Encounters From a Kayak: Native People, Sacred Places, and Hungry Polar Bears by Foster Nigel

Author:Foster, Nigel [Foster, Nigel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sports
ISBN: 9780762790159
Goodreads: 17890458
Publisher: FalconGuides
Published: 2012-11-20T00:00:00+00:00

Barges along the canal, bright with geraniums, offer cool beer.

The waterway widens and there are white water-lily flowers, great green floating leaves and green beer cans. There are also bottles and bikes. Seems there are only the white railings around the canals to prevent bikes from ending up in the water. A distorted wheel hangs by a chain locked to the railing. What happened to the rest of the bike? When the town decided to dredge the narrow canals so that tour boats could operate, they hauled more than two thousand bicycles out of the mud.

My plan had been to stop for coffee at the cafe on the barge, the one with blue umbrellas, but it is closed. It’s Sunday. I suppose I could find another, but I’d hoped to sit in the sun and let my damp clothes dry. Besides, I like that cafe. It sits across from an elegant house beside tall reedlike iron railings. This was once the home of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, the man who observed the magnifying power of a drop of water and went on to construct the first microscope. We owe our modern lenses to Leeuwenhoek’s initial observations.

Close by is a tunnel. BOTERBRUG says the sign. I pass into cool darkness. The sound of my paddle strokes echo a little. I feel pleasantly alone here, surrounded by brick, moving toward the circle of light that is the exit. Butter Bridge is the widest bridge in town at one hundred yards from side to side—or a tunnel a hundred yards long, depending on your viewpoint. This structure of tiny clay bricks, more than four hundred years old, was built to accommodate the flat-bottomed barges that carried butter. In the heat of summer, the barges were tied up under the bridge to keep the butter cool. Nearby were the old weigh-house and the butter market.

The low arch makes for a cambered street above that scarcely hints at the canal beneath, or of me on the canal. I pause in this man-made cave to savor a moment’s peace away from the clamor of the streets that line the canals. Turning into the bustle and sunshine once more, I drift again, this time to view a series of arched bridges, one beneath another, and a bridge inside that one, and so on until the bridges become very small in the distance. It’s a city of echoes. Each canal seems to echo the previous, and each intricate rooftop gable that reaches in steps and curves—tight, tall, and narrow—is reminiscent of another in another street.

I come upon a barge moored against a wall: a black wooden hull topped with white umbrellas and boxes of bright red geraniums. It offers extra seating for a pub. I wouldn’t mind a pint of the locally brewed blond beer, sharp and refreshing with a slice of lemon. As the canal system was extended from the thirteenth century onward, Delft was perfectly positioned as a center for import and export. In particular, it was

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