August 27, 2003

My Wish

onight I was reviewing the monthly web server logs and I'm astonished by the number of people from different countries that visit Woody's Kayak Trip Reports. Visitors from Canada, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Japan, Norway, Mexico, Australia, Germany, Belgium, Iceland, New Zealand, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, France, Malaysia, Italy, Israel, Malta, Slovak Republic, Egypt, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Finland, Hungary, and Argentina have all come to my little piece of the electronic frontier to read about the adventures I share with nature, my own abilities and failings, and possibly about things I don't myself understand.

Entering "kayak trip" or "kayak trip reports" into Google returns my web site as the #1 entry. Wow. That is cool. Around 2000 world residents a month visit. That is cool too. What started as a project to help keep me from forgetting my own kayaking origins has grown into something that in and of itself is humbling to me. Stories I wrote 5 years ago are still being read, sometimes, even by me. I still marvel at how far I've somehow progressed from trip #1. I imagine that some of those who visit WKTR are at the level I was back then.

This is a long way of saying I thank you for taking time to read about my adventures. I hope you come away from here with something you can use or a smile on your face. But more than anything I hope you get the same thing I get from kayaking - that thing which I've never been able to explain, but I love to share. The thing that speaks to us when we see an eagle take flight, or the unknown word that describes our sense of becoming one with our surroundings. That unspoken feeling one gets when a cool breeze blows across a river and sends our minds tumbling after it.

This is my wish for you.

Woody