; but would experience every mile with my body.

“That’s just ridiculous,” a bystander told me as I wheeled the boat past houses.

“Thank you for your opinion,” I replied.

 

The morning of August 17, I left Ledyard by bicycle for an easy ride into Old Mystic. Here I loaded the kayak and eased it over a seawall to the head of the river.

The stress of trip preparation floated off my shoulders as I started paddling with the ebbing tide between rows of marsh grass. The favorable current carried me into downtown Mystic. From there, I entered Fishers Island Sound, and then skirted Little Narragansett Bay for Napatree Point in Rhode Island.

Blue skies were dappled with wispy mackerel scale clouds. These made beautiful, undulating reflections on the silky seas. Such clouds also meant that fair weather had an expiration date. There was a tropical storm brewing to the south. I would be ending the trip just before it made landfall.

 

Protected water met open ocean at Napatree Point. The area is in fact, one of the passages between Long Island Sound and the Atlantic. An outgoing tide tussled with incoming swell, provoking mild waves into sharp breakers.

I was hungry for excitement. I deliberately steered the boat over a shallow sandbar. I carefully watched a building wave on my left side, only to have a different wave break on my right and carry me for a sideways ride through chest-deep froth.

I had no sooner caught my bearings when I was startled by an enormous splash beside the boat. The water writhed with baitfish.

Swift along the bottom swam the striped bass; some of the bass were the length of my arm, all harassing and snapping at their prey.

Thrash! Bite! Bite!

Sets of teeth lunged for the surface, setting more terrific splashes.

I moved my hands closer on the paddle to keep my fingers out of the water.

 

Beyond Napatree the horizon was wide open. Block Island was a gray smudge, 10 miles offshore.

On my other side, lay the wealthy beach enclave of Watch Hill, guarded by a lighthouse at the end of a peninsula. I wove through a rock garden as big waves crashed. There was the nearby Ocean House hotel—a sprawling, Victorian-era spectacle of sweeping balconies and turrets, done up in sunny yellow paint and ivory trim.

You also may have heard of singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. She owns Holiday House, on an adjoining hill—featured in her song The Last Great American Dynasty.

The hot weather drew bustling crowds to the sand. The sounds of hooting swimmers and laughing kids drifted over the roar of surf. I could practically smell the sunscreen. Watch Hill Beach was thronged, as was its eastern neighbor, Misquamicut.

Farther east, crowds dispersed. I startled a bevy of black oystercatchers, distinguished by pointed orange bills. A loon, in its less familiar gray and white colors, floated in the water nearby and reproached me with a warble.

 

I reached the East Beach Campground at around 2:30. My shoulders were already sore from about 19 miles of paddling. How I looked forward to watching dark waves roll onto shore through the flames of a driftwood fire!

No such luck.

This campground, along with the nearby Charlestown Beach Campground, were reserved only for RVs. It sure was a scenic place to run the generator and admire the rising, acidifying ocean.

I don’t blame the state of Rhode Island specifically for its doorstep-hostile set of policies. It is just one more example of how systems prioritize automobiles at the expense of simpler forms of recreation. There was a logic to it. RV-ers, with their need for hook-ups and sewage pump outs, were bound to spend more money than dirtbag tent campers.

Plus, there were hordes of these high rollers in rolling boxes, a base which started growing fast amid the pandemic. If an occasional oddball with a tent felt put out, it wouldn’t hurt the bottom line.

I was not entirely out of luck, however. I could still paddle another seven (uggh!) miles followed by a two-mile portage up to Burlingame State Park.

Ninigret Pond as seen from shore

 

I would paddle into Ninigret Pond, one of several vast salt ponds on Rhode Island’s coast. These are separated from the ocean by glacier-created barrier beaches. Ponds and ocean are no longer as separated as they once were; now they connected by breachways, built in the early- to mid-20^th century. The breachways are essentially trenches cut through the beaches and fortified by riprap. The breachways let boat traffic in and out, along with ocean water. The ponds are now much saltier than they had been in the past, changing the ponds’ unique ecology.

