Bigger is Better

Giant Economy Size

Spectacular

See it on the Big Screen

What is it with us and size? If we have some, we want more. If we have want we wanted, we want a bigger one (no remarks about envies, please). TV screens, cars/SUVs, houses and bank accounts; we want them to be bigger, no matter how large they are now. No matter that they are already more than adequate.

The same seems to be true about our lust for adventure. I know all sailboaters and power boaters go through a cycle of wanting, and often getting, larger and larger boats. The end result is often a case of ending up with a boat that is too big to manage and too expensive to maintain. Disheartened, the owner sells and denies himself the pleasure he had knoown with his first and much smaller boat.

Kayakers, by and large, don't have this exact syndrome. At least I haven't seen any 42-foot kayaks down at the yacht clubs. Instead, we are gear junkies who tweek our lines, scour the catalogues and stores and constantly come across stuff we didn't know we couldn't live without. Or we lust after that new model that just has to be better than the one that just our sorry asses through 6 foot waves and a lee shore.

And, there is another varient of this diseasse that some of us have.

We (some of us) want big environment. What doesn't explode on the motion picture screen needs to explode on our retinas...and get critiqued just as much.

Big water, open seas, bigger waves, spectacular rainbows, storms (see picture above) that are huge and dramatic (and not too close). These things are all woth seeing and experiencing, however, the intense search for them may result in us wearing blinders.

Gazing over a large body while we rush to see what is around the next point, we often miss the smaller and more delightful things the world has on display.

The little musckrat scooting along the river bank and suddently disappearing into his tunnel. The colorful bird almost, but not quite, hidden in the branches while he watches us and waits, in return, to be seen. Or one of the gazillions of flowers along a shoreline that quietly lives out its existance and is availble for enjoyable viewing. The rock polished smooth by centuries of wter washing over it. If only we would look. If only we would see.

DS