The Kayak Guide – Part 1: Paddle Stroke

"Long stroke," said Mateo. "From the hips."

"I'm doing it from the hips."

"You're doing it from the elbows."

Rebecca gritted her teeth and tried again. The paddle bit into the water, and the kayak surged forward over a lake of milky turquoise. Around her, icebergs floated in the still fjord like sculptures, white and cobalt and glass. Beyond them rose a wall of black mountains, striped with waterfalls, topped with glittering glacier. The air was bitingly clean.

She was thirty-two, a lawyer from Dublin, taking her first big holiday in years. He was thirty-six, the guide, lean and brown, with a shaggy beard, a woolly hat and quick friendly eyes, paddling beside her in a bright red kayak.

"Better," he said.

"Really?"

"Much. You're pulling the water, not pushing."

She smiled, absurdly pleased. The group paddled on in single file: six tourists, two guides, a little flotilla of coloured boats. A seal bobbed up and watched them. A condor sailed high overhead, huge and black.

By midday they landed on a pebble beach for lunch. Mateo unpacked bread and cheese and hot soup from a waterproof bag. The sun burned off the mist, and the glacier flared white. Rebecca sat on a rock, hugging her knees, and could not stop smiling.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Nothing. It's... everything."

"The first day is always like this."

"How many times have you done it?"

"Two hundred," said Mateo. "And I still cry, a little, at the glacier."

Rebecca laughed, delighted. "Can I ask you something?"

"Yes."

"Why do you do this?"

"Because it reminds me how small I am," he said, "and that it is a good thing."

"Green?" she said, a paddle, a flag.

"Green," said Mateo, with a warm shy smile. "Very green. Come. I know a camp."

Continue the story: Part 2 – The Camp.