The tidal currents at a breachway can get strong enough to send a paddler backwards. My luck was in today because the flood tide was with me. I shot through the opening like a canister in a vacuum tube.

The breachway carried me into Ninigret Pond. Ninigret, named for an Eastern Niantic sachem from the 1600s, is three and a half miles long, Rhode Island’s biggest salt pond. Its shallow, murky bottom is an important resource for birds and sea life. The Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge lies on the north shore.

Several fishing egrets dawdled in the shallows near the breachway in a receiving line. There were also plenty of speedboats and a shell fishing fleet, crab traps on their roofs. The boats buzzed in and out from a marina on the west side of the pond, where I planned to land.

 

I pulled up to an underused corner of the marina and spent a few minutes reassembling my makeshift cart. Finally, I began trundling the boat toward the campground. The route took me along the busy Boston Post Road, against a current of speeding vehicles. The divided highway forced me to go a quarter mile out of my way before I could cross at a traffic light. It’s ironic how roads meant to connect us to places can also separate us from them. Even with the breakdown lane, it was profoundly uncomfortable having speeding cars zooming feet away. After that, it was an uphill climb to the campground.

The sites were almost exclusively taken up by RVs and pull-behind campers. One of the tenants treated the neighborhood to a curated selection of ’80s power ballads. This on top of the hour of pulling the kayak along roads had me in a hostile state of mind. Could there be no peace?

I relaxed somewhat as I set up the tent and prepared dinner, satisfied to have the parts fall into place. I wasn’t camped under a tarp, which meant that I was actually glamping. Flavored ramen topped the evening menu, garnished with kale and tomatoes (both home-dehydrated, both home-grown) cooked over an alcohol stove. The weather was too hot for my sleeping bag, so I stretched out on top.

Camp at Burlingame

 

Part III: Surf and Meditation

I started rolling the kayak down the road to Ninigret at sunrise.

I launched at 8:00, just in time to catch the outgoing tide. I enjoyed a fast ride through the breachway. Opposing waves produced a chaotic churn of two- and three-foot breakers: the perfect play zone. I took the first of many goof-off sessions that day, riding waves and getting soaked.

I ended by letting the current carry me offshore, then rejoined the eastbound ebb. The waves were only a foot or so high, but were stacked higher at surf spots. I was about a stone’s throw off the beach when one freak wave sent me on a bouncing ride into the shallows.

 

I passed several long breaks outside the village of Matunuck.

“It’s like the West Coast of the East Coast,” according to the surfing megadatabase Surfline.com.

I tried surfing in a couple different places, but the best fun lay farther east. Here, a guy on a stand-up paddleboard took swooping, graceful rides on belly-high waves. My sea kayak took to the surf like a kid’s toboggan on a hill. The rides were ridiculously long, perhaps a hundred yards. Unlike most other breakers that would pivot my boat sideways, here I could keep the boat pointed straight as an arrow, racing over the shallows at top speed. With some waves I finished with a dirty lean and brace in whitewater. It was a fun ride from start to finish.

West Coast surfing indeed! I couldn’t think of any comparable breaks since my time in Washington years ago. They were some of the best rides I’d had, period.

The paddleboarder and I traded waves and were soon calling rides for each other.

“Get this one, man!”

“Go! Go! Go!”

“Nice one!”

 

Paltry tenting options along the coast had forced me to plug in a low-distance day. Although I’d initially been bitter about this, I now appreciated the fact that I didn’t have to hurry to a far-flung Point B. Horsing around on beautiful waves was as good a way to spend the day as any other.

 

Finally, I left the fun for Point Judith, where I would camp for the night. A large series of breakwaters create the vast Harbor of Refuge here. North of this lay Point Judith Pond — another salt pond guarded by a breachway.

Docked fishing vessels at the state pier bristled with steel rigging, radio antennae, and exhaust stacks. Some were up to three stories tall. If the sleek yachts in Newport were Maseratis, these were tow trucks — pulling up nets of flopping protein with the drum winches on their transoms. Point Judith’s commercial fleet brought in more than $63 million dollars-worth of seafood in 2018, making it the 11^th-ranked fishing port by value in the United States, according to the National Ocean Economics Program.

