Taylar was born in Ottawa and attended high school at Ashbury College. After graduating from high school she moved to Montreal to study a Bachelors of Anthropology, focussing on Archaeology at McGill University. She also studied two minors; one in Social Studies of Medicine and one in Sociology. She graduated in 2011 and the following year moved to Australia where I have since been living.

She was also on the old Canadian $10 bill before it was changed to plastic. “I’m the blonde haired girl in the middle of the three people standing on the back of the bill.”

‘Paddle to Alaska – Come join me on a 2500 km kayaking expedition from Vancouver, BC along the coastal route to Skagway, Alaska.’

I was sitting in my living room in the small beach town of Anglesea, Victoria. The place that I had called home for the last four years of my life in Australia.

I read the words printed above a photo of Chris Porter sitting in his kayak, floating in front of an iceberg that consumed the entire background of the photo.

Chris, or Ports as those of us who knew him would refer to him, was the original founder of the surf and adventure school where I had been employed for nearly 4 years. While no longer fully active in the school, he did make occasional appearances to help run the ocean kayaking lessons due to his significant amount of paddling experience. It was during these lessons that we got to know each other.

I looked at the photo again. I remembered the day he returned from the trip in the photo, where he lead a small group of men as they circumnavigated South Georgia Island, just off of Antarctica. I was sitting in what was referred to as the Factory – the shed where we stored all of our equipment and ran our operations – when Ports walked through the door. He pulled up the chair next to me as a number of colleagues came to greet him. When asked ‘how was it’ he didn’t respond. He furrowed his brow as he tried to put the enormity of his experience into words.

‘It was the most incredible experience of my life.’

He proceeded to tell us stories of their adventure. Paddling in ocean swells that could swallow a house, paddling against 70 km wind and rain, paddling through ice and past massive icebergs. Pulling their kayaks up onto black beaches and waking up in the morning surrounded by penguins, seals, and walruses. He showed us photos of penguins that had come to investigate their kayaks, sitting in the seat and standing on the decks, attacking the equipment with their beaks. There was one harrowing moment where an extremely large female walrus tried to force her way into Port’s tent. She eventually gave up with a resounding belch through his screen door. I sat there absorbing every word.

I would have never considered taking part in a kayaking expedition, especially not a 2500 km coastal paddle that would take around three months to complete. My kayaking experience, for all it was worth, was fairly minimal. I started kayaking when I was young, an activity to help fill the summer months. As I got older and started high school, the sports I was playing at a competitive level – basketball, volleyball and rugby – took over. Until I moved to Australia and started working for Go Ride a Wave, I hadn’t even sat in a kayak since I was 12 years old.

This trip was different though, this trip struck a chord with me. Having spent 5 summers living and working in the bush as a tree planter before I moved to Australia, I loved the Canadian wilderness. Every spring photos would pop up from from my friends, making their ‘farewell city life, hello bush life’ posts to Facebook, and a pang of homesickness would cut through me. This was a chance to return to that lifestyle without having to plant trees, and achieve a pipe dream of mine that I had never really expected to come to fruition – kayaking around Alaska.

When I had initially approached Ports with questions about his trip, I was only considering joining for the last 3 weeks when they would be they paddling into the more protected waters of Glacier Bay, Alaska. I had just returned from travelling overseas and didn’t have the funds nor the kayaking experience to commit to a three month long expedition along such an exposed coastline. But Ports wasn’t interested in what I couldn’t do.

He wasn’t concerned about my skill level – he could teach me. We also had options; he wanted to paddle the western coastline because it would be a challenge, but there were plenty of opportunities to sneak into the Inside Passage if the swell and winds were too much. He knew of my tree planting days and my experience living and working in the bush. For most of my tree planting career we worked 6 days on, one day off, with a minimum of 75 working days each summer. That meant showering and sleeping in a real bed once every 6 days while carrying out one of the toughest jobs in the world. That meant being eaten alive by bugs, blistered by the sun, soaked by rain and blasted with late spring snows. Sometimes we walked more than 5 kms just to get to work to start making money. Being hungry, exhausted, wet, and uncomfortable in the outdoors? I had that covered at least.

However, it wasn’t my experience being cold and miserable in the outdoors that made him so receptive to my interest in the trip. Aside from Nic Lowe; a fellow surf instructor of mine, Anglesea Surf Club member and surf ski competitor, there were very few people who even showed an interest in the full expedition. Not that this came to a surprise to anyone. Dedicating 3+ months to a remote kayaking expedition isn’t for everyone.

What was a surprise, however, was that of all the highly skilled female kayakers on our coastline who knew of the proposal and could afford the time away, none of them showed any signs of interest. Not even for a week or two, here or there? This caught my attention.

While there are many female kayakers and expeditioners out there, men still capture most of the limelight. Social media has improved the visibility of female adventurers in certain circles, but for those whose daily dose of imagery is from ads and commercials, outdoor pursuits are still very male-centric. If I were to join the expedition as a novice paddler and as a woman paddling with two highly skilled, competitive male kayak racers, perhaps I could help motivate women who doubted themselves and their abilities, something I am regularly at fault for doing myself. Perhaps I could set an example for anyone wanting to get more experience in the outdoors who didn’t think were capable.

