By the time we arrived at the Benicia bridge it was very clear the tide was winning the duel of the water forces. The river was going backwards. As we stopped paddling, we kept moving nearly as quickly under the bridge. Oh oh. Yes, our ah-hah moment had arrived as we faced another decision-point in our travels and began making more meaningful distal assessments.   It suddenly dawned on us that heading home would be a very different kind of paddle.  As our distal assessment kicked in, we begin to recognize we were going to have a different, tougher time getting back.  We hadn’t been paying attention to time during our joyful journey to the bridge, but now we checked on time.  It took us 30-40 minutes to travel 6000 meters to reach the bridge, which is well beyond our kayaking abilities for sure.   The tide had carried us to the bridge at a speed beyond Olympic kayaking in calm waters. We literally flew on the shoulders of the tide and now began to hope the tide would join us again on the way back home.  In the absence of earlier distal assessments, we found ourselves languishing in wishful distal thinking, one might call it magical thinking.

We began our journey back. As if wanting to add to our mounting dilemmas, the wind picked up quickly and conspired with the Tide to press us back toward the bridge (a bit of magical proximal thinking). Now we faced large white caps that drenched us and water-weighted our kayaks, nearly tipping us both over several times. Through this conspiracy of tide and wind, the flowing ocean water was overwhelming the river. These conspiring conditions had now created a high-risk situation for two weekend kayakers.  Our joyful flight to the bridge had now become a death-defying race against a wicked churning river-like riptide going the opposite direction of home. Our mind-set of a joyful paddle through a tranquil lake-like delta had now become a life-endangering battle that would push both of us to the brink of exhaustion and risk our sinking in the chilly waters of the delta. Perhaps we call them deltas as they are so ready to change at the whims of winds and tides.

Any cessation in paddling led to rapidly moving back toward the bridge. My anxiety rose, adrenalin flowed, my attention focused, I realized I must paddle continuously as strongly as I can to overcome the turbulence tide. The wakes and waves might turn over my kayak if I am at the wrong angle and not moving. Our pleasant kayak was converted to a risky, exhausting test through conspiracy of tide, wind and river….making our decision to go up-the-delta 45 minutes earlier look foolhardy at best. Our proximal, frozen state thinking based on the assumption of a static, flat plane had now become the fluid thinking of a dynamic, turbulent delta—a warped plane that was constantly moving. We had failed to do any distal assessment of potentially dangerous conditions.

Water and wind in a tightly bound delta provide a dynamic waterscape that vividly (and dramatically) represents complexity and mystery. How did we miss this coming? Many important questions were never asked.  Why weren’t there other kayakers out on the water this day?  How could such a calm day become so hazardous in just 45 minutes? Being caught off guard in over-simplified and frozen thinking states can be overwhelming and lead to deeper questioning—stirred by fear and awe at the rapid turn of events. It is easy to scurry back and forth in our fast (desperate) thinking and acting.

Something more powerful than humans is at work.  Some of us call her Mother Nature, others God, or gods, yet others Spirit, Giaia, etc. Yet regardless of beliefs, the rapid shift from apparently simple (frozen) to chaotic (vapor) states creates a profound search for the meaning behind the shift. Second- order learning and slow reasoning were standing at the door, waiting to be invited in. We joked that Neptune was punishing us for the arrogance to go up-delta. We noticed there were no boats out on the water. We wondered, did other people know better than us that this was not a good day for a gentle kayak?