There was a faint, but ever-present fish smell. One of the largest (and homiest) ships featured a painted SpongeBob and Patrick, leaping into the air for a high five.

 

The fisherman’s Memorial Campground was conveniently located just off the water. I pitched tent, then got back in the kayak.

I continued east out of the Harbor of Refuge and into open ocean. I passed the Point Judith Lighthouse, turning north into Narragansett Bay. The rocky point below the light acted like a giant magnifying glass, bending the waves together until they stacked up and curled over into appealing breaks. There could be a fun ride here, but that surfy siren song ended with a face full of granite.

I opted instead to travel further off the coast and let attention wander. I would paddle for about another hour and a half before I turned back.

 

Dappled, bulbous, waves shifted in psychedelic mirror, symmetrical, random-seeming, a patch of blue here, the clouds there, the winking sun. Each element remixed, swirled together: first in large swatches, then diminishing to points as my eye tracked to the horizon. Here were the patterns that bring out the best in human nature, according to The Extended Mind. The lines were soft about the edges and colors muted. Shapes repeated, but there was no rigid order.

These patterns pass through our minds like a calming hand. They smooth the fuzz of electric noise, the atomized pops and screeches of intrusive thought. Branches sway in a breeze. A swell approaches shore. A maestro summons a final flourish from the players.

The wave closes, the hand shuts, then…shushhhhhh.

 

Part IV: Reckoning

I awoke the next morning to a cherry-red sunrise and brisk south wind, signs that foretold challenges on the water. The Weather Service validated my suspicion. Block Island Sound would deliver a stiff south wind, intermittent rain, and two- to four-foot waves kicked up from the approaching storm.

Such conditions may not seem huge on paper, but consider that a four-foot wave will come to about the height of a sitting paddler’s head. Meanwhile, every class of waves was bound to have some standouts.

“Individual wave heights may be more than twice the significant wave height,” the Weather Service notes.

I was glad to have a comparatively short trip ahead of me between my current camp and final camp back at Burlingame. The open water section of the itinerary would consist of 6.5 miles between the Harbor of Refuge and the Charlestown Breachway leading into Ninigret Pond.

Flags snapped at their poles as I started paddling. Dark spoils flew across the surface.

The south wind had already enlivened the protected waters with sharp waves. I paddled cautiously into the ocean to meet the heavyweights.

The coast of Matunuck roiled with giants, tripping over the ledge, collapsing into whitewater thunder trains. Even though I steered well clear, there were several rogues breaking further out, threatening to roll me up in a salty barrel roll.

A dark band of rain approached from the west.

I really needed to pee.

 

My usual technique of peeing from my boat was a nonstarter. Conditions demanded that both hands remain on the paddle as opposed to being occupied, uh, elsewhere. The alternative, landing amidst huge breakers, had its own hazards.

I eventually spied a potential opening by a riprap wall. The boulders protected an RV park from the sea fury and also absorbed enough wave energy to make for a (slightly) softer landing at an adjacent stretch of beach. I took a wild ride, leaning into the froth. The boat hit the sand. I lurched out of the cockpit and pulled the boat high up the beach, away from the melee.

I quickly flipped the boat next to a dune fence and relieved myself in the cover of the riprap. It started raining. Rather than get back out in the sea wilderness, I decided to visit the streets of Matunuck.

I walked into a funky seaside hangout: low-slung shacks, beach taverns on pilings, and more than one lot full of RVs and trailers. The rain started dumping. The only thing that held my interest was a coffee stand in a surf shop parking lot. I half ran, half waded to the window, where a small awning provided paltry, but effective shelter.

I paid the young woman at the counter nine bucks, money well spent, for a mocha coffee with oat milk and a toasted bagel with peanut butter and jelly. The peanut butter was silk smooth. The raspberry jelly, dark rich with tang, could only have been procured from a Black Forest faerie cabal. Rain pounded on the roof, and wind lashed the side of the stand. It couldn’t touch me. I ate slowly within my blissful eddy. The rain tapered and then, with my last bite, ceased.

 

The surf launch was no easy matter.