We dove right into training. Every Saturday morning was dedicated to skills – rolling, paddling out through the surf, riding waves into the beach, catching runners in deeper water. We started doing little paddles together until I started to feel comfortable going out on my own. Next we began discussing logistics, breaking up tasks between myself, Nic, and Ports. We started looking at safety gear, emergency procedures, routes, campsites, food and equipment drop spots. I started up a Go Fund Me page and thanks to family, friends, my workplace, and strangers I was able to raise enough funds to purchase a kayak, roof racks, paddle, and other safety equipment.

Soon we were paddling in more hazardous surf and weather conditions to be prepared for the worst case scenario. We planned a few kayak camping trips to get used to packing and unpacking our kayaks, which is surprisingly one of the trickier skills we would need to be able to perform efficiently. I was starting to see some real progress; my paddling technique and strength was improving every day and my confidence in larger surf and ocean swells increased dramatically.

It was all going so well… and then I broke my neck. (?????)

The small city of Newcastle, New South Wales has a man-made swimming pool cut into the rock on the foreshore, called the Ocean Baths. This pool provides an area of calm water for swimming for families or those wanting to swim laps. It has a grate at the bottom of the ocean-side wall that allows the water to filter in as well as sand from the ocean. I knew the water was shallow but when I attempted a shallow dive across the surface, I landed with a resounding smack on a sandbar barely three foot underwater, breaking my neck.

A fractured C-6 and six weeks in a neck brace. It was to be worn for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I wore it while I slept and while I showered. Eating was difficult. Sleeping was torture. I couldn’t lie down or sit up by myself for the first few weeks. If I wanted to look left or right to cross the street or talk to a friend I had to turn my whole body.

Having my head immobilised for six weeks caused the muscles in my neck and back to seize up to the point that I had no mobility or flexibility. I suffered from a constant deep, throbbing pain that faded into the background of my life during the first few months of my recovery.

We put a hold on the expedition. Being in a collar for so long and then having an incredibly slow recovery meant that I missed out on months of crucial training. Our initial expedition was already risky, but with so many months of training lost I knew that I would not be able to continue safely. Nic and Ports were no longer keen to undergo the entire expedition with just the two of them. It was a devastating blow and one that still bothers me.

Ports would not let this dampen our spirits though. Instead, we decided to shorten the trip to three weeks of paddling in and around Glacier Bay, Alaska, and use this as training grounds for a longer expedition sometime in the future. This required substantially less trip preparation and training than our initial journey. The shortened time frame meant that we would be joined by two other friends from the Surf Coast – Tom Cazalet and Ross Peasnell.

My recovery period was long, slow, and painful. It wasn’t until the New Year that I felt capable of building up my core and upper body strength again. With three months to go until my trip I still hadn’t sat in a kayak since breaking my neck. I needed to get back in the saddle and start seriously training.

I shipped my kayak and all my gear 1200 kms from Anglesea, Victoria to my new home in Newcastle and went for my first paddle in nearly a year. I lasted about 45 minutes. Considering we were expecting to average about 6-8 hours on the water each day I still had a fair bit of work to do. I started paddling 10 km every morning before work. At first I was slow. Really slow. I found practice tedious. I felt uninspired. Investing your heart and soul into something and then having it taken away makes it difficult to regain your enthusiasm afterwards. For a while I felt like I was going nowhere.

Three weeks passed and I was paddling an average of 50-60 km a week. I began to enjoy my paddling sessions again and looked forward to my weekends spent exploring the waters around Newcastle. Before long my morning paddles didn’t feel like work, it was just another chance to get out on the water and watch the city wake up. Kayaking became a part of my life again.

I didn’t think too much of it at the time until one morning while I was getting dressed and my partner pointed out how much I had changed over the last few weeks. I looked in the mirror and was surprised at what I saw. My neck and shoulders were lined with muscle. My back stood straight and my chest was proud. The weak, hunched posture that I had developed from being immobilised in a neck brace for so long was gone. ……I reflected on the days that saw me struggling to push myself out of bed. For the first three weeks in my collar I was not allowed to lift weight of any kind. I couldn’t carry bags of groceries or carry out simple tasks like moving chairs around the table. Now I hiked my steel-frame bike up the flight of stairs to my apartment with ease. I hoisted my heavy, plastic kayak onto the roof racks of my car without breaking a sweat. If I came out of my kayak in deep water I was able to flip it upright and pull myself in one-handed while the other hand held my paddle. For the first time since breaking my neck, I felt healthy and strong. I felt unstoppable.

Now as I approach the last few weeks before our departure date, every day I hop on the water excited to paddle. I look forward to it the night before with anticipation rather than apprehension. I’ve been reading maps of waterways to explore and my partner is buying a kayak so we can go on more kayak camping trips together.

Kayaking presents so many opportunities for adventure – for solo exploration or for having fun with friends and family. It creates access to areas that are unreachable by road and it allows us to explore so many different bodies of water from lakes, rivers, estuaries, channels and coastlines. I forgot all of this during those months that I was recovering from my injury. To think that if this trip wasn’t a goal that I’ve worked so hard for, I may never have sat in a boat again. As kayakers our passion inherently puts us in the face of adversity and it is our drive, curiosity and determination that helps us overcome these challenges.

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