Waves battered the hull before I could snap spray skirt into place. By the time I pulled it over the cockpit, the boat turned sideways. I almost lost the paddle, then flailed wildly. To steer the boat away from the rockpile. A new breaker reared up, slammed me across face and chest. Inches from the rocks, I paddled desperately to meet the next wave. The nose climbed, then splashed to safety down on the other side.

The gear beneath my decklines was an unruly mess. I realized that the waves had knocked a water bottle overboard. Surely it was Davy Jones’s water bottle now. Yet, lo! I turned around and saw the blue plastic rolling forlornly in the shallows.

I took a backwards surf ride into the beach, impressed that I didn’t end up eating sand. I secured the bottle and punched my way out for the next round.

 

The next miles were a game of saltwater football. Surprise breakers detonated left and right. The water would mount, and I would either speed up and slow down to avoid getting caught.

The nastiest surprise breaks formed hundreds of yards out and crashed all the way to the beach in a line drive. Such assassins tended to gather in certain areas but only trigger every fourth or fifth wave. At first, I steered around such places; adding distance to the trip as I paddled long distances to get around. Then they started becoming more and more common.

The long break zones in front of me became so common that I stopped trying to avoid them. I would simply sprint across the foamy water as quickly as possible before the next monster barreled in. It might have seemed that the best option was just to paddle into the deeper water further offshore to stay safe. Unfortunately, I was hemmed in by reefs. The waves were even taller, offshore, more explosive.

It was exhausting trying to process the chaos, to respond to different bumps and jolts, to stay focused on keeping the boat upright. My frame of reference was slipping. This is when I started singing and reciting poems.

 

The Charlestown Breachway was supposed to be my doorway to the calm water in Ninigret Pond. Instead, I found a dragon’s mouth. The current was still ebbing too hard to fight. The breachway entrance was a permanent froth-zone where stalling waves boiled and raged.

Once again, I needed to make a beach landing. I got lucky in that this time I grabbed one of the smaller waves, pulling the boat up before the bigger siblings could roll in to pound me.

The Charlestown RV Park offered a potential portage to calmer water beyond the breachway. The other option was to wait out the tides and shoot the breachway when the ebb current had abated. I decided that I wanted to walk the jetty above the breachway to scout conditions.

The view was unencouraging. The ripping water extended out for a quarter mile or more. The two most likely outcomes of an attempt would be a flipped kayak or a shattered one. An angler stood on the far point, casting a rubber baitfish into the churn. The biggest waves blasted us with spray.

“Look at that!” the angler called.

I looked out just in time to spy a harbor seal, moving easily through the pandemonium, in search, no doubt, of disoriented fish to seize.

Despite the grim conditions, the current was softening. I decided I would wait out the tides, then launch back into the surf and try to paddle my way in. I waited for about an hour. Then I made my move.

The opposing current was strongest in the first 50 feet of breachway. Incoming waves squeezed the current against the wall. I surfed some of these, gaining a kayak-length of progress with each ride. Finally, I cut right in order grab eddies off the riprap.

I slowly edged my way back into Ninigret Pond. The egrets were in the same place I’d left them yesterday, wading in the still water.

See Footage of The Sea vs. Charlestown Breachway

Dinner at Burlingame was more ramen, and the last of the kale and sundried tomatoes. My neighbors in the RV had a generator roaring, air conditioning, and some ’80s arena rock to boot. The diesel scent eventually wafted to my picnic table, and I realized that it really bothered me.

This was, after all, the third day, and I was supposed to be now benefiting from the three-day effect, that I’d read about in The Extended Mind. The noise pollution from the nearby site was clearly taking away from the introspection and exhilaration I’d felt earlier. I now felt the jaw clamped down and a tide of negative thoughts rushing in.

I decided to practice what Anne Murphy Paul describes as environmental self-regulation. In other words, I decided to take a hike. It was near twilight, and the bugs had redoubled their assaults. An ablution of pure DEET put a stop to that. I put a headlamp in my pocket and walked down the road.

I soon took a nearby trail into the woods, which greeted me with a chorus of crickets, the boom of an owl in the canopy. It felt more relaxing than it had any right to be. It was too easy. Looping ruminations melted off, especially after I stopped beneath some sprawling oaks to contemplate their branches against the darkening sky.

The good life in a pot

 

Part V: Landfall

I started the last day of my doorstep adventure by rolling my kayak to Blue Shutters Beach. The new route was only slightly longer than launching at Ninigret Pond. It would save me miles of paddling on the way back to Mystic.

The forecast called for the same wave heights as the day before, uh-oh! but lighter winds good! The first look from the beach showed me a far mellower coast. The air was clear enough that I could see the offshore windmill towers near Block Island. Fishers Island looked so close that I initially thought that it was part of the Rhode Island shore.

A group of skim boarders stood atop the steep beach face, threw boards down the swash, jumped on, and whirled around to catch rides from the next waves.

My kayak launch was less graceful. The sharp waves broke close to shore, leaving little time to prepare skirt or paddle. A longshore current spun my bow to the left — just in time for me to get a breaker to the face. I almost went backwards, then fell through to the other side, climbing over the next wave an instant before it dumped.

It was Easy Street after I crossed the surf zone.  I let the waves roll under me and aimed well offshore to Watch Hill lighthouse.

 

As I passed Misquamicut, however, the sight of a gray fin sticking out of the water made me jolt.

I discerned a large, dim form below the surface, scarcely moving, yet pointed at my boat. It than disappeared only to reappear a moment later. Unlike porpoises I’ve seen, this did not blow air at the surface.

I later concluded that the fin almost certainly belonged to an ocean sunfish, a species frequently mistaken for sharks because it has smooth gray skin and a habit of swirling its dorsal fin at the surface. Ocean sunfish are giants; they can get up to 1,000 pounds. Fortunately, these giants choose jellyfish over human flesh.

 

By 11, I was back at Napatree point, on the threshold of Long Island Sound. The ebb current was going strong, stacking the oncoming waves into tall overhead curls. I would have to fight the tide through Fishers Island Sound and all the way up the Mystic River: miles of effort under the hot sun. Before that, I thought I was due for one last tango with the sea.

I steered the boat back over the shallows, waiting to ride.

The wave tripped over the shoal and fell apart into an anarchy of froth. The kayak nose plunged into the trough. The boat turned sideways, then spun around. I rode the beast until it tamed.

The second oncoming break caught me less prepared. In the ensuing rush of water and adrenaline, I connected to the paddle; to the boat; to the water; and through each of these, to years of paddling experience.

I was connected to every mile that I had rolled a kayak against traffic. I could trace a story from doorstep to Napatree Point and I could remember the effort I’d felt along the way.

I feel connected the waves now, as I write these words and reflect upon how much poorer my life would be without rare moments of wild joy.

I surfed backwards head above the froth. I wobbled, but somehow, on this ride, I landed upright.

 

I want to own such moments, to be able to summon them at will, but connection is shared not owned. It is the opposite of consumption, where we take something so we can use it solely for ourselves.

Burning gasoline is a prime example of consumption. It is a handmaiden to disintegration of our environment. Consequently, the burning fuel divides our spirit from the natural world that should nourish it. Gasoline is connected only to a system that tears poison from fractured ground. Drivers in steel cocoons feel disconnected from the consequences billowing out of their tailpipes, but they cannot change the fact that the carbon dioxide behind them rips our children from their future.

Because of consumption, we now face a future filled with rising waves, with fire and storm. A menace approaches the Gulf Coast as I’m writing. The Category 4 hurricane threatens to take lives and shatter others. I am connected to what happens there by water, by asphalt and atmosphere. The fuel we burn is connected to their fate as it is to ours. Our journey winds around the axis of climate change. It is the wheel that binds and crushes us.

At what point do we collectively fling aside the gas pump with horror and disgust?

At what point do we decide that cheap vacations aren’t worth the destruction that trails tailpipes and airplane wings?

How can we prepare for the long, dark ride ahead if we won’t even try to turn the boat in the right direction, acknowledge our peril, or work with others to patch the holes?

As the world falls apart, we must find better ways